ValueCapper

[lefty359]

Mickym, great post. Don't be a stranger...

[mhaney0423]

Originally Posted by geroge.burns99

Welcome to PA...

I'm sure many here have about the same kinda life you have....
Most will say keeping a 1.20 ROI is something we all would like..
I too have Prime and Secondary bets...but those Secondary bets can wipe all the hard work you've done getting those Prime's..
Try just betting Primes and see what happens

GB

Originally Posted by Mikym

Hi all, I am a long time lurker but a first time poster. This particular post was of interest to me as I also use ValueCapper and do pretty well with it. I swear I am not a plant for MP. I have actually been betting on horses for a long time. I’ve been married for 31 years and the first time my wife and I went away together was to the old Rockingham Park. (I know…how romantic…)

Anyway, i started betting after reading James Quinn, and once Pace Makes The Race came out I started my own database using Lotus. (For you really young folks, Lotus was Excel before Excel.) Eventually, it just became to much to do as I got more responsibility at work…you know the rest. Enough about me.

I started using ValueCapper about 15 months ago. For the first four months, I could not lose. I mean, I showed a healthy profit every single session. I thought, “Where has this thing been all my life?” And then, it all went south. I basically gave everything back over the next four months. Some of my losing was self inflicted, like thinking I had an exacta box, when I didn’t. Some was bad luck.

I took the next four months off, and when I decided to start again, I rewatched the videos that come with the software. I realized I wasn’t doing anything wrong, but there was a lot I wasn’t doing. A lot of that was covered by mhaney0423. Betting to many races, and so on. I basically do most of the things he does, but not all.

I will make a bet on a horse that is less than 5-1. Why? Well, one of the things I learned was being flexible. I can’t tell you how many times there was a horse on the top of the line, that ValueCapper would suggest betting if the odds were 5-1 and I wouldn’t bet because despite the horse being an overlay at 4-1, and the horse was clearly the best horse in the field, I would not bet because the horse wasn’t 5-1, only to see that horse win. So I will be flexible on the odds if the horse is on the top of the line and is an overlay.

The other thing I learned is Primary bets versus Secondary bets. All of my bets were the same amount. I’m not sure how others feel about that, but my ROI is much more consistent since I started doing that.

Finally, I make my bets a few minutes before the race, rather than early.
So with all that, for the spring my ROI is 1.29. I guess that’s pretty good. To be honest, I do expect it to go up and down, but if I could get it to stick around 1.2, I’d be pretty happy.

Sorry this is so long. I guess I have a number of years worth of stuff to talk about.

Welcome Mikym,

If you can make horses less than 5-1 profitable then I say do it!! I wouldnt say I never bet a horse under 5-1 but it is very very very rare. Its probably going to be in a 4 or 5 horse field with a false favorite if I do it though. My reasoning is simple, there are just way too many unknowns and things that can go wrong in a horse race. I am not sure I would take Secretariat at 7-2 in a a field of 10 5k claimers, just too many variables.....normally if I find a race like that, its a simple pass and move on to the next one.


I could never make the secondary bet thing work for me, a secondary bet to me is an excuse to play a race you have no business in to start with. That being said, sometimes even I get bored and will bet a small daily double but its usually a small 4-6$ bet and I dont do it too often because I normally prebet everything and carry on with my day. I do leave a lot of unforseen prices on the table though by doing this.


At any rate, good to hear from you and keep posting

Matt H

[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by mhaney0423

If you can make horses less than 5-1 profitable then I say do it!! I wouldnt say I never bet a horse under 5-1 but it is very very very rare. Its probably going to be in a 4 or 5 horse field with a false favorite if I do it though. My reasoning is simple, there are just way too many unknowns and things that can go wrong in a horse race. I am not sure I would take Secretariat at 7-2 in a a field of 10 5k claimers, just too many variables.....normally if I find a race like that, its a simple pass and move on to the next one

Matt H

Come on...REALLY?

[mhaney0423]

Originally Posted by thaskalos

Come on...REALLY?

Yes, really. Thats just me, to each their own. All it takes is one of the other horses to bump or break down, a jockey to fall off, a horse not in the mood to run that day, bad weather, a trainer with the horse in for a workout, etc, etc, etc, ad nauseum. I know there are people who make money betting low priced horses, I just dont happen to be one of them, never acquired that skill, and probably Im not smart enough to do it.

[lefty359]

Thanks to you both. I wish more Valucappers would post here.

[Mikym]

Thanks everyone for making me feel welcomed. Much appreciated!

Let me give an example of when I may do a secondary bet. Within ValueCapper, there are various portfolios. One of those portfolios is called something like “Anti Value Countdown.” Essentially, the program ranks the field as it normally does and then finds the flaws it considers anti value. Let’s say the top three all have anti value and the fourth doesn’t. The fourth is a possible bet because the program perceives the top three to have flaws. Now as MP says, ValueCapper isn’t a magic box. You still need to do some handicapping to make a final decision. So for the sake of this discussion, if I feel the fourth horse has a chance and is not only an overlay, but is giving me a really good price on a horse that is that far down on the line, I will make a secondary bet. The bet is much smaller than my primary bet for sure. More often than not - at least in my experience so far - the wins are few and far between. But, as long as doing this isn’t a huge part of your game, you do have the chance at making a decent score on occasion.

[mhaney0423]

Originally Posted by Mikym

Thanks everyone for making me feel welcomed. Much appreciated!

Let me give an example of when I may do a secondary bet. Within ValueCapper, there are various portfolios. One of those portfolios is called something like “Anti Value Countdown.” Essentially, the program ranks the field as it normally does and then finds the flaws it considers anti value. Let’s say the top three all have anti value and the fourth doesn’t. The fourth is a possible bet because the program perceives the top three to have flaws. Now as MP says, ValueCapper isn’t a magic box. You still need to do some handicapping to make a final decision. So for the sake of this discussion, if I feel the fourth horse has a chance and is not only an overlay, but is giving me a really good price on a horse that is that far down on the line, I will make a secondary bet. The bet is much smaller than my primary bet for sure. More often than not - at least in my experience so far - the wins are few and far between. But, as long as doing this isn’t a huge part of your game, you do have the chance at making a decent score on occasion.

Thats my favorite profile and I would argue with you here my friend that if you are making secondary bets in this profile, you are losing out. I do not reccommend betting blindly, but I do keep track of this profile and it shows consistent profits even betting blindly.

If you eliminate all RED(Consider Passing) and ORANGE (Proceed with great caution) races and just bet the AVC horse IF it goes off at or above the VCP price.......here what you get from June1-June21 for 2$ bets

47 BETS
$94 Invested
4 winners
8.5% win
$132.40 returned
Profit=$38.40
1$ ROI = 1.41

I also RAN this with real money JAN1 - APRIL30 but since they were prebet, I only used the ones that I thought would go off above VCP and here what I got

96 Bets
$960 INVESTED
10 WINNERS
10.4% WIN
$1,194 RETURNED
PROFIT $234
ROI 1.24

Thats not too shabby betting blindly. Hitting only like 8-10% of the time you will hit long runouts, but I think since I began tracking this sometime in 2020 there has only been 3 losing months.

Just doesnt provide enough plays, I wouls say 2-3 per day avg.

[ReplayRandall]

Not to downgrade what you've got here, when taking out the winner Mdcl 20K Kee at 1-1/8 mile, which paid $53.40, the method shows a slight loss...Not bad at all.....But, profitability all hinges on this one winner in a cheap unknowable Md claimer....Sample size is a bit too small as well.

[mhaney0423]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

Not to downgrade what you've got here, when taking out the winner Mdcl 20K Kee at 1-1/8 mile, which paid $53.40, the method shows a slight loss...Not bad at all.....But, profitability all hinges on this one winner in a cheap unknowable Md claimer....Sample size is a bit too small as well.

You are welcome to run it back as far as you'd like, it does pretty well for me, although I dont bet them all blindly. That sample size was the 4 entire months I bet those blindly. It is small because there are not many of these races to bet, especially not during the early part of the year in 2021 with Covid restrictions still in place.

You are correct about it hinging on long priced winners but in my experience you get a couple of those every month. This month so far has been only 4 winners out of 47 races paying $14.20, $27.20, $44.80, and $54.20. This is how it normally goes....longest losing streak I ever had was 35 races in a row. Think that streak was ended with a 46-1 winner.

As far as the "unknowable claimer" would you bet the horse in the attached file at 25-1? I hope so.

[ReplayRandall]

The distance of the race was the "unknowable" for that younger lower level and inexperienced route, which probably no one had run.

I did like what I saw as a projected price of 5-1, and getting 25-1...

[mhaney0423]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

The distance of the race was the "unknowable" for that younger lower level and inexperienced route, which probably no one had run.

I did like what I saw as a projected price of 5-1, and getting 25-1...

Tell ya what I'll do, on July 1st, I will make a new thread called VCP AVC and list the final results for June and I will try to update it every month with the preceding months results (win or lose) for at least the next 6 months.

These will be listed as paper bets in my results because I dont bet blindly this way, but it will be interesting to see what happens.

We will place a mythical $20 win bet on any AVC horse that goes off at or above VCP odds provided VCP odds are at least 5-1.... There are a few tracks I dont bet namely the fair meets and any track in Nebraska and probably a few others so anyone following along may have slightly different results. I also do not have my Valuecapper set up in the default manner so that can change things too.

For anyone watching from the VCP board, I will not be giving out selections, only results from the previous month, so please dont worry about your prices taking a hit.

I have no idea how this will fair, I expect we should see a profit, but who knows, this is horse racing.

[geroge.burns99]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

Not to downgrade what you've got here, when taking out the winner Mdcl 20K Kee at 1-1/8 mile, which paid $53.40, the method shows a slight loss...Not bad at all.....But, profitability all hinges on this one winner in a cheap unknowable Md claimer....Sample size is a bit too small as well.

You can eliminate a high paying winner ONLY if its the only one...

Its clear that this system of betting relies on high paying horses because there's more than a few .

GB

[ReplayRandall]

Originally Posted by geroge.burns99

You can eliminate a high paying winner ONLY if its the only one...

Its clear that this system of betting relies on high paying horses because there's more than a few .

GB

I posted an entire meet of Saratoga everyday, giving out all picks before they ran the first race....My ROI was 1.24 in the black, with a 12% hit rate....All winners were double digit.

[mhaney0423]

Originally Posted by ReplayRandall

I posted an entire meet of Saratoga everyday, giving out all picks before they ran the first race....My ROI was 1.24 in the black, with a 11% hit rate....All winners were double digit.

That is great, few people are willing to do that. I did it in this thread for a while, but it upset some of the people using the software......justifiably so I would say, after all they did spend the money to reap the rewards.

So I am not going to give out plays before the races here, but I will honest report the results. I will say, even I dont bet all of the AVC horses randomly, I like there to be something to like at least. I miss a few winners that way, but I miss a lot of losers too!

[ReplayRandall]

I did it just the once....No need to do it again.