Change Your Game Forever

[CincyHorseplayer]

Originally Posted by AndyC

Or a very lucky one who thinks they are betting value.

I never bet anything less than 2-1.I bet about 40-50% of the races on a card.The favorite wins 15% of the races I play.Is that luck?

[DRIVEWAY]

Originally Posted by CincyHorseplayer

I never bet anything less than 2-1.I bet about 40-50% of the races on a card.The favorite wins 15% of the races I play.Is that luck?

If you can select over time approximately 50% of the race on a racecard and have the favorite consistently loose 85% of the time, then you must be a very wealthy man.

Congratulations!

[Dave Schwartz]

So you measure public error by how far off it is from a line that may or may not have any correlation to actual probability?

I measure TYPICAL public error on a horse like this.

In other words, I might say that the #7 horse is PROBABLY the best bet in the race without having any idea what its odds will be.


It is not essential to my success that anyone agrees with this approach.

[AndyC]

Originally Posted by CincyHorseplayer

I never bet anything less than 2-1.I bet about 40-50% of the races on a card.The favorite wins 15% of the races I play.Is that luck?

It matters little what I think. Results are all that matters.

If indeed the favorites were only winning at a rate of 15% on the races that you bet wouldn't it make sense to wager on the favorites in the races you aren't betting? At a hit rate of about 50% I would have to believe that would be a positive ROI.

[AndyC]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

I measure TYPICAL public error on a horse like this.

In other words, I might say that the #7 horse is PROBABLY the best bet in the race without having any idea what its odds will be.


It is not essential to my success that anyone agrees with this approach.

If the underlined words was meant to be a link, I was unable to access it.

[Dave Schwartz]

Sorry. I meant to bold that instead of underline.

I go into a race with what I call my OOP. That means "order of preference." It is my rank for each of my contenders, taking into consideration hit rate and profitability.

Essentially, I feed my horses onto the ticket based upon that OOP order, stopping when I reach a given percent of return. Not as much as you would expect.

The bets are sized on each horse relative to the horses' line. Thus, if the #1 OOP horse happens to be (say) 4/5 on my line, I will single that horse.

If the #1 OOP horse was (say) 12/1 then I would be adding another horse. If, after that second horse was added, there was still room - that is, my net odds were high enough, I would add still a 3rd horse.

Once I have decided WHO I am going to bet and the ratio of the total bet on each one, I decide HOW MUCH to bet. This is a relatively simple formula that I have adopted that sizes the bets as close to perfect as I have ever seen.

IMHO, Kelly doesn't work. It can't work. Oh, it works in theory but not in reality.

Kelly is based upon 2 things: Profitability and odds. Thus, an advantage of 20% with odds of 2/1 calls for a 10% wager. We all get that. Great formula.

However, we NEVER really know the hit rate - it is only our perception.

And we NEVER really know the odds - because they change so much after we've made our bets.

I had to develop something better.

[nat1223]

Originally Posted by Dave Schwartz

Sorry. I meant to bold that instead of underline.

I go into a race with what I call my OOP. That means "order of preference." It is my rank for each of my contenders, taking into consideration hit rate and profitability.

Essentially, I feed my horses onto the ticket based upon that OOP order, stopping when I reach a given percent of return. Not as much as you would expect.

The bets are sized on each horse relative to the horses' line. Thus, if the #1 OOP horse happens to be (say) 4/5 on my line, I will single that horse.

If the #1 OOP horse was (say) 12/1 then I would be adding another horse. If, after that second horse was added, there was still room - that is, my net odds were high enough, I would add still a 3rd horse.

Once I have decided WHO I am going to bet and the ratio of the total bet on each one, I decide HOW MUCH to bet. This is a relatively simple formula that I have adopted that sizes the bets as close to perfect as I have ever seen.

IMHO, Kelly doesn't work. It can't work. Oh, it works in theory but not in reality.

Kelly is based upon 2 things: Profitability and odds. Thus, an advantage of 20% with odds of 2/1 calls for a 10% wager. We all get that. Great formula.

However, we NEVER really know the hit rate - it is only our perception.

And we NEVER really know the odds - because they change so much after we've made our bets.

I had to develop something better.

better than HMI?

[Dave Schwartz]

HMI is the money management method for sizing the available bankroll in a given race.

What I am speaking of here is the amount of that bankroll that should actually be wagered in this race and how it is apportioned per horse.


IOW, I use both.

[Capper Al]

After reviewing your videos 'Change Your Game Forever' and 'The Basics of Winning', I can see why I have been winning for the last five years. One might wonder without your videos how many years of winning would it take to convince me that I'm winning? Well, I had to overcome a major disbelief in my results that made me feel only lucky. I know my speed and pace figures have an average hit rate, something someone just reading Modern Pace Handicapping for the first time could duplicate. Overcoming this disbelief was major.

I stick with value play (the one and only absolute truth), but I do have my own versions of your worksheet.

[Overlay]

Dave,

Could you clarify a point for me? Based on what you said at the outset of the thread about Change Your Game Forever not involving handicapping or money management, I take it that your comments in the thread (such as in posts #90, 161, and 171) about the mechanics of making an adjusted morning line are not addressed in Change Your Game Forever, but instead refer to features of the latest version of your software. Is that correct?

[Dave Schwartz]

Overlay,

Yes, our software does it at the click of a button.

But it is not a complicated process. All you do is add up the "booking percentages" of the Morning Line for each horse (i.e. 5/2=29, 4/1=25, etc).

It is a good idea to normalize it for the particular track's takeout, which is, again, not difficult. Just do the same thing using the final odds from a handful of charts from the track to determine what the "normal" pool totals to.

How to create an adjusted morning line is discussed in depth the Renegade Handicapper product. There is also a spreadsheet.

[Dave Schwartz]

Overlay,

This is really very easy to do. As such, I have created a simple Excel spreadsheet in the last few minutes to accomplish the task.

I added that worksheet to the Materials folder at the Change Your Game Forever download links.

Here are download links for people who did not invest in CYGF:

Download Excel 2010 version here

Download Excel 2003 version here

Note that the older version throws a cosmetic error for a scratched horse. If someone with older Excel wisdom wishes to fix that and email it to me I will be happy to put it up.


Instructions
1. Put each horse's morning line in the ML column. (Leave out scratched horses.)
2. Put the "normal" sum of the points at this track in the yellow area above "Norm Pct."



That's it.

Dave Schwartz

[CincyHorseplayer]

Originally Posted by DRIVEWAY

If you can select over time approximately 50% of the race on a racecard and have the favorite consistently loose 85% of the time, then you must be a very wealthy man.

Congratulations!

You missed a few key words here.I don't select 50% winners on a card I will bet about 40-50% of the races on a card.If there is a favorite I think is legitimate at less than 2-1 I skip the race.In the races left over the favorite wins at about 15%,with obvious fluctuations.That's been the case over my last 150 races.This year I'm struggling with win % at 24%(13.13 avg mutual).Last year it was 30%.In the last 11 years it's slightly higher than 28%.There was nothing technical in my decision.I just said to myself it's not worth betting less than 2-1.All the other realizations came much later.It's a nice foundation.I haven't reached dave's comfort level of betting 70% of the races though!

[CincyHorseplayer]

Originally Posted by AndyC

It matters little what I think. Results are all that matters.

If indeed the favorites were only winning at a rate of 15% on the races that you bet wouldn't it make sense to wager on the favorites in the races you aren't betting? At a hit rate of about 50% I would have to believe that would be a positive ROI.

Other than an include(maybe)on a pick 4 etc,I see zero value in even indulging the thought.Last year I bet one of these types roughly 1 time in every 100 bets.

[njcurveball]

I bought the product and went through the whole thing. I would say if you get one thing out of it, you got your $18 worth. I definitely got one thing out of it.

I have a few suggestions.

1.) If you want people to do something, just say it and then play about a minute of music. All the momentum is lost when you stop and do an exercise and then come back to be scolded to do the exercise 3 or 4 more times.

2.) Unfortunately if you are giving a generic selection criteria, spending extra time to explain your own point system only adds to the confusion. You can suggest proper metrics and ratios, but when you give specific numbers to point out a winner, horseplayers want to know how you got it.

3.) The contender "systems" are a good touch (if you do it that way). I would find it confusing to eliminate horses statistically one way, but then add them back another way. Again, since it was supposed to be generic, one contender selection system should apply.

4.) The lessons were very uneven and at the end of each it would have been a good example to tell the listeners how your procedure had changed with the coaching. My take on it was that you used the same procedure, but were just more disciplined and confident in your selections.

Thanks for all your efforts Dave.