Thanks EI. The results sure surprised me! Had to check them 3 or 4 times to make sure I hadn't made a mistake. I can't believe I have spent hundreds of hours developing and refining a fairly complex system only to find a really simple method that seems to outperform it! Only problem is the fairly small number of selections means some weeks you will not get any winners.

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

The difference between 10% POT and 71% is considerable indeed, but it also gives very wide parameters for customizing the method to a punter's liking. I'd be looking for a little bit more action, so could include ratings 100, 99, 98 and still be assured of POT somewhere between 10% and 70%. Impressive flexibility!

I gather the ratings scale holds good throughout that range of POT, i.e. 96-100 gives lowest POT, 97-100 second lowest, 98-100 third lowest, 99-100 highest of all. Conversely, 96-100 gives most action, 99-100 least. Choose within that range to suit your betting style.

And if the ratings scale holds good like that it also follows you could bet accordingly. Rated 96 = 1 unit. 97 = 2 units. etc. Stack your bets with the probabilities?

(Beautiful day at the races at Bendigo today - now yesterday. Got severely stung betting with a bookie, saved by a last start lunge, went home happy. Love country racing.)

Hermes

Well done Becareful.

Thanks for sharing your findings, has you computer blown up yet ? , have you still got eyes in your head after all that work.?

An EXCELLENT example of following through on a shared idea with some solid research using past data with the power of "modern" computers ..Brilliant POT.

The average No. of bets per day appears to be 3 for this system.
Good example of resticting ones No. of bets & confining to higher priced conveyances.
($11.00-20.00 range.)

For any of those in the market for computers at the right price, check out,
http://www.pc-club.com.au

__________________
Cheers.

I have had a look at the weekly figures for each week this year and if you are considering using this system be warned that you do need to be prepared for a run of outs. There was one 4 week period with around 40 selections in total and only a single $12 winner. Around 40% of weekly figures had no winners but there were also some great weeks - 18 bets for $59.40, 13 bets for $47.30, 10 bets for $40.80, etc. Like any long-odds betting you need to make sure you are prepared for the possible long gaps between drinks!

Hermes - Yes you could include the lower raters for more bets but there does seem to be a big drop between the 99 and 98 raters - in fact 98 raters perform worse than 97 raters but I suspect that may just be a statistical anomoly.

Bhagwan - Thanks for that. The long-term average is about 10 bets/week (so 2 per day) but it is quite variable - there were several weeks with only 2 or 3 bets the whole week (possibly because of the Good/Fast track restriction?) but other weeks with 20+ bets. You certainly need some patience but the plus side is you don't need to spend a lot of time studying the form guide! Today you only need to look at Queanbeyan and I don't think any of the 99-100 raters will start at over $11 (so far most of them have been under $5).
_________________
"So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?" - Yoda



[ This Message was edited by: becareful on 2002-08-26 15:15 ]

On 24/8/2002, becareful wrote:
quote
Hermes (and anyone else interested):

I did some analysis on my database using the QTab ratings and thought you may be interested in the results. I have the QTab ratings for all races run this year (since 9/1/02) so I looked at all races since that date (quite a few races - I need a faster PC as it took some time for each query!).
unquote

becareful,

You say you have the QTAB ratings in your database.

Can I ask how you got the data in there?

Do you enter it manually, or do you download it or buy it from somewhere?

I, too, am interested in the QTAB ratings and had recently embarked on a 'manual, eyeball mission' to update my database, but then read your post and I am hoping I can download it from somewhere to update my history.

Any advice you could give would be most appreciated and I will gladly share any new findings with the rest of the forum.

Thanks & regards
Big Louie

__________________
Here for a good time, not a long time!

Big Louie,

I have my own database and wrote a program to download all the price data from the QTab website (actually I get the data from all three TABs). At this stage I am not selling the program that I use as it contains all the logic rules behind my own betting system - if I get time and if people were interested I may split the downloading part of the program from my betting system at some time in the future.

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

hi becareful

i'd be interested in that.

do you do any computer work for others as a norm? i have a couple of things i've been looking at , but every time i mention horse racing to programmers they "poo poo" me

regards

mal

Mal,

Yes I currently do contract programming for anyone willing to pay me! Hopefully soon I will be able to give that up and live off my punting income but in the meantime you can have a look at my website and email me if you want to discuss anything. I am not opposed to working on betting systems!!!


Latest update on QTab Ratings:
I left my computer running all night to download the QTab ratings from their website for previous year from 1/2/01 onwards (glad we have unlimited internet plans these days!).

On a quick analysis the results for previous year for 99-100 raters are good but not quite as good as this year (particularly the 99 raters which had some bad months). 98 raters were better than this year. 97 and below is quite variable and nothing below 95 seems to work.

One thing that does seem to improve returns is to increase the minimum and maximum bet limits for the lower raters. So we have $11-$20 for 100 raters, $13-$22 for 99 raters, $15-$24 for 98 raters, etc.

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

becareful,

You wrote:
I have my own database and wrote a program to download all the price data from the QTab website (actually I get the data from all three TABs).

My question:
Can you reveal what programming language/tool you use to do this download from QTAB? I have a programming background too, but I can't imagine how you would do it.

============================================

You wrote:
At this stage I am not selling the program that I use as it contains all the logic rules behind my own betting system - if I get time and if people were interested I may split the downloading part of the program from my betting system at some time in the future.

My comment:
Yes, I would be interested if I can't achieve it myself.


Hope you and the others keep up the interesting feedback on this thread.

Cheers,
Big Louie

__________________
Here for a good time, not a long time!

Big Louie,

I use Visual Basic for the data retrieval and store results in an Access database. The program uses an internet control to download the web page as a html text object and it then searches through to pull out the bits of information I want. The tricky bit is working out how to locate each bit of information you want - basically you have to search for certain HTML strings to locate each item and then strip away all the excess HTML formatting. Each of the three TAB's obviously has to be handled seperately and you also have problems when they decide to change the formatting of their websites - luckily they don't do that very often! Queensland and Tabcorp are good because you can go back several years and get full details for each race, NSW deletes their detail pages at the end of each day so you cant get past history (they only have summary results for past dates). Be warned that there is a lot of data transfer involved so you need an internet connection with unlimited MB data transfer (eg. my effort last night for 11 months of gallops data only from Qld was about 250MB of data transfer).

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