I don't actually think a mechanical system can work long term. I watched my old man come up with mechanical systems ad nauseum growing up, and I remember each time him saying that he thought this one was going to win blah blah but they failed when tested with money. He has a first class honours degree in economics from Melbourne University. His father, an owner, breeder and sometime SP bookie, kept piles of the Sportsman newspapers in his study and was always researching systems. He never came up with a winning one either.

All the men (and women), and all the millions of hours of study that they have put into it, and do you actually know of a winning system? It's like cracking an impossible code, and I have a small theory as to why:

Think of humans. Think of all the different ones you have known or known of, all the weird, colourful, positive, negative things they have done.

Now try to make a system filled with mechanical, arbirtrary rules to explain them.

Let's give it a crack:

1 - When on a train, they will sit down. Or stand up.
2 - Men like women. Women like men. Some men like men. Some women like women.
3 - If one human attacks another, the other will always fight back. Sometimes he will not.
4 - Humans like meat. Some don't.

OK I could go on, but I don't think I'm making my point correctly - you can't explain humans. You can't set up rules which classify them. We are a complex, beautiful, ugly, boring, funny, smart, ignorant, proud, arrogant, humble, generous, selfish race, infantile in our evolution, completely obsessed with ourselves.

When all is said and done, horses are just as complex as us. Hell, they can drown in a puddle of water for God sake. Arbitrary rules fall too far short of explaining what they can and can't do.

The other thing is this: The human mind is a very complex thing. Einstein alluded to his belief that the best and brightest of us (ie him) only use up to 10 or 15% of it. It is capable of immense understanding and powerful insight in a fraction of a second, and that is without us even concentrating. In that respect, the market on a horse race is generally pretty right, because the combined brainpower of all the people out there doing the form pretty much mean that the right horses go out the right prices. (A good example of the combined brainpower thing was Sportz's ratings comp the other day - the combined ratings of everyone had both winners in the top two). No pre-ordained rules containing sweeping statements about horses in certain situations can be more accurate than that combined brainpower which sets the market. That's why - in my opinion only of course - systems pretty much have to fail.

There is a way to beat that combined brainpower, and that is what Crash alluded to: you have to put in the time to do the form. Basically, put in more time to do the form than what the average of the combined brainpower pool did, and do the form properly. Learn how to do the form if you don't know, from books like Don Scott and Andy Beyer if you like time analysis, but ultimately the best way is to learn from your mistakes. It's no quick answer, it's a long grind to understanding the best way, and even when you're like Crash and are confident in your form analysis, it doesn't mean you'll do it the right way every time. You'll still get heaps of horses wrong, but that's OK. If looking back after the event the reason the winner won isn't apparent then you need to look harder. Then, when you're in the enviable Crash position of being confident in your analysis, the other half of your job begins: how to punt.

I never used to believe them when they said that form was only half the battle, that punting properly was the other half, but it's true. I know that now, it's been a costly lesson but I've learn't it (I hope). I still go out and have some very muggy bets sometimes, and they lose, but most of the time I stick to what I know is the right way to punt, and to answer haveadip's other question, his original one - people can win on it, but if doing the form etc is a grind then you probably aren't going to stay the trip. You have to love it to do it, otherwise you'll burn out.

Duritz.