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Since my name is getting mentioned so often in this thread, i think it appropriate that I comment from time to time.
The basic concept that I function under, even today, is that I, personally, cannot tell you which contender is going to win a race.
My belief is that most other players cannot do so successfully either.
There may be the rare, exceptional player, and the rare, exceptional race, when the stars line up and you just know that such-and-such a horse is the winner. Of course, in the scheme of things, if you tally all those sure thing-plays up, my guess is that you are still fortunate to carry anything close to a hall-of-fame batting average and be profitable.
To solve MY problem, I came up with what has turned out to be a workable solution: produce a method for virtually guaranteeing long-term success.
1. If you can eliminate a significant percentage of the pool...
and...
2. If your eliminations lose a significant amount of money...
then...
3. It follows that the remaining horses will be at least close to breaking even...
4. Leaving you with the ability to almost throw darts and make a profit.
In other words, if you can get it down to (say) 4 horses AND pick 40% of the pool that will be losing large, you should be able to easily grind out a profit.
Of course, there is still the need for a "value component" to help you with the final selection(s), but you are starting with a much smaller pool of selections.
I firmly believe (and every study I have ever done supports) the idea that all natural odds horses that make it into the "contender" category will (collectively) be profitable.
Think of it this way...
1. If you are good at selecting Non-Contenders...
then
2. You will only play races where a high percentage of the pool has been eliminated...
therefore
3. The remaining horses should be involved in a much-closer-to-break-even race...
and
4. If your contender process with above-natural-odds horses is at least as good as it is with low-odds horses, it is reasonable to expect them to significantly outperform the ones that do not make it into your contender set and, ultimately be profitable; perhaps hugely so.
So, why don't I just do that? Because playing nothing but natural odds horses does not allow one to wager "a lot" of money. It does not allow one to wager enough money to make significant money.
My biggest challenge right now is to figure out how to wager on those highly profitable longshots and still keep my per-race hit rate around 60%.
I suggest that this is why Al is so convinced that he is doing the right thing with these high-priced contenders and struggling to stick to his guns during play: they just do not win very often to build a strategy around, despite being very profitable.
This is my experience. Your mileage may differ.
Regards,
Dave Schwartz
Last edited by Dave Schwartz; 01-27-2013 at 09:26 PM.
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