Betting Systems

[BMeadow]

From time to time, players ask me about betting advice--usually about turning losses into profits. Here's a column I did several years ago for American Turf Monthly. Comments?
================================================== =

Should you bet more if you've won the last race? Back off if you've lost five in a row? Press up because you're due? Quit when you're ahead for the day?

Everybody's got ideas. The problem--most of the ideas are wrong.

Who says so? Mathematics.

The single most important fact you need to know about betting systems is this:

If a method has a negative expectation for a single play, then it will have a negative expectation for an infinite number of plays--no matter how you manipulate your bets.

Whether you raise your bet after a win, or a loss, or quadruple your usual bet at some point, or have a stop-loss number--it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you use session bankrolls, or play parlays, use progression betting, calculate the square root of your current profit and divide by 19, or employ anything else you can come up with. In the long run, it all comes down to your single-bet expectation.

Let's take an example from another gambling game, craps. If you play the pass line, you give the house an edge of 1.4%. If you play the pass line all the time, then it doesn't matter a whit which betting system you use. On average, if you bet $1 million on the pass line--whether on a single bet, one million bets of $1 apiece, or something in between with the bets going up and down either on a personal whim or according to some strict betting method--you are going to lose $14,000.

This does not mean you will lose exactly $14,000 on every single series, of course. If you bet the whole million on one bet, in fact, you have a near dead-even chance of winning $1 million--or losing it. But looking at it another way, if a billion people each bet a million dollars on the pass line, using one billion different ways of mixing the bets, on average each person would lose $14,000.

No one knows who came up with the first betting system, but it was probably somebody who knew Adam personally. Who among us hasn't thought that there is some sequence of bets that will turn losses into profits, or turn tiny profits into large ones? Is there anybody, grade-school dropout or Harvard graduate student, who hasn't experimented with some sort of due-column or progressive wagering plan?

In fact, some pretty intelligent folks have come up with some of the craziest betting ideas you've ever heard. There are booklets packed with graphs and charts and complex mathematical terms, although when you analyze them carefully they are simply nonsense. But they sure do sound good, especially to those folks who don't bother to wade through the arithmetical swampland.

Any method can be made to look good depending on a particular sequence of results. All you have to do is make sure you bet more money on your winners than on your losers. This isn't hard to do if you know the results. Let's say you make five bets, one of which wins. If the order is LLLLW, how about a method where you keep tripling your bet until you havea winner? If it's WLLLL, how about one in which you quit as soon as you hit a winner? If it's LLWLL, how about waiting without betting until you lose two races, then jump in with a bet, then wait without betting until you lose two more? If you prefer Betting System A over Betting System B, it isn't that hard to find 10 or 100 or 10,000 races in which yes, A did outperform B--just as if you could probably find just as much evidence that B is superior.

Streaks--winning or losing sequences that many of these betting systems try to grapple with--come and go for many reasons, foremost of which is the randomness of mathematics (flip coins long enough and eventually you'll record 17 straight tails). How can you know that a streak is going to continue? How can you tell when it will end? You can't.

You never know which bets you make are going to hit, and which won't. If you knew--for sure--even one single bet in your lifetime, you could mortgage your house, raid your savings account, take out six figures worth of credit-card advances and bank loans, and bet it all, one time. What with exactas and trifectas and everything else, and all the places to play offshore, you could rake in more on that one bet than in all your other lifetime bets combined.

But it doesn't work that way. You will never know, for certain, that your next bet will be a winner.

Racehorses don't care whether you've just won your last bet, or whether you've just lost it. They don't care whether you're betting $2 or $2,000. They don't care whether this is bet number 14 in some cancellation-series of wagers, or the last leg of a three-horse parlay. They are no more, or less, likely to win because you've changed your bet size.

Just because a result is unusual doesn't mean it will never happen. If you think you can't lose a lot of bets in a row, think again. Steve Cauthen, a Hall of Fame jockey, once managed to lose 110 straight races. One winter at Santa Anita, another Hallster, trainer D. Wayne Lukas, was able to go the whole meet without a win, 65 consecutive losses. A few years back, dominating northern California rider Russell Baze was sailing along with 29% wins for the year before an unfortunate streak at Golden Gate in which he lost 24 straight races on horses whose average odds were 2-1; among them were 15 losing favorites.

That Baze stat might even be the scariest, because most of us hit less than 29% winners and most of our plays probably average higher than 2-1. So how long, during an unlucky streak, might we go without a winner? Or maybe lose 35 in a row, hit one at 5-2, then lose 35 more?

Stay away from betting schemes that require you to bet $40 on a 4-1 shot in the second race but would have required you to bet $4 or $400 had that same horse been scheduled to run in the sixth race.

Instead, bet when you have an advantage, and don't bet when you don't.

[Light]

Point taken. A negative number,times any positive number is still negative. What suggestions do you have for maximizing profits if there is a positive expectancy?

[Overlay]

Point taken. A negative number,times any positive number is still negative. What suggestions do you have for maximizing profits if there is a positive expectancy?

In that case, doesn't Kelly (for example) call for betting a constant percentage of bankroll that's equal to your long-term advantage?

[Nosebob]

In that case, doesn't Kelly (for example) call for betting a constant percentage of bankroll that's equal to your long-term advantage?

It depends on how you define advantage.

Most people equate advantage to "edge", and in that case I believe the proper Kelly bet would be edge (or advantage) divided by odds.

If you have 30% winners at 3/1, your edge would be 20%, but the proper Kelly bet would be 20%/3, or 6.67% of your bankroll.

I recall Dick Mitchell advocating bets of half the Kelly criterion, though I don't remember a mathematical reason other than to reduce drawdowns of bankroll.

Hope I remembered that correctly, it has been a few years!

Bob

[GameTheory]

It depends on how you define advantage.

Most people equate advantage to "edge", and in that case I believe the proper Kelly bet would be edge (or advantage) divided by odds.

If you have 30% winners at 3/1, your edge would be 20%, but the proper Kelly bet would be 20%/3, or 6.67% of your bankroll.
And actually that is not even correct, although apparently that it one of the (wrong) ways Kelly betting has been presented through the years. You cannot just take your averages to compute the proper Kelly fraction. You get the wrong fraction that way. That only works if all your wins pay the same amount.

[Robert Fischer]

I agree that positive expectation bets are clearly the way to go.

My wager size goal is SAFE&SMALL in relation to my bankroll as to avoid randomness as much as possible and play a skill game with little to no reliance on luck.

While all my wagers are supposed to be safe, I wager slightly more (or less) depending on the value and hit%. So I actually use estimated hit% twice, because it is part of the value equation.

[SMOO]

A closed system is the only system that you can double up on & do better. The only closed system I know of is counting cards in blackjack when you get near the end of the deck, and even that is flawed due to part of the deck being cut off & a new shuffle started. Random odds are your enemy.

[badcompany]

A system is just another name for bet sizing. It's very easy to come up with one of these "systems." Not risking more than 2% of your gambling bankroll on a play will work fine for most.

THE HARD PART IS HAVING THE DISCIPLINE TO STICK TO IT.

[njcurveball]

That only works if all your wins pay the same amount.


FINALLY someone who actually KNOWS about Kelly betting! :ThmbUp:

Nice work and good luck convincing people who are looking for a "magic bullet" to turn a loss into a profit.

Just because "your line" makes a horse 2-1 it does NOT mean they have a 33% chance of winning when they are sitting at 20-1 on the tote board.

Most don't understand that simple premise, but I see you do.

Nice job! :ThmbUp:

[njcurveball]

Not risking more than 2% of your gambling bankroll on a play will work fine for most.

.

Tracks would be closing very quickly if everyone adhered to this advice. Imagine walking into the track with $100 and only playing $2 a race. I personally know of only one person with that kind of discipline (and it certainly is not me).

Good advice, kind of like telling people to cut out corn syrup and hydrogenated oil. Based on sound principles, but very hard to do with our mindset.

Jim

[badcompany]

Tracks would be closing very quickly if everyone adhered to this advice. Imagine walking into the track with $100 and only playing $2 a race. I personally know of only one person with that kind of discipline (and it certainly is not me).

Good advice, kind of like telling people to cut out corn syrup and hydrogenated oil. Based on sound principles, but very hard to do with our mindset.

Jim

I don't consider the amount that you bring to the track as your bankroll.

If you're someone who is considering playing the ponies for something other than recreation, it would be a good idea to open a bank account just for your bankroll. So, if you have a grand in your account but you bring 100 to the track, your bet size would be 20.

In my experience, the hardest thing to do is regress and bet smaller amounts after a hot streak has ended.

[njcurveball]

I don't consider the amount that you bring to the track as your bankroll.

If you're someone who is considering playing the ponies for something other than recreation, it would be a good idea to open a bank account just for your bankroll.

Of the millions who "play" the ponies there may be a dozen or so who have a bank account used ONLY for their betting.

If you are one of them than kudos to you! :ThmbUp:

[JBmadera]

Of the millions who "play" the ponies there may be a dozen or so who have a bank account used ONLY for their betting.

If you are one of them than kudos to you! :ThmbUp:

I have a seperate bank account for wagering......of course it's named "education account" in quicken just in case the wife decides to take a closer look at the finances..:lol:

JB

[njcurveball]

I have a seperate bank account for wagering......of course it's named "education account" in quicken just in case the wife decides to take a closer look at the finances..:lol:

JB


WOW! I am impressed! :ThmbUp:

So this account is NEVER touched for anything other than wagering? Nice job! :ThmbUp:

[JBmadera]

WOW! I am impressed! :ThmbUp:

So this account is NEVER touched for anything other than wagering? Nice job! :ThmbUp:

Wagers, HTR subscription fees, etc.....anything to do with horse racing..;)

[barn32]

In my experience, the hardest thing to do is regress and bet smaller amounts after a hot streak has ended.

How do you know when a "hot streak" has ended?

[GameTheory]

How do you know when a "hot streak" has ended?When 2% of your bankroll is starting to become a much smaller amount.

[badcompany]

How do you know when a "hot streak" has ended?

It's one of those things that's hard to quantify, but, it usually involves not cashing a ticket for a while.

[JeremyJet]

Kelly criterion

The Kelly criterion is a theoretically optimum money management
formula discovered by J.L. Kelly Jr. of Bell Labs, and first described
in 1956 in the article "A New Interpretation of Information Rate" in the
Bell Systems Technical Journal. It is based on work done by C.E.
Shannon in the field of information theory . In its simplest form,
betting on only one proposition, it reduces to edge divided by odds .
The general formula is considerably more complex, and provides for
wagering on multiple, mutually exclusive propositions.

Goal

The criterion is designed to maximize longterm growth of bankroll . When
the assumptions given below are met, the Kelly criterion is maximally
aggressive. Wagering more than the criterion calls for can lead to the
so-called gambler's ruin -- going broke when betting on overlay s, due
to inevitable losing streaks.

Assumptions

The Kelly theory requires that the fair odds be well calibrated, in
the sense that horses actually win, in the long run, at a rate
commensurate with their perceived fair odds. It also assumes that the
fair odds are independent of the pari mutuel odds. It is beyond the
scope of this documentation to advise as to what constitues a sound
wager, but it should be noted that lack of independence is a very
important consideration. For example, if one is considering a wager at
pari mutuel odds of 50 to 1 on a horse judged, a priori, to have fair
odds of 3 to 1, the criterion based on those numbers should not be used
unless there is sufficient evidence to believe that such horses will win
a quarter of the time that they are sent off at 50 to 1. It is not
sufficient to verify that such horses win a quarter of all their
starts, regardless of pari mutuel odds. Finally, the criterion assumes
that the wager will not materially reduce the pari mutuel payoff.

Half Kelly

To compensate for lack of independence of the pari mutuel odds, some
writers advise betting only half of the theoretical Kelly amount. That
practice reflects the tacit opinion that the actual edge is at least one
half of the perceived edge. That of course is a very suspect hypothesis
in general. No simple adjustment can correct for a lack of statisitcal
soundness. You must do your homework. Betting half as much will not turn
a losing proposition into a winning one; It will only reduce the rate of
loss. As always, the gambler must use his best judgement.

Betting On Underlays

Occassionally you may notice that the criterion calls for wagering on an
underlay . This runs counter to the commonly held belief that such
wagers are never warranted. Dr. Kelly himself pointed this out in his
original paper. These bets, often on short priced underlays, are a form
of insurance that allows the gambler to bet more on the overlays without
risking "gambler's ruin". The criterion will never call for betting on
an underlay in isolation; a bet on an underlay will always be used to
protect one or more bets on overlays. When insurance bets win, they will
not recover the the entire amount wagered. This runs counter to the
commonly held belief that sound composite wagers always either lose
everything or show a net profit. When you see a wager amount displayed
next to a proposition with a negative edge, you may wish to experiment
by removing the underlaid proposition from the input, to see how that
affects the structure of the composite wager.

JeremyJet

[pantoner]

Who says so? Mathematics.

The single most important fact you need to know about betting systems is this:

If a method has a negative expectation for a single play, then it will have a negative expectation for an infinite number of plays--no matter how you manipulate your bets.



While I wouldn't advocating the notion that any progressive system of wagering can turn a winner into a loser. I do believe that there are times when if one of my selections wins than I am more likely to win again sooner than I am after one of my selections loses, and I might not even know why.

I believe that no player always has the expectation of winning that he thinks he has when he creates his odds line. One example of this would be the following:

Let's say a player is using trainer stats and a certain trainer wins at 10% with first time starters. Our statistics may not include the fact that out of his 4 wins last year 3 of them occurred during the same month. The trainer may have a habit of bringing his best first time starters into racing form at the same time and the first win may be the signpost we need to increase our bets on his next few entries.

That is just one example and that is an example of something that we could possible be aware of. But there are many things going on that we are not aware of. Maybe there is a track bias that favors something in our selection method that we are not aware of. Who knows. But I think that increasing wagers after a win may have some merit.

If I flip a coin and it comes up heads 5 times in a row mathematics would tell me that with the next flip I still have a fifty-fifty chance of getting tails. But who's the fool if I think that maybe the coin is heavy on one side and I double my bet on the next flip?

[Jake]

From time to time, players ask me about betting advice--usually about turning losses into profits. Here's a column I did several years ago for American Turf Monthly. Comments?
================================================== =

Should you bet more if you've won the last race? Back off if you've lost five in a row? Press up because you're due? Quit when you're ahead for the day?

Everybody's got ideas. The problem--most of the ideas are wrong.

Who says so? Mathematics.

The single most important fact you need to know about betting systems is this:

If a method has a negative expectation for a single play, then it will have a negative expectation for an infinite number of plays--no matter how you manipulate your bets.

Whether you raise your bet after a win, or a loss, or quadruple your usual bet at some point, or have a stop-loss number--it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter if you use session bankrolls, or play parlays, use progression betting, calculate the square root of your current profit and divide by 19, or employ anything else you can come up with. In the long run, it all comes down to your single-bet expectation.

Let's take an example from another gambling game, craps. If you play the pass line, you give the house an edge of 1.4%. If you play the pass line all the time, then it doesn't matter a whit which betting system you use. On average, if you bet $1 million on the pass line--whether on a single bet, one million bets of $1 apiece, or something in between with the bets going up and down either on a personal whim or according to some strict betting method--you are going to lose $14,000.

This does not mean you will lose exactly $14,000 on every single series, of course. If you bet the whole million on one bet, in fact, you have a near dead-even chance of winning $1 million--or losing it. But looking at it another way, if a billion people each bet a million dollars on the pass line, using one billion different ways of mixing the bets, on average each person would lose $14,000.

No one knows who came up with the first betting system, but it was probably somebody who knew Adam personally. Who among us hasn't thought that there is some sequence of bets that will turn losses into profits, or turn tiny profits into large ones? Is there anybody, grade-school dropout or Harvard graduate student, who hasn't experimented with some sort of due-column or progressive wagering plan?

In fact, some pretty intelligent folks have come up with some of the craziest betting ideas you've ever heard. There are booklets packed with graphs and charts and complex mathematical terms, although when you analyze them carefully they are simply nonsense. But they sure do sound good, especially to those folks who don't bother to wade through the arithmetical swampland.

Any method can be made to look good depending on a particular sequence of results. All you have to do is make sure you bet more money on your winners than on your losers. This isn't hard to do if you know the results. Let's say you make five bets, one of which wins. If the order is LLLLW, how about a method where you keep tripling your bet until you havea winner? If it's WLLLL, how about one in which you quit as soon as you hit a winner? If it's LLWLL, how about waiting without betting until you lose two races, then jump in with a bet, then wait without betting until you lose two more? If you prefer Betting System A over Betting System B, it isn't that hard to find 10 or 100 or 10,000 races in which yes, A did outperform B--just as if you could probably find just as much evidence that B is superior.

Streaks--winning or losing sequences that many of these betting systems try to grapple with--come and go for many reasons, foremost of which is the randomness of mathematics (flip coins long enough and eventually you'll record 17 straight tails). How can you know that a streak is going to continue? How can you tell when it will end? You can't.

You never know which bets you make are going to hit, and which won't. If you knew--for sure--even one single bet in your lifetime, you could mortgage your house, raid your savings account, take out six figures worth of credit-card advances and bank loans, and bet it all, one time. What with exactas and trifectas and everything else, and all the places to play offshore, you could rake in more on that one bet than in all your other lifetime bets combined.

But it doesn't work that way. You will never know, for certain, that your next bet will be a winner.

Racehorses don't care whether you've just won your last bet, or whether you've just lost it. They don't care whether you're betting $2 or $2,000. They don't care whether this is bet number 14 in some cancellation-series of wagers, or the last leg of a three-horse parlay. They are no more, or less, likely to win because you've changed your bet size.

Just because a result is unusual doesn't mean it will never happen. If you think you can't lose a lot of bets in a row, think again. Steve Cauthen, a Hall of Fame jockey, once managed to lose 110 straight races. One winter at Santa Anita, another Hallster, trainer D. Wayne Lukas, was able to go the whole meet without a win, 65 consecutive losses. A few years back, dominating northern California rider Russell Baze was sailing along with 29% wins for the year before an unfortunate streak at Golden Gate in which he lost 24 straight races on horses whose average odds were 2-1; among them were 15 losing favorites.

That Baze stat might even be the scariest, because most of us hit less than 29% winners and most of our plays probably average higher than 2-1. So how long, during an unlucky streak, might we go without a winner? Or maybe lose 35 in a row, hit one at 5-2, then lose 35 more?

Stay away from betting schemes that require you to bet $40 on a 4-1 shot in the second race but would have required you to bet $4 or $400 had that same horse been scheduled to run in the sixth race.

Instead, bet when you have an advantage, and don't bet when you don't.

I think you might enjoy reading The Black Swan by Taleb, which deals with this topic, as well as Taleb's Fooled by Randomness. Both strong reads.

Jake

[Robert Fischer]

Half Kelly

To compensate for lack of independence of the pari mutuel odds, some
writers advise betting only half of the theoretical Kelly amount. That
practice reflects the tacit opinion that the actual edge is at least one
half of the perceived edge. That of course is a very suspect hypothesis
in general. No simple adjustment can correct for a lack of statisitcal
soundness. You must do your homework. Betting half as much will not turn
a losing proposition into a winning one; It will only reduce the rate of
loss. As always, the gambler must use his best judgement.


One way to compensate for you being innacurate, is to to make low estimates of both the probability of winning that wager as well as the final payout. By doing that, you allow room for error.
Simply cutting your stake in half doesn't correct for your errors as well.




Betting On Underlays
...
These bets, often on short priced underlays, are a form
of insurance that allows the gambler to bet more on the overlays without
risking "gambler's ruin". The criterion will never call for betting on
an underlay in isolation; a bet on an underlay will always be used to
protect one or more bets on overlays. When insurance bets win, they will
not recover the the entire amount wagered.
...
:eek:
This is dangerous advice to include in an overview.
It is pretty advanced stuff.
What he is talking about here is using more combinations in order to increase the hit% to a playable level.

This is ok ONLY when the resulting total wager meets your value demands.

for example lets say you estimated a straight exacta to be paying $100 with a hit% of 3%. Your edge would be 1.5 or + 50%. However if you have a small bankroll, you should understand that playing 3% wagers is inviting "randomness", because probability may take you along for a ride that your bankroll can't cover.
However, say you could add some high% underlayed combinations to your exacta ticket. The additions allow you to include the longshot overlay from above, but bring the average payout down to $25, and bring the hit% up to 10%. Now your edge is down to 1.25 or + 25%. If that meets your value demand, you have a better wager now for your bankroll size, because 10% hit rates are much safer than 3% wagers for moderate to small bankrolls.

EDIT- after re-reading this example, it may be mathematically impossible for an underlayed combinations to raise the hit percentage so substantially, while still keeping the total value at 1.25.

If 25% is too low for you or if it came out to something like .95 or -5%, you would obviously pass.

I can't really come up with a good example of the ticket paying less than the wager and meeting a value demand. I would have to see that one to believe it. I would guess that it would need a case similar to the above example where the
"average" expected payout >wager size> worst-case expected payout

whenever the worst case payout dips below wager size, it takes careful consideration on whether to proceed. This stuff is not easy! Give me a win bet on a 2-1 horse with a 40% chance all day over this headache:D

[JeremyJet]

This stuff is not easy! Give me a win bet on a 2-1 horse with a 40% chance all day over this headache:D

If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. :bang:

JeremyJet

[barn32]

In my experience, the hardest thing to do is regress and bet smaller amounts after a hot streak has ended.
How do you know when a "hot streak" has ended?
It's one of those things that's hard to quantify, but, it usually involves not cashing a ticket for a while.
Recently, while attending the races with a friend, I lost four races in a row. My friend said I was on a cold streak.

The next day I won three nice races in a row, and my friend said I was on a hot streak.

Two weeks later we went again, and I didn't cash a ticket on Friday. My friend said I was cold. On Saturday I won seven out of nine, and my friend said I was on fire--who do I like tomorrow?

The next day I went one for six.

The funny thing is that my friend never once was able to figure out whether I would be on a hot streak or a cold streak before they actually happened. He was only able to make these observations after the fact.

And that is the point. Hot streaks, cold streaks or whatever streaks cannot be predicted or ascertained.

They can only be identified in the rear-view-mirror.

[pantoner]

Recently, while attending the races with a friend, I lost four races in a row. My friend said I was on a cold streak.

The next day I won three nice races in a row, and my friend said I was on a hot streak.

Two weeks later we went again, and I didn't cash a ticket on Friday. My friend said I was cold. On Saturday I won seven out of nine, and my friend said I was on fire--who do I like tomorrow?

The next day I went one for six.

The funny thing is that my friend never once was able to figure out whether I would be on a hot streak or a cold streak before they actually happened. He was only able to make these observations after the fact.

And that is the point. Hot streaks, cold streaks or whatever streaks cannot be predicted or ascertained.

They can only be identified in the rear-view-mirror.

When you win one race consider yourself on a hot streak for your next bet.

Just out of curiosity, if you still have the numbers from those days see what would have happened if you had played two units the next race after every win. If you lose go back down to one unit.

First bet each day is one unit.

[Overlay]

Just because "your line" makes a horse 2-1 it does NOT mean they have a 33% chance of winning when they are sitting at 20-1 on the tote board.

Of course, the toteboard odds will reflect the processing of information that isn't available to each bettor individually. But I think that it helps, in cases where a horse that you have at low odds is "dead on the board", if you can explain why the public is betting that way, and discount that reasoning. Often, it may be nothing more than a byproduct of the public being oversold on one (or more) other horses or angles in the race, which drives the odds on other horses above fair value. (That's not to say that the factors the public is keying on aren't significant, but just not to the degree that the public thinks.) Actual odds that are markedly higher than your line may call for a second look, but I don't think that they should automatically steer you away from a horse, especially if your experience with your handicapping model gives you confidence in your odds-setting, and in the overall performance of horses that go off as overlays according to your line.

[wonatthewire1]

I had been flat betting for awhile now but remembered using a slight progressive betting technique when I was a much lower percentage handicapper.

Revisited it (how things pop back into the mind) recently and have been quite happy with the results.

1. Base bet
2. If a loss, continue with the same base bet
3. If a win, take the square root of the amount won and add the base bet
Etc.

Example - say the base bet is $10.00

1. Bet $10.00, loss is -$10.00
2. Bet $10.00, loss is -$10.00 and net is -$20.00
3. Bet $10.00, winner at 14-1, gross is $140.00 - $20.00; net $120.00
4. Bet $10.00 + SQRT of $120.00 ($10.95), round up to a total of $21.00; loss is -$21.00; net is $99.00
5. Bet $10.00 + SQRT of $99.00 ($9.95), round up to a total of $20; winner at 8-1; gross on this wager is $160 + $99 already won totals $259.00, etc

If I've won a few and then proceed to give it all back, I'm back to the base bet. This has only happened once in the last 3 months playing 4 days (nights) a week.

[pantoner]

I had been flat betting for awhile now but remembered using a slight progressive betting technique when I was a much lower percentage handicapper.

Revisited it (how things pop back into the mind) recently and have been quite happy with the results.

1. Base bet
2. If a loss, continue with the same base bet
3. If a win, take the square root of the amount won and add the base bet
Etc.

Example - say the base bet is $10.00

1. Bet $10.00, loss is -$10.00
2. Bet $10.00, loss is -$10.00 and net is -$20.00
3. Bet $10.00, winner at 14-1, gross is $140.00 - $20.00; net $120.00
4. Bet $10.00 + SQRT of $120.00 ($10.95), round up to a total of $21.00; loss is -$21.00; net is $99.00
5. Bet $10.00 + SQRT of $99.00 ($9.95), round up to a total of $20; winner at 8-1; gross on this wager is $160 + $99 already won totals $259.00, etc

If I've won a few and then proceed to give it all back, I'm back to the base bet. This has only happened once in the last 3 months playing 4 days (nights) a week.

I like it. So you start with the base bet again the next day?

[wonatthewire1]

I like it. So you start with the base bet again the next day?

Yep, no problem - after awhile, you can always increase your base bet if your comfortable with going a bit higher. But the key is using what you've been winning to incrementally increase overall betting amounts.

What if you started with $2.00 in the above example?

After 2 races you are -$4.00
The 14-1 comes in and you have collected a gross profit (less the wager) of $28.00 - $4.00 nets $24.00.
Next race is betting $2.00 + SQRT of $24.00 ($4.89); rounded to $5.00 gives a bet total of $7.00. It is a loss, so the net total is +$17.00
The last one of the example is a base bet of $2.00 + SQRT of $17.00 ($4.12 round to $4.00) so the bet is $6.00, winner at 8-1 gives a gross profit of $48.00. $17.00 + $48.00 nets $65.00
ETC

...best of all, you get really good at square roots after awhile
;)

[Overlay]

Wasn't it Jim Selvidge who discussed "base bet plus square root" wager sizing at some length in Hold Your Horses?

[wonatthewire1]

Wasn't it Jim Selvidge who discussed "base bet plus square root" wager sizing at some length in Hold Your Horses?


Could be Overlay - but I didn't read that book & don't know the author at all.

I do remember hearing it from a guy that used it who hung out over at the Meadowlands about 17 years ago for simulcasting. For some reason, I remembered it a few months ago and reapplied it.

Has been working well for me, but if someone else actually came up with it (besides the way I learned it verbally) - we can post it here

Aside: did a Yahoo search for Jim Selvidge and found the following:
http://www.horsestalk.com/

[Tom]

BB+SR - yes, Selvidge.

[dav4463]

Let's say you take $200 to the track and you have handicapped 10 races.

You can pick your best two races (strongest opinion) and allot more money for those two "Best Bets". Then, rank your other races based on your opinion of how strongly you feel about them and allot the maximum amount you would risk on the race. Don't be afraid to pass a race if you don't get what you want, but do not bet more than you intended to bet on a particular race.

Example:

Top two races, bet $60 on each for a total of $120.

Next three best races, bet $20 on each for a total of $60

Sixth favorite race, bet $10

Other four races, bet $3 on two of them and $2 on the other two.

That way, most of your money is riding on your strongest opinions that you had before you got to the track, but it still allows you to play four "fun" bets. If you don't get wishy-washy and vary your bet amounts, you can stay on course for profits. Of course, if you have no clue which races will win, you can just bet $20 on each race and see what's left when you are done.

[hashhouse]

I have one of those accounts, but mine is called STASH FOR PONIES.

[pandy]

Racehorses don't care whether you've just won your last bet, or whether you've just lost it. They don't care whether you're betting $2 or $2,000. They don't care whether this is bet number 14 in some cancellation-series of wagers, or the last leg of a three-horse parlay. They are no more, or less, likely to win because you've changed your bet size.



Stay away from betting schemes that require you to bet $40 on a 4-1 shot in the second race but would have required you to bet $4 or $400 had that same horse been scheduled to run in the sixth race.

Instead, bet when you have an advantage, and don't bet when you don't.[/QUOTE]

Barry, you may be mathematically correct, but I don't see the harm in using a betting system. I have one that I give out as an extra with my computer handicapping systems and I've received a lot of compliments on it, and customers seem to have fun with it. I guess if you ran a few hundred thousand races through it, maybe it wouldn't work, but tests we've done on paper show it does improve the bottom line.

You comments on craps, well, I have a life long profit at the craps table but mainly due to two days when I was at a table with a hot roller. If I had bet the same amount on each wager during the hot streak I would've realized a very small profit. But, I used a system called Commando Craps, which is an aggressive system in which you Press your bets if a roller gets hot. Consequently, I had dramtically bigger wins during these two long sessions, which put me in the black. When I play craps I always bet conservatively unless a bad or cold streak occurs and then I start the Commando system, which requires that you are up at least $75.00 to start.

You also seem to assume that intution means nothing. Even when betting horses I've had hot streaks where I raised my bets, and then when I cooled off, I dropped the size of my wagers. Again, if I had bet the same amount on each horse I would not have done as well, because I wouldn't have taken advantage of the hot streak. For instance, a few years ago I was red hot at Hollywood but I was betting about $20 a race. After a few weeks I realized that I was not taking advantage of my streak. As Del Mar opened, I raised my bet per race to $75 and I had a sensational Del Mar meet by anyone's standards. After the meet, I was ice cold for the first 10 days at Santa Anita and I dropped my bets down quickly and held on to 90% of the streak profit. Had I continued to bet $20 a race all summer, during the hot streak of my life, that would not have been a good strategy.

[ryesteve]

When I play craps I always bet conservatively unless a bad or cold streak occursSuggesting that one should size their bets according to "streaks" of random outcomes makes me want to cry...