Eliminating
bad betting proposition races
And now a
word form the Minister For The Bleeding Obvious: eliminating
the bad races, the races where your selection system
is least effective, increases the winning percentages
in the fair to good races.
As I wrote - it could have come from the Minster For
The Bleeding Office's press secretary but it is one
of the most common faults you can see every day at your
nearest TAB or on track. Punters scrambling to get on
as they go to the start, scratching around looking for
a form guide line with seconds to go. Desperate for
a horse or dog to bet on - any horse or dog, it doesn't
matter - as long as they think they can find an angle.
The surest way to increase
your winning percentage is to reduce the number of races
you bet on if you can identify the weakest link in your
chain.
In my case I simply won't
bet on Maiden or Class 1 races anywhere in Australia.
Why?
Some years ago, I was part
of a syndicate that raced a horse. It actually won two
races, a maiden at Devonport and a Class 1 at the old
Deloraine course. Wonderful news, you say. Well, here's
the rub - in reality that horse couldn't run out of
sight on a foggy night over a cliff and yet it still
managed to win two low class races. From that time on
I started looking very closely at maidens and class
1 races and the very inconsistency of those races.
How many times do you read
a race report for a Maiden where the winner is described
as "improved many lengths on it's only other run"
and there was no way that you, astute punter that you
are, could possibly have entered that improvement in
to your calculations. Have a look at today's Maiden
race fields - doesn't matter which day you are reading
this - any day is the same and you will see in open
Maiden class races horses that are 4 year old or 5 year
old or 6 year old maidens!
Some poor sod has been
paying up for these horses for years without a return.
You want to join them in that pursuit? An astute trainer
once told me he never bet on any horse that hadn't done
the same "job" before - in other words, had
won or placed in that distance range or had won so strongly
in a weaker class of race that it was obvious it would
handle the increase in class today.
From February 1, 2010 through
to February 7, 2010 there were 243 races around Australia
you could have invested your "hard earned"
on - that's just about all all provincial tracks and
the major meetings in each State on the Saturday. It
does not include the plethora of overseas races either.
Because my weakest sector
of my methodologies always is betting in maiden or Class
1 races I was able to eliminate IMMEDIATELY from consideration,
96 races out of the 243 - that's nearly 40% before I
started applying the other filters that I usually do.
It greatly increases my winning percentages by simply
making my life easier. 96 races I didn't have to rate.
Hours and hours and hours freed up to other things rather
than"study the form" or whatever you want
to call it. Many hours not sitting in front of a live
computer screen on race days - doing the other things
that have to be done!
How do I really know that
they are the weakest races? Records. Records. Records.
I am sure you have read elsewhere many times about the
importance of keeping records. It is essential to be
able to review your favourite system's weakest links
and eliminate them.
I keep every form guide
for a year. Yes - every electronic form guide I download,
I download it to a particular folder on my computer
and leave it filed away there for a year. It's not like
the old days where you would have kept every Sportsman
and Sunday paper of choice and filled up half the spare
bedroom with newspapers - much to your partner's disdain!
Electronic files take up
very little space - in fact I can tell you exactly -
from September 1 2009 through to today ( February 10
2010) there are 5338 files in 770 folders taking up
171 MB - that's because that's what Windows Explorer
tells me in their cute little square!
Before you can be successful
at this caper you have to be organised. A haphazard
approach can only lead you to the door of doom.
You may find that your
weakest form moments are looking at 50 to 55 rating
races in NSW and 56 to 64 class races in Victoria. You
want to know how many of them there are in any calendar
month? Simply eliminate these races - reduce your loss
leaders - stay in front .
It's not brain surgery
yet so many punters seem to want to make so hard.
Every losing bet you don't
have is really a winner in the overall scheme of things.
Eliminate the bad races and turn your losers in to winners
