in bravely posting his weekly tips in a thread below, Becareful alluded to the "forum jinx" - a subject close to my heart.

to enlighten those who have yet to fall foul of the Jinx...

there are basically two types of Jinx -
a) the "I'll open my big mouth for a one off selection" Jinx and
b) the " here is a system I have been working on" Jinx.

Type A is pretty straight forward and I have had the pleasure of falling for this one myself -
about a month ago I opened my Big Fat Mouth and declared that I would be putting my money that night on Double Identity as its record made it a certainty.
Before that night DI had run a place in something like 15 of its last 15 races, and has run a place in 4 out of 4 races since that night - but do you think the ************** could run a place on the night I had opened my Big Fat Mouth???
Nup, it ran 4th !!!!

And we see many members of the forum get brave and bring their systems to the group only to fall victim to the type B Jinx.
They put in lots of hard work, probably even make money from it and then they bring the system to the forum, and they are doomed...
there are two forms of the type B Jinx.
Sometimes the victim brings his system to the forum and from day 1 onwards everything unravels and the system chalks up a loss. Maybe for a day or two we are excited by the odd win, but sure enough the rest of the week will be doom and gloom and members will slowly and politely stop reading the selections and feel sorry for the victim.
But there is a nastier strain of the Jinx and this is when the poor victim puts up his selections and for the first week or two they actually make money.
The other forum members are delighted and start putting their own money on the tips and everyone is on a winner - or so they think!

But then the good old Jinx starts to work, slowly withering away the profits until the hard earnt POT slides towards zero and then becomes a LOT.
The original poster then has two choices, to slink away into the distance and hide, or to come back in a few days with a new identity so he can again grace the forums pages with courage.

It is a terrible thing this Jinx, it gets the best of us ultimately.

You could have a strike rate of 99%, but step up to the plate with your public selection and BANG - it will be the one that loses.

So, good luck Becareful, but really you should have known better and Been Careful.

Public selections always attract the Jinx,
there are many of us who have fallen foul to it in the past.

see ya
Every Topic







[ This Message was edited by: Every Topic on 2003-01-27 14:02 ]