every week there are ideas put forth in this forum as to how to succeed - and there are references to all sorts of articles, books and gurus who have supposedly made it.

I have a simple question...
what sort of POT is considered successful?
What is an average POT, what is a brilliant POT?
Now I realise that if someone slaps down a million on one bet once a week and turns over 1% they are still making more than any of us would dream of in a single bet, but I am talking more about us little fellas...

Are any of you successful at this, in a real money sense??

Does anyone here make a living from this, or make 1K per week profit??

Im just curious...

thanks

Every Topic

I have spoken to several people who make a very good living off the punt and the general opinion seems to be that 8 - 10% POT is considered a reasonable level for a professional punter. Anything above 10% would be considered very good - below 5% and you are going to have trouble maintaining a decent income in the long run. Note that these are LONG TERM averages for people placing a fairly large volume of bets. If you want to only place a few bets per week then you will need a larger POT to make a living (otherwise you will have to place HUGE bets and any run of outs could cost you a lot of money).

I have made a profit over last 12 months - not enough to consider myself a professional though! Before the spring carnival I was averaging close to $500/week profit but my system fell in a hole once the carnival started so I stopped betting and have just been monitoring since then and playing with some other strategies. I am having a 10 day holiday from this weekend in Fiji :grin: but am hoping to get back into serious betting when I return.

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

Every system falls into a hole sooner or later.

If you want to make a living off the punt, you need to rely on logic and common sense rather than use a system.

The only way to profit over the long term is to bet on winners which are over the odds.

there is a few people NOT a milion miles away from here who reckon you are wrong, personally after many years of research I find that "ALL" systems work!! but not forever, but I believe it is possible to make a killing during the time some of them work,... enough to ride out the bad times that is; and still come out ahead!!

Lew
If having the patience to wait for a race where you cannot lose is a system, then yes a system can work long term, try 15 years, no losing months, years, whatever.

Becareful - without wanting to get too personal,
how many bets would you have made on average to end up with a profit of $500 per week.
As for those you know who do this for a living, what number of bets would they be taking - limited number of large bets or many small bets.

And finally, do most successful punters you know use one method or rely on many to give them their income.

why am I asking?
just to trying to get a feel for a few things inside this head of mine :smile:

off to fiji huh?
hope you have a great time.

see ya
Every Topic

Mark is talking about each way betting with a bookie. yes mark i know.

Party dude, yes some systems can work well for a short period, but most of them fall into a hole and never fully recover. that is why you see systems every year, cause the last one fell in a one and never recovered.

I'll stick to backing horses at overs and win that way.

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.

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

fair enough.
I'm not a big fan of systems because they are too rigid, but I do use a set of guidelines to try and reduce the no of losing bets. Within those guidelines i do my own ratings and bet the overs.

Regardless of what method you use the profits are made by backing the horses at overs and letting the other selections pass by.

I prefer to make only 5-10 bets per week, because I don't like betting on races which I don't have a good understanding of?

Question for bECAREFUL?
If you're betting on 50 races per week, how could you possibly know the horses well enough to accurately frame a market and bet the "overs"? They would require 50 hours per week commitment!

Lew,

That is why it is mainly computerised! The computer does most of the work and gives me the details of possible bets - I then have a quick look at the form and see if it seems reasonable - if it is and the price is right at the jump then the bet goes on, if not the money stays in my pocket. Probably only takes me 5 minutes per race. I am not saying this is the perfect approach - I know I placed a lot of bets that in hindsight were not too clever but it seems to work for me and keeps the time required to a manageable level. Over the period from January to September it managed a healthy POT - I lost some money in October before I stopped betting (I have a "rule" that if I have 2 consecutive losing weeks I stop and assess the situation) but nowhere near as much as I made in the previous months so overall I am happy with it.