The Holy Grail of Racing: There are no systems that can beat it

[fishorsechess]

I remember someone in my family told me the best stock
market trader in the U.S. doesnt use any system but just
pick's out "what looks good". Is it possible that there are
no systems that can beat the track? That winning horseplayers
base their decisions solely on an evaluation of individual
variables of each races and try to find races where they
get the best value? The junk mail you get tries to make you
believe that a system exists when it does not. So there will
always be someone that will be sucked into buying a
system.

[Dick Schmidt]

Fish,

The best stock market investor spends about 12 hours a day doing research on which company to buy next and looks at hundreds of possibilities before he makes a move. His name, by the way, is Warren Buffet, and depending on the price of Microsoft stock he is either the first or second richest man in the world. He has developed a system that works for him and has discussed it publicly many times. Horse racing is no different, we just aren't that good.

Dick

Waiting for brilliance to hit me.....stay tuned. May be awhile.

[fishorsechess]

I didn't want to be shut out in terms of the number of replies
I would have gotten for that post. By the way I attended the
monthly meetings at Beaumont, CA where Dr. Sartin had
his seminars on the methodology of pace handicapping long
ago. Still remember the character like presentations you gave there.

[dav4463]

I have a longshot system...send me $100 and I will send it to you!!!!!!!

[Macdiarmadillo]

Fish, please expand your definition of "system". So far, the two methodologies that are not Dave's mentioned are large enough to be deemed philosophies, even religions. Both have changed/evolved over time as well; they're not fixed at all. Is that what you meant?

When Buffet talks about what he does, it has been, AFAIK, in generalities. Exact methods (what we want to know) have been given by or guessed at by former associates or his ex. He's damn good at what he does, particularly in picking his spots.

[Blackgold]

If you've read books or articles about Warren Buffet, you'll find that he

(1) Looks for a business he thinks he understands

(2) Assigns a fair value to the business

(3) Looks to invest in the business only if he receives more than fair value to compensate for a margin of error.

It's the same in horses. If you dont' understand the race, stay out. If you like a runner you must receive odds greater than his chances. Repeat this over and over and your bankroll grows.


"I wish I was back in my crash pad days, before I knew what cash flow meant" -Jimmy Buffet

[formula_2002]

Fish, not only is it impossible to beat the track take-out,it would take soooo much data to prove one could beat the take-out,that by the time large amounts of data is accumulated, the earlier data would be useless. So nothing is proven

Another point

Look at some of my recent post regarding the All_ways regression analysis. It demonstrates to me that quality data/software such as the All-Ways/ Bris data files does not get the job done even though one has accumulated hundreds of thousands of races.
While that software is useful predicting winners...so is the tote board.

Joe M

[Macdiarmadillo]

If it's impossible to beat the takeout, why are we all here? The idea is to bet only at advantageous odds, an overlay. Playing every race guarantees takeout will become significant, therefore you sure don't play that way if you expect to beat the takeout.

And if it would take sooooo much data to prove it's impossible to beat the takeout, how can you state that it is impossible?

[highnote]

William Benter won about U.S. $50 million in his best years betting in Hong Kong. His "system" appears to have worked pretty well.

[Bob Allen]

Fish,

Giving you a compliment I hope.

You are probably too young to remember this. About 26 years ago on a fairly new television show by the name of "Sixty Minutes" they had a challenge.

The challenge involved five of the top stock analysts on Wall Street and one guy, literally off the street. This one fella knew absolutely nothing about the stock market except that there was one.

The test was to give each of the analysts an imaginary sum of money, have them trade for six months using all of their skills and see which one wound up with the most money. Think about the publicity this fella would have gotten. He would have been inundated with new customers.

Now the other fella, who knew nothing about the stock market, was to pick some stocks, hold them for the same six month period and see how close he could get to the experts.

There was one stipulation to this fella picking his stocks though. It was on camera and he had to stand with his back to the wall with the "Wall Street Journal" taped to the wall. He then was given 5 darts which he had to throw over his shoulder at the stock pages in the Journal. His darts hit 5 stocks and those became his 5 stocks.

Accountants monitored everyone involved. At the end of the sixth months totals were tallied so see who had won the war of the analysts.

The results were that none of them won. The guy who had thrown darts beat everybody.

This, to me illustrates the randomness inherent in racing. A long, long time ago Dick introduced me to a book by a man named Nicholas Nassim Taleb who is an options trader. He buys and sells options based on randomness factors. He manages 100s of millions of dollars and does very well for himself and his four man company. Not one of his employees has any kind of financial background. He hires guys like psychology majors, philosophy majors, and others in the behaviorial fields.

In other words, he analyzes the crowd and then does just the opposite, depending upon randomness to earn him a fortune.

Off to the races,

Bob

[fishorsechess]

Bob,
The last statement in your long reply hit the nail on the
head. Yes, that is how you beat the horses. Find out
what the crowd is doing, and do the OPPOSITE of what
they do. All "think and grow rich millionaires" understand
this principle. It was even mentioned in a 5 dollar paperback
book call "Beat the Track" at the bookstore.

[formula_2002]

A long, long time ago Dick introduced me to a book by a man named Nicholas Nassim Taleb who is an options trader. He buys and sells options based on randomness factors.

that's one of my night stand books.

A recently published book "The Wisdom Of The Crowd", seemed to write about subjects already covered by many of my books.

[rrbauer]

blackgold wrote:
If you've read books or articles about Warren Buffet, you'll find that he
(1) Looks for a business he thinks he understands

(2) Assigns a fair value to the business

(3) Looks to invest in the business only if he receives more than fair value to compensate for a margin of error.



To which I will add:

(4) He learned this from Benjamin Graham.