why it's called gambling

[acorn54]

i was thinking about the 100 race simulation of 1000 bets that is illustrated in william quirin's book "winning at the races". his results ,betting at the 5% of bankroll level were a 50/50 chance of tapping out or reaching a 40-fold gain.
this is using the same payouts and same win frequency. the only difference was the configuration of wins-losses.
this illustrates how one can use the same exact system and get completely different results because of the money management employed. and it also shows why horseracing is called gambling.
acorn

[skate]

acorn;

ok, so you are saying the configuration will change the outcome.
the configuration, assumption, of how much you bet on race 1,2,3... vs the 5% method will change the outcome.

so would the illustration be that if you spend more early (on 1000bets) and won your early bets , youd be better off than if you lost your early bets?

not to say, right or wrong here , but ive always done "better" when i was not concerned with my bank. thats from my book.

[Overlay]

Quirin's results applied specifically to the multiple-regression sprint system outlined on pages 273-278 of Winning at the Races. He found that 100 simulated runs of 1,000 flat bets of an amount between 8 and 10 percent of a starting $1,000 bankroll (i.e., flat bets of $80 to $100 per race) resulted in a 50% chance of losing the entire bankroll, and a 50% chance of increasing the $1,000 to $10,000, which (as he put it) is getting 9-1 odds on an even-money betting proposition. Using progressive bets of 5% of bankroll (rather than flat bets) gave the player a 50-50 chance of increasing the original $1,000 to $40,000.

[Overlay]

I should have added that the optimal bet size is determined by the winning frequency and average payoff of the system in question. In the case of the multiple-regression sprint system, the system picked the winner on top 28.8% of the time, with an average win mutuel of $7.50. Quirin included a table showing what the optimal bet size should be based on any particular system's win percentage and percentage of profit.