Hermes,

A few ideas:

# If you believe that you can maintain a strike rate above 80%, then place betting may be the way to go. If you can't see this happening then you should look at win betting.

# If you bet for a win, it all depends on your avg div as to a req'd strike rate. My method is aimed at a strike rate above 30% and avg div of at least $4. That equates to 120%, or POT of 20%+. Currently it is well above that, however as long as it stays above 20% over the LT my bank will be doing fine.

# With Stats based systems, in my experience you need to construct one that has a set of rules that are not too rigid individually, but combined are powerful. By that I mean, if you have rigid rules they will knock out too many winners and you'll be left with hardly any good priced bets. For every criteria such as LS position, I use 2 or 3 moderate rules which combined are powerful, but individually aren't too daunting for horses to achieve.

# When trialling, only trial on "Paper" for a short period. The reason is, unless you place real money on selections you won't get a proper idea on how accurate the system is. That's because when you have marginal selections, one can ********** a little and include marginal winners, and exclude marginal losers. You'll have some horses which are on the border of being selections and you won't know whether to include them or not. But if you have to place real money on them, your results will be clear cut. I'd suggest placing small bets at the beginning, say $1/race. So if your system doesn't work too well, it doesn't matter much. If your system shows promise, then start increasing your bets, steadily. But don't go from betting $1/race to $50/race in a week, unless you can afford it, cause many systems have bad weeks and you don't want to give away a few hundred dollars straight away.

# Don't take it too seriously - have fun with your method. Horse racing can throw up some odd results at times which defy explanation, so don't get too serious otherwise you'll start going mad when you have a bad week or two. There is nothing worse then spending countless hours working out your selections/method and have it fall in a heap on race day. I'd suggest don't spend any more than 2 hours doing selections each race day. If it takes longer, you're system needs to be improved.

# Review your method regularly - don't make drastic changes if you have one bad week though. But you should review results and see if any minor modifications need to be made.

# Banks - you can operate just the one bank and still have multiple bet types, just keep accurate records on your computer as too which bet types are performing best.

# Field size - Depends on your approach. My system works best on fields on 9-16. However, if you're betting for a place or betting on horses above 10/1 then fields of 17-20 can be profitable as you will receive good divs - the Falvelon example was a good place bet, but a poor win bet in a field like that. Don't except under 10/1 in large fields if win betting, unless we are talking Sunline running against backmarkers. I also wouldn't accept place divs below $2.50 in large fields.



[ This Message was edited by: chief on 2002-06-25 12:07 ]