Racehorse TALK

This comment ignores one very important word though DD.....risk!

Yes I agree, if they are having too many bets each week (but how many is too many or too few?) . I guess they would have to keep records of how many bets they have before their stats go down. Like group them into lots.
Lot 1 Best bets 3 bets
Lot 2 Next best 3
Lot 3 Next best 3
Lot 4 Next best 3
then after a year or so of keeping records you may find Lot 1 & 2 are way ahead of Lots 3 & 4. So then deicde to only bet on Lots 1 & 2.  


With staking, If you're shooting at 50% strike rate then I guess you're aiming at increasing you're stake each time you miss? This can be fraught with danger but you'd have to research your own number of outs of your system. You could always CAP your top bet so you wouldn't go broke.

My immediate thoughts on reading the staking system....don't like it.

Why? Reasons a bit along the vein of DD. As a horse doesn't know how much we have bet on him, a punter to some extent, doesn't really know the order of the succcess of his bets (not explained very well). For example if your a place punter striking 70% you would expect to tip 7 winning bets out of 10 - but in what order?

W L W L W L W W W W W W
W W W W W W W L L L
L L L W W W W W W W

The staking method put forward here seems to be to assume we know something about the pattern of success. But if we knew the pattern obviously we would have a 100% strike rate and the discussion would be moot.

For that reason I am generally a level stakes punter. I might implement a staking arrangement like this if I was at the track for the day and using a mentality like DD mentions above (max loss, any return a bonus).

Maybe the idea of Wenona's works better - which is similar to this but puts together bets into blocks of larger samples.

Interesting discussion nonetheless!

www.horseracingsoftware.net     Target Staker, download it free.  Several methods for recoup, profit. I downloaded it and a Dutch betting one. Target Staker is a bit harsh.

The Equestrian e-Book of Staking Plans was put out years ago in print out formula.

It was put out by Practical Punting and is well worth a read .

I don't use a staking plan as I am short on discipline as are most punters, but if used in conjunction with a successful system then it could be just the tool needed to finish ahead of the rest.

Think you're missing the point about the reason for spreading your investments. First of all it's NOT to be more profitable. It's simply protecting your investment. For example if you've saved up all year & then go to the track for 1 big day. then you could put your $10,000 on ONE horse & you would have the biggest reward or biggest loss with this strategy. If you wanted to protect your investment, you might rather have 20x $500 bets. Your chances of getting some money in your pocket is greatly enhanced BUT you won't get anywhere near as much as the single bet that comes off. What would you rather do? Some would say only an idiot would put it all on 1 horse, depends on your outlook & what you are COMFORTABLE with doing. Same applies in sharemarket, big reward/risk to buy a single share compared to heaps of them.

DD, I'd call our staking plan progressive rather than flat.

We've outlayed about $2200 which works out about $40 per betting week.

Out POT is around 7-8% on that figure.

If you just backed every one of our 114  selections with a flat bet you would have a profit on turnover of around 28-29%.

But you can't really compare our actual results with us betting $20 on each selection (t/over approx $2200) because despite now having a good level stakes return, I think we probably would have gone broke during my run of outs.

The pattern of my results has been bizzarre in the extreme and this makes any comparison problematic.

From a theoretical point of view, staking systems can increase your probability of making a profit (particularly in the short term), but what they can’t do is increase the fundamental profitability of your selections ie your Expected Value.

They basically can:

i) Increase the probability of a profit being made.
ii) Decrease the probability of a loss being made
iii) Decrease the potential size of any profit made
iv) Increase the potential size of any loss made.
v) Have no effect on your fundamental expected value.

The martingale system betting on an even money bet is the obvious example where you keep doubling your bets until a profit is reached. At the end of a series you will either win one unit or go broke.

The bigger the number of selections or series you run using the staking plan the higher the probability your actual results will tend towards your expected value. Ie if your selections fundamentally lose money, the longer you play the more you increase your probability of going broke, despite increasing your probability of making a short term profit.

Methods that incorporate principles around the Kelly method probably make the most sense but can be impracticable  for most bettors. Also it relies on every bet having an intrinsic positive expected value.

In practice, I would recommend that anyone who feels they can make selections that would show a level stakes profit to use a set percentage of bank strategy, be that on an individual bet basis or some type of step basis. Eg Start Bank $100, bet 3% or $3 until bank reaches $500 then bet $4 until bank reaches $800 then bet $6 etc. Just keep in mind that the higher the percentage of your bank you bet, the higher your flat stake profit percentage needs to be to avoid an unacceptable probability of going broke despite the positive expectation of your selections.

Always a smart strategy to protect your investment.

Agree investing in Sharemarket is not exactly the same as a single horse bet it was just an example. The difference is with the market you are betting on a share over a longer length of time. If you want to compare the market with horseracing then you would have to do it with a system that has many series of bets.

Insurance is just that, you're paying for peace of mind. It's not an investment.

I estimate the probability of having 24 losers in a row in 57 bets when your 1 in 4 of picking a winner as around 14%.

I find that surprisingly high actually, and just shows what you can expect even when your picks are profitable in the long run.