Hi All,

I have two stories to relate whereby "systems" with no logical base have worked for me.. admittedly in the short term. I'm curious whether other people have similar stories, and perhaps ones where they have worked for longer periods of time.

Up until 3 months ago, I was betting with the aid of the Neurals. My settings had been researched over a period of time, and intially they looked like they'd be a winner, but I ended up almost losing my entire bank for that system. I had noticed that simply betting race 1 and race 2 on the card was very successful, so I put the last few bets on the bank on race 1 and 2 only, and managed to win back my original bank over a period of about 3 weeks. I stopped at that point. Now many will say Race 1 and Race 2 are maidens or poor class events, but analysing all races on the cards that were maidens or of a similar class didn't work... It was simply race 1 and race 2.

My other "system" is a system which takes ratings and bets them only on those tracks where they appear to have won in the past. I did an analysis of each track and simply picked those (yes - backfitting, I know) where they worked in the past. A list of 21 tracks. I've been betting these selectiosn for the last 4 months, and have doubled my bank. What makes this even more bizarre is that I don't bet these selections if any of my other systems select them, and my actual profit is far better than it would be having bet them all.

Now, I recognise that both these approaches are quite illogical. I have no faith that either of them will actually work long term, but they both have appeared to work over a period of time. The "tracks" approach in particular is 4 months and 500 bets.

Comments?

Cheers,
Chris.

Irrational systems can work, and they work the same as logical systems, i.e. temporarily.


Hermes

Illogical betting systems can work, but I treat them simply as a bonus to my other betting. I've just posted a pretty wierd illogical sort of plan on the 'Maiden Over' thread, and while it actually does pretty well, I wouldn't rely on it as a main part of my betting.

Speaking of wierd illogical systems, there's a guy that gives a few tips on Radiotab up here and he likes to bet on horses with form of 0x or 00x. He actually backed a winner at about $120 a month or so ago and today a $98 winner popped up at Cessnock which had form of 00x, so perhaps he was on that one as well.

[ This Message was edited by: sportznut on 2004-01-05 18:34 ]

Was having some profitable (at the time) fun backing last start beaten favourites, next start, until a mate of mine with one of those huge results databases told me that without filters - only around 19% of last beaten favs win next start. Put me off completely :roll:

Yeah, I like backing last start beaten favourites, but if you simply bet on every single one of them without any further rules, you probably won't do that great.

Personally, I like to look at last start beaten favourites which meet any of these criteria:
(a) won their second last start
(b) won at this distance at this track
(c) last start within 7 days
(d) starting from barrier 1
(e) favourite in a maiden race

There you go, there's a few ideas which I've used. Perhaps you can have a go at them.

[ This Message was edited by: sportznut on 2004-01-07 15:15 ]

I personally think irrationality has a lot to do with horse racing success. For want of a better word, I guess this unknowable, illogical gut feeling is the basis of "luck". It works better for some than others.

~Lenny

[ This Message was edited by: Lenny on 2004-01-11 03:20 ]

Oops, I'm sorry. I didn't quite explain myself well enough. It's not simply one or two noughts before a spell. Those noughts must be the horse's ONLY race starts, so in other words:
0x means just one start for nothing followed by a spell and 00x means just two starts for nothing followed by a spell.

I find that the better systems usually pull both ways - one rule finds the talent and another rule finds the value. So something like (1) best average prizemoney in race and (2) ran 0 last start, works better than a combination of obvious talent-seeking rules like (1) best average prizemoney in race and (2) last start winner. Its the seemingly irrational rule that gives you profit.

Hermes