Every Topic,

I was generally placing between 50 and 100 bets per week. The two professionals I have personally spoken to both place very large numbers of relatively modestly sized bets. One of them does a lot of quinellas and trifectas so if you count the individual combinations he would be placing literally thousands of bets/week but average bet size is only a few dollars - he also does win betting with much larger bets but nothing huge. The other one does mainly win betting and doubles (running double/daily double) and again places large numbers of modestly sized bets.

I also know of people who claim to be professional and only place a few very large bets/week so you can probably go either way. My personal leaning is towards a larger number of reasonable bets. Lets say you bet $10000/week. If you are only placing a few bets/week and have a bad run you could easily be down $40000 for the month. If you place a large number of small bets then it is likely even if you are having a bad month quite a few of your bets will win so you may only be down $5000 or $10000 for the month. The POT for the small volume bet punter would probably be higher but I don't think I could handle the huge losses in bad times.

Neither of the guys I have spoken to revealed much about their methods but I gather they are essentially doing their own ratings and then betting the overs in different ways (win/quinella/trifecta or win/running double) so I am not sure if you count this as a single method or not?

I personally feel that having a couple of alternative methods would be preferable as it would tend to even out the ups & downs. The only problem with this is the amount of work involved - for a part time punter it can be hard enough doing the work for one system - 2 or 3 could be too much.

Lew - when I said my "system" I meant my selection methods, not a bought system as such. While it is mainly computerised there is still some human decision making involved and I am constantly monitoring and modifying it where necessary. I agree that a bought system will probably never work long-term but if it is something you have developed yourself, not sold, and can update as circumstances change then I don't see any reason why it can't work long term.

I believe that the method I am using is based on logic/common sense and is trying to identify those runners starting over the odds. I think that the "hole" it has fallen into over recent times is not permanent (it is showing signs of recovery with a paper profit last week) and when it recovers I will be ready! Also I am always looking for other options and methods to identify the overs.

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"Computers can do that????" - Homer Simpson