In principle, I tend to side with Becareful.

The most important element is the Selection System/Methodology. If the Methodology does not make a level stakes profit, no matter what one does with a staking plan there is still the potential - ie risk - of being wiped out due to a losing seqence of bets. If the Methodology makes a level stakes profit, provided care is taken in terms of level of bets you WILL make a profit. In addition, as PPM have highlighted on a number of occassions, staking plans do not improve the POT.

If you can not make a level stakes profit over a long sequence of bets, it is my opinion that you will never make profit using a staking system, all you will do is delay the inevitable realisation that the method is wrong.

In order to improve my own methods, I review them without fail every week, ie they self learn. As a result, some of my methods have returns in excess of 44 % POT over tens of thousands of dollars of wagers.

The second element and just as important at improving the profitability is the Psychology. The key to this is still related to methodologies and in saying this I mean the thought process/psychology of chosing whether or not to lay the particular bet. An example that comes to mind was Avon Jewel in Brisbane two or three weeks ago. My methods picked the horse as a bet however given that the horse had run at the track 5 times for no wins and no places, I left the bet alone. The horse won but over the long term those final choices whether to bet or not have saved me far more money that they have cost me. In fact, over the past 9 months, only two of the possible bets left alone have won for a saving far exceeding the dividends.

The Psychology issues seem to often be approached in terms of "will to bet" whereas I approach them more from the point of "reason why my selection should be bet". In saying that, for me a good bet is a method/system selection that seems to have a good chance of winning either because it has run a good race in a fast time already at the distance (my preferred final review) or for some other potential positive reason. A bad bet is one that afterwards you can look back as say "I was not confident that it had a good chance because xxxxxxx" and in Psychological terms, we should always learn from those decisions.

The staking for me is a non issue as I always total the days results in terms of profit or loss however treat each method as a totally seperate entity on level stakes.

regards

The Phoenix