Early Black, Late Red - Horse Racing Forum - PaceAdvantage.Com

jfdinneen · 05-31-2010, 04:14 PM

One of the most frustrating scenarios in SportsTrading is moving into the black early in the day only to finish it in the red. Sound familiar?

Psychologically, we reset the baseline to zero each day even though intellectually we may be focused on generating an annual income. Because we are loss averse, it is not possible to simply ignore these daily downswings as it impacts our overall confidence level.

How do you reconcile the daily psychological balance with the annual intellectual goal and what has it taught you about your own strengths and weaknesses?

John

Dave Schwartz · 05-31-2010, 04:53 PM

Great topic, John.

Kind of builds a case for Karl's Korner's approach.

Overlay · 05-31-2010, 05:13 PM

I find that removing subjectivity from the handicapping and wagering process as much as possible, and having confidence in my overall model based on experience and analysis, help me to avoid having my game thrown off-course by intraday fluctuations. Any negative energy from an experience such as going from black to red, I channel into determining whether what happened has any implications for the validity of my general approach, or falls within acceptable limits of random variation.

jfdinneen · 05-31-2010, 06:09 PM

Thanks Dave.

Remind me - what is Karl's Korner approach and how do you reconcile the conflict yourself?

John

jfdinneen · 05-31-2010, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Overlay

I find that removing subjectivity from the handicapping...

Overlay,

Certainly, self-talk is a legitimate approach to addressing the emotional-rational conflict. But, over the years, that first line of defense must have faltered at least once. When it did, what did you do next?

John

JustRalph · 05-31-2010, 06:23 PM

how in the hell anybody makes any money over a years time is a foreign concept to me anymore.

Sitting around days on end waiting on decent races to play sucks..........

I am a little cranky about it. I have a back injury and going to PT twice a week leaves a lot of time for watching races........some of these fields are terrible.......now I usually don't play horses less than about 9/2 on any given day.............but come on !!!

karlskorner · 05-31-2010, 06:46 PM

O.K. for the benefit of the 12000+new members to this forum since when this was kicked around 10 years ago and without all the fancy terms described above, it's very simple. You set a goal for the day, if and when you reach that goal, you fold your tent and LEAVE, you have a minium WIN wager (mine is $40.00), forget the exotics etc., it has worked for me for 20+ years.

Yesterday at CRC, 1st race, was an extreme extreme example, I had my usual minium $40.00 wager on the winner that paid $50.20, my car was still cool from the AC when I hit University Drive.

Being the end of the month I faxed to my accountant this evening, my profit for the month of May which was $7972.00, CRC having gone to a 4 day week is going to cause me to increase my win wagers in order to reach my yearly goal.

Dave Schwartz · 05-31-2010, 06:49 PM

John,

Karl's approach was to play to a daily target, mildly chasing the money through the day. As soon as he is ahead a specific amount, his day is over and he goes home.

As for me, well that is another story.

As I test systems, I do it day-by-day, race-by-race. (Actually, I draw a day at random but go through every race from the tracks I am playing in post time order.)

I noticed that over 90% (literally) of the time I am a flat-bet winner at 1pm and by 7pm I was losing. I ignored this for a long time then asked myself, "Why?"

Obviously, it has nothing to do with the time of day. Logically, I assumed it was the mix of tracks I was playing. That was when I noticed "IT." There was a pronounced bias.

My profitability was directly tied to the rebate I was receiving at the track!

The lower the rebate, the better my performance.

That was when I realized that the high-rebate tracks had far more intelligent money. In other words, the competition was more difficult.

I am in the process now of a long-term study to verify this.

I can tell you it was a real eye-opener and has caused me to totally re-invent myself in the last three months.

Dave

Overlay · 05-31-2010, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfdinneen

Overlay,

Certainly, self-talk is a legitimate approach to addressing the emotional-rational conflict. But, over the years, that first line of defense must have faltered at least once. When it did, what did you do next?

Rather than relying totally on statistics, I start looking at horses/races subjectively through the application of Steve Davidowitz's old question, "What is he doing in today's race?" to see if there are relevant aspects to the results that my statistics aren't providing, and supplementing the responses I get to that question with statistical information and observations about explanations such as possible biases, as applicable. Until I have addressed those to my satisfaction, I avoid anything other than absolute minimum bets, if even that.

Space Monkey · 05-31-2010, 07:11 PM

Most of the people I know, and it used to be a younger me, would up their bet after getting ahead. Combine that with increased alcohol consumption, and you have a recipe for failure.

Ralph, I know exactly what you're saying. Race after race of small fields and heavy chalks. Or tough maiden races with multiple FTS, etc. I recently subscribed to a new program that enables me to easily scan every track in the country for playable races. Yesterday I played 5. One each at CD, AP, BEL, RD and MTH. IMO, I had to change from my old ways. Its not cheap, and it requires more of a commitment from me, but its well worth it.

jfdinneen · 05-31-2010, 07:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karlskorner

...You set a goal for the day, if and when you reach that goal, you fold your tent and LEAVE...

karlskorner,

You are using a variant of "Bold Play" first made famous by Dubins and Savage (1965) and further developed by Kulldorff (1993), Ziemba (2002), and Ethier (2010) among others.

Note that I have referred to this elsewhere as session handicapping and it is the mathematically optimal strategy for unfair games.

John

jfdinneen · 05-31-2010, 07:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

...That was when I realized that the high-rebate tracks had far more intelligent money. In other words, the competition was more difficult...

Dave,

Good troubleshooting on your part and it shows the benefit of keeping good records.

John

wonatthewire1 · 05-31-2010, 07:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karlskorner

O.K. for the benefit of the 12000+new members to this forum since when this was kicked around 10 years ago and without all the fancy terms described above, it's very simple. You set a goal for the day, if and when you reach that goal, you fold your tent and LEAVE, you have a minium WIN wager (mine is $40.00), forget the exotics etc., it has worked for me for 20+ years.

Yesterday at CRC, 1st race, was an extreme extreme example, I had my usual minium $40.00 wager on the winner that paid $50.20, my car was still cool from the AC when I hit University Drive.

Being the end of the month I faxed to my accountant this evening, my profit for the month of May which was $7972.00, CRC having gone to a 4 day week is going to cause me to increase my win wagers in order to reach my yearly goal.

I've been using the same idea for awhile now but based on odds points rather than money amount as my base bet has been increasing over time.

Currently betting $30/horse and betting those that will net at least 3-1 total per race. My current odds point goal is 10 per day. Example, like three horses in a race. One is 9/2, one is 5/2 and one is 8-1; bet the 9/2 and the 8-1 ones as they net more than 3-1.

Since I work during the day (it pays way more than enough to continue and the job doesn't suck the life blood out of me). I am usually signing on at 430pm on weekdays (Weds - Fri) and 3pm or so on Sat. Rest of the days are off. Usually I have my 10 odds points in about an hour or so. If I'm still on NJ Bets at 8pm > I'm still trying to get to the 10!

Most days; I'll get over 10 and if I have a race or two that are compelling enough to stay on-line for, I'll use the overage amount to play those but never so much as to dip below the 10 goal that I've set. The best days that I have are going over the 10 odds points, then keep playing until I lose a race. Average per my records is 23.7 odds points on those days (almost 2.5 days of odds points in 1)

Just looking at my records (to give JustRalph an example) the average field size is 9 but the optimum for me is 10 and up. Difficult to find these days on weekdays. I get to the 10 odds points 84% of the time and have not had a net losing day in 7 months. Average win odds for my bets is 10.16; so not as difficult to achieve as it sounds.

Working on some stuff to get to a better exacta play for myself but till then, happy with the results of getting with this type of wagering "mentality"

karlskorner · 05-31-2010, 08:51 PM

John;

10 years ago Dave Schwartz called what I was doing "sessions", I guess you and he read the same books. I had neither reason or desire to read the authors you mentioned, but I always liked what Ray Taulbot called handicapping, he said it was neither art or science, but a craft, something you learn over a period of time. You don't become a Plumber by reading a book, you don't become a carpenter by buying somebodys computer program, you become a handicapper by "doing" over a period of time.

My learning period was the 80's, the first 3/4 years I paid dearly for the lessons I was learning, the middle 80's it started to level off and by the end of the 80's I had the Tiger by the tail.

thaskalos · 05-31-2010, 09:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by karlskorner

O.K. for the benefit of the 12000+new members to this forum since when this was kicked around 10 years ago and without all the fancy terms described above, it's very simple. You set a goal for the day, if and when you reach that goal, you fold your tent and LEAVE, you have a minium WIN wager (mine is $40.00), forget the exotics etc., it has worked for me for 20+ years.

Yesterday at CRC, 1st race, was an extreme extreme example, I had my usual minium $40.00 wager on the winner that paid $50.20, my car was still cool from the AC when I hit University Drive.

Being the end of the month I faxed to my accountant this evening, my profit for the month of May which was $7972.00, CRC having gone to a 4 day week is going to cause me to increase my win wagers in order to reach my yearly goal.

You mentioned that you have a MINIMUM win wager...is there a MAXIMUM win wager, or does the "mild" chasing go on indefinately?