Making
25% Profit Gambling
Well that's got to be an easy task doesn't it? A miserable 25%?
Don't
kid yourself. Making 25% out of nothing is a very big ask and
a steep learning curve at the very least. Even full time share
market traders, day traders if you like, who gamble big time
buying and selling heaps of shares, many of which they never
own (but that's another story for another day) are very pleased
if the finish their year trading making half of that - more
likely a quarter. So why would you, as a lowly punter on the
horses, have any ambition to make 25%?
Here's
the maths and reasoning behind behind the idea but firstly you
have to know, (and be confident in that "knowing")
that in every ten race series, you can pick the winner in two
more than half the time. Let's make it even more restrictive
(and easier) and say there can be no more than ten starters
in any race you're interested in. Now, how do you feel about
picking the winner at least five times out of ten in ten, ten
horse races? Seeming more likely?
The
odds are the next consideration. Any race where one of your
picks is say, favourite, it CAN'T be less than $2.50. Feeling
more confident?
The
idea of course, by way of example, is you have 10 units on each
of two horses to win (yes, one bet MUST be a losing bet - but
let's not go down that circuitous route). If your favoured one
is less than $2.50 you simply skip the race.
If
the favoured one wins, your minimum return is $25.00 or 25%
nett return on your $20 investment. If the longer priced one
wins, say at $4.00, your return is $40 with a 100% profit for
that race.
How
easy is that?
Then
on that ubiquitous "law of averages" - that
doesn't exist by the way - over any ten race series
if you have saluted five times at the minimum possible dividend,
5 x $2.50 winners, the most you can lose
is $75. Two or three better priced winners from your chosen
few, depending on price, would probably put you in front. Two
winners from the five from the ten at say $6.00 would most likely
have you just short of square at worst. Well, that is if you
have another 3 winners from the remaining 8 in the series at
the minimum dividend.
Ah,
now the most observant reader would by now be yelling "but
over the series of ten the profit isn't 25%, you goose!!"
EXACTLY.
It can only be a minimum of 25% on any individual race
and to get a 25% nett profit day in, day out, your race strike
rate would have to be closer to 70% in two picks. Can you do
that unswervingly 365 days a year?
No.
Neither can I.
So
the question then is why are people out there in the big wide
wonderful world selling this strategy to the unwary and unskilled
as a way to "profit from the wonderful world of horse racing"?
Good
question, Narelle.
The
moral to the story is that mathematically even flawed reasoning
can stand up for a short period of time and sound reasonable.
Only when you test something for 12 months or more, day in,
day out, do you get a "reasonable expectation curve"
as to what may happen in the future. Note the word is MAY and
not WILL!
Years
and years ago when we got serious about all this gambling stuff,
we started on the basis that to make any relevant forecast that
stood any chance over the space of time, you had to have it
based on a set of data going back over at least 400 similar
"random events" - preferably way more than that.
Nothing,
absolutely nothing, has changed.
Horse
racing systems and research
