What would you do?

[PaceAdvantage]

Say you were to discover a commercially available handicapping program that you were successful with, long term. Would you be concerned about informing others about your success with the program for fear of having your odds impacted by the possibility that more handicappers will be betting on the same horses as yourself?

[acorn54]

i think someone else mentioned the fact that it only takes one blabbermouth to ruin the odds. so i for one would remain tight lipped.
over at jcapper we discuss in general terms but noone gives out profitable udms that they have discovered.

[PaceAdvantage]

Yes, but would you tell others of your success with Jcapper, the program?

[Charlie D]

Originally Posted by PaceAdvantage

Say you were to discover a commercially available handicapping program that you were successful with, long term. Would you be concerned about informing others about your success with the program for fear of having your odds impacted by the possibility that more handicappers will be betting on the same horses as yourself?

Does this program select the right Pacelines, Contenders etc PA or do you need to this yourself??

[Sinner369]

That's like answering: If you had the only map to a gold mine.....would you share it?


To a few good friends.........yes........ and no to anyone else!


Sinner

[socantra]

Originally Posted by Sinner369

That's like answering: If you had the only map to a gold mine.....would you share it?

I've never seen any software that works like a map to a gold mine. All of the successful software I've used presents you with different routes to get to the end of the race, with positive and negative factors for each. You still have to do the choosing.

Big Brown has changed the game this year, but its usually very entertaining to watch the number of different choices that users of the exact same software can make in the Triple Crown races.

If someone has produced software that I feel does a superior job of crunching the numbers and helping me to make decisions, I'd like to see the creator do well so he keeps working on the software.

[dartman51]

Unless it's an absolute BLACK BOX, that requires no thinking on your part, the answer is yes. Most people don't want to put in the time required to make a software program work for them. I have no problem sharing the name of the program, or sharing success stories about a certain program. Although I wouldn't tell everything that I did to make the program work for me.

Dartman

[russowen77]

Originally Posted by dartman51

Unless it's an absolute BLACK BOX, that requires no thinking on your part, the answer is yes. Most people don't want to put in the time required to make a software program work for them. I have no problem sharing the name of the program, or sharing success stories about a certain program. Although I wouldn't tell everything that I did to make the program work for me.

Dartman

I am not sure what impact it would really have if you shared that with boards like this one. Lord, 95% of the the gamblers around here are not exactly computer literate. It might be way different in California.

I have a feeling the real whales would get the data anyway, money does talk, and their impact the pools much more than the average capper anyway.

[Fingal]

It always comes back to one thing- this is parimutuel betting & money talks. The only way one wins is by knowing something the other guy doesn't.

The prime example would be speed & pace figures- before Andy Beyer put wrote Picking Winners & then the inclusion of them in the DRF for anybody to see, & then the publicity of Sartin, Brohammer, Bradshaw,etc. type theories these type of figures were the domain of those who put in a little more effort & prospered because of that.

When everybody knows everything, it's useless.

It's not personal, it's just business.

[Tom Barrister]

It would depend on whether the way that I made the program profitable was easily found by everybody else. For example, I have no problem telling people about HTR, because the way I use it isn't going to be found by the data miners or those who seek an easy road to riches. Most people who aren't winning, and who get a solid program, still aren't going to be winning once they've gotten it, and they usually will overbet the obvious things, which will make the less-obvious (valid) things more profitable.

If the program had some rating that was profitable standalone (as CJ's Performance Figure was before he had a wide base of users), I'd probably keep my yapper shut and use it until the blabbermouths tell the world, and everybody hops aboard and beats it into unprofitability.

[GameTheory]

I am having great success with HSH right now, and it doesn't matter who knows it because no one could possibly reproduce what I'm doing. (Mainly because I export the ratings and do my own thing with them.) So yes, let everyone know -- I want HSH to stay in business, after all.

But even if I used the tools in the program more as part of the process, HSH is so friggin' complicated (which is good or bad, depending on your POV) that I doubt there are ANY two users that do things the same way.

[ddog]

if i was making the money in small track's pools , NO I would never tell a soul.

large top tier tracks, no matter let em all know.

[Stareagle]

First rule of handicapping - the minute you tell anyone about your system, it stops working.

That said, if I figured out a Great Secret, I'd tell anyone that would listen. My ego is bigger than my need to wring every possible penny out of the windows. There's always more tracks to bet than people who would use my system.

[njcurveball]

It would almost be a Twilight Zone episode for most people here. They find the "key to the mint" and then the author of the program goes bankrupt and stops supporting it.

[bigmack]

Some awfully good programs out there that take work to 'work'. No program worth its salt tells someone how to wag. You need to work with any program for a spell to gain a modicum of comfortability.

One mans roof is blocking an Ocean view to another man. Or, is it ceiling & floor? In other words, a program is something that is individual to the user and how they see data, how they "ma-nippleate it" and how to wager from its spitting. Tough for a program to spit the same way for two different users.

You had a question PA - Why sure! I'll hand someone a piano or a box of paints. There's little chance they'll play or paint just like me.