As expected, as soon as I posted this thread I took a gigantic hit and lost 21 of my next 25 wagers, and the winners were small enough they barely matter
Oh well, that's gambling. The losing streak brought my net down to about break-even, maybe just a little below. I have since recovered a bit to post a small $7.50 gain on 304 total bets.
I thought more about increasing the size of my place and show wagers, and decided against. On the one hand, I can increase the size of the wagers since my hit rate will obviously be higher, reducing risk of loss. On the other hand, if I stick with a lower wager, I am reducing risk of loss in a real, tangible way, while taking a lesser return as the offset. Since my main goal is to not go broke, I've opted to stick with my minimum wager size for these bets.
Related to that, I think 2% of bankroll is too much for a win bet for me. Since I am trusting my program to pick my wagers for me, I waive the right to skip races and/or wagers on horses that I would toss without even thinking about it if I looked at the form. Much of my losing streak was due to wagers on 20/1+ shots that had absolutely no chance, but they slipped through my code. I had a wave of those.
Once the dust settles and I've finished with the basics, I'll be able to go back and see if I can program these losers out of my system, but until then, I'll have to live with them as an expense of black boxing, and hope the rest of the wagers can overcome these guaranteed losses. All that said, I think I'll keep my win bets at 1% of bankroll once (and if) it grows to where I have that flexibility.
