I will make this answer very personal and pretty long
.
Should have, would have and could have. When you play as many pick 4's, pick 5's, pick 6's and super high 5 (with carryovers) as I do, and you are constantly right there to huge money (just off the top of my head I can name a $50,000 rainbow six, 2 mohawk harness pick 5's that nobody hit (so at least $50,000 each) a $13,000 super high five at Hawthorne Harness that I absolutely should have hit last year (not even would have or could have). This year I must have played about 30 rainbow sixes and would say that I had 5 of 6 on about 20 of them (if only so and so would have won I would have won $15,000 or if so and so would have won $8000 etc, yawn). The ones that I do hit I end up being 10 deep in a key race and watch the 8/5 win like a 1/5 shot and i get back about $500.
With wps betting, if you keep records it is really hard to delude yourself away from the truth. If I bet 500 or 700 win or win/place bets a year and am losing 10% or 15% on the dollar, nothing rational can convince me that anything other than being outplayed by better competition is to blame. My long term probability is the sum of each bets's short term probability and if isn't positive, I am doing something wrong. But if I am losing 10% on super exotics but can name so many close calls for large sums of money, then the it takes a lot longer for reality to slap me in the face or for a couple of scores to actually turn the tables and put me into the black.
All this being said, my performance the last 3 years, while not great helped me maintain hope. I actually felt like I had legitimate hope to cross the line into profits. However, my performance in 2018 has been absolutely dreadful. Whether it is pressure, bad decision making, battle scars, bad luck, short term bad spell, or me regressing to a pretty weak mean, if things do turn around pretty significantly, my betting will likely be reduced to just superexotics. Either you grind or you get grinded and all indications to me are that I for the most part (with the exception of the superexotics) am getting grinded (much more so in thoroughbred then in Harness where I am still very confident in my abilities but for some reason the pick 4's, pick 5 are the only places I can seem to make any traction.I have even sucked on those in 2018 yet I am still well in the black on those bets.
IF I lose $10,000 chasing a legitimate chances of hitting a 40,000 to $50,000 scores that is acceptable and rational to me If. I lose the same $10,000 trying to grind on straight bets (only to get grinded) and this continues to happen, then I would be pretty darn stupid to persist in that behavior. Now on the other hand if the $10,000 lost chasing superexotics becomes, $15,000, $20,000, $25,000, then I would just be getting grinded there as well and would have to give those up as well. Only time can tell.
Bottom line is record keeping is paramount, but ultimately unless we are surviving this game, or are loaded with cash, many will ultimately continue to drop out of this game. For me time will tell. Worse case scenario, is that I am attacking the 20 cent pick 4's and pick 5's at Mohawk Harness, more likely I will be chasing pick 4 and pick 5 carryovers and even pick 6's at the thoroughbreds as well. To be honest not sure I am able to make money straight betting (win, place, exactas, trifectas) any of them anymore. I haven't waved the white flag, just yet, but it is sitting right next to me ready for action.
I just see too many horses that look good to me, that are completely ignored in the betting and run to how they are bet (then when they do win the whales knock them down from 54-1 to 28-1 after the bell). Even at the harness races, I like a longshot, he gets a dream 2 hole trip (I have him boxed with the favorite he is sitting behind) I feel like I am completely home and he just goes backwards in the lane. I can stare at the past performances for an hour after the race and my opinion doesn't really change. The money seems to know things that are not apparent to me. It is not an every race happening, but it certainly happens too darn often. Unfortunately this is not an ingredient for success. I need horses that I make 5-1 that are 20-1 to at least run like 10-1 shots, not like they are true 40-1 shots as too many do.
