Horse racing systems versus betting systems

Have you been trying to make a profit by betting on horse racing? It really doesn't make much difference whether you're betting on the Group 1 classics or point-to-point, flat racing or National Hunt jumps races, turf or the all-weather, it is all but impossible to make a significant amount of money by rating horse races. I'm sure if you've been trying to make money playing against the bookmakers then you know what I mean. Thousands of punters spend a lot of time and effort trying to beat the races every day.

There is the school of thought that suggests that the game of betting is all about finding winners. They summize that if you can just pick enough winners, then you'll surely make a profit. The thing is, nothing could be further from the truth. Unless of course you're able to highlight the winner of each and every single race that you analyze. And seriously, that just isn't about to happen any time soon.

Earning a living from punting is a matter of understanding probability.

Two questions matter most: What is the likelihood the horse will win? What is the return if it does win? This is what matters. For sure, you have to exercise your skill to calculate, or rather estimate, the horse's chances. But you must also have a firm grasp of the money angles. The first part of the game is about race rating, and part two, which is equally as important, is in deciding whether or not a bet is a good bet or a bad bet.

A race rating system involves evaluating the horses. Whereas a betting system is much more to do with evaluating the actual bet itself, and assessing whether it offers 'value'. In other words, do you think the odds are in your favour?

Whilst a race rating system should return a profit just as long as you employ prudent money management strategies and know when to use it, and when to use a different system, a betting system only looks at the actual probability and the payoff.

For example, a punter who uses such a system may be of the opinion that a horse offered at odds of 2/1 only has a 25% chance of winning. Or conversely, perhaps a horse at 10/1 has a realistic 20% chance of winning. This punter may shop around the bookmakers or betting exchanges to see if he can secure a bet at odds higher than the actual probability suggests.

That's an example of a betting system. The punter doesn't have to rate the race, and he may not even be aware of the horses' names, or the jockeys riding. If the betting system is based upon statistics, it should work. But statistics and trends are by their nature transient. They do change and are limited in their accuracy to predict the future within a range of numbers. That is why no system will win every time, be it a betting system or a race rating methodology.

The race rating method, however, will usually rely more upon judgment by the user. Whereas a betting system will often be mechanical in nature, with rigid rules and filters.

The success depends entirely on the punter and his skill, experience, and judgment of when to employ the system. In the long run, betting systems, because they address the fundamental question of profitability, tend to be more profitable.

If you want to learn more about betting systems that work you'll find explanations of various race rating methods, as well as betting systems, at the horse racing and betting systems blog SkyBlueKangaroo.com

 

Mission Impossible: Beating the roulette wheel

Am I the only one, or has there been an increase recently in web sites promoting betting systems to win at roulette?

 

So is there a way to beat that spinning casino wheel? You may think you know the answer, but I would still urge you to read what Graham Laurie over at the Cashmaster Blog has to say. He's penned a fascinating expose of the roulette betting scams.

 

http://www.cash-master.com/blog/the-roulette-scam/

 

 

Graham is looking in particular at online casino games sites.

 

Many of these will have fancy algorithms that monitor the numbers and are able to make predictions with ‘stunning accuracy’ on what’s coming up next. Often they will be ‘taking advantage’ of the casino’s own computer algorithms and beating the computer at its own game.

 

Visit the Cashmaster blog for the full article

Paul Nicholls on Denman's retirement

Hugh Taylor's Eyecatchers

Betting Systems and your Return On Investment

When we browse the betting system review sites we very often look at the bottom line profits generated by a system, and make a decision as to whether we want to get involved (or not). This can be forgiven as a totally natural approach, as basically we all want to get a feel for how much money we might be able to make.

But if there were another way to figure whether a system was worth following, wouldn’t you want to know about it?

You see, the thing is, we come across some problems when we look at profit figures on their own. And these problems crop up because the bottom line profit figure doesn’t tell us everything.

Two key aspects the profit figure doesn’t reveal are...

• How large does our bankroll need to be?
• To what extent are we exposing our bank to risk?

Let’s dig a little deeper shall we...

On the face of it, if we have in our hands a betting system that’s just produced a profit of 100 points in the last month, we might be forgiven for thinking this was the most incredible method for selecting winning horses ever.

But what if I then explained that you would have needed a bankroll of 1,000 points to bet those same selections. A profit of 100 points would still be good... very good in fact ...but still not quite as brilliant as we first thought. That’s why it’s important we should always put bottom line profit figures into context, and discover how many points we need in our bank to be able to bet all the selections.

Now let’s consider another familiar scenario. We’re evaluating two different betting systems. Over the course of the month System A returns 100 points profit, whilst System B scores 20 points. Would you agree that System A is a much better performer compared to System B?

But what if I then told you that I had risked 200 units to get the 100 points profit from System A, as opposed to risking a mere 5 points to benefit to the tune of 20 points with System B. Once again, by putting the bottom line profit figure into context, we can judge the performance of a system with a degree more objectivity.

In my opinion, assessing a betting system using Return On Investment (ROI) is preferable to profit alone.

The advantage of ROI is that it shows us precisely how much we are earning for every single unit stake invested from our bankroll. It effectively levels the playing field. When using ROI it doesn’t matter whether a series of selections requires more stakes to bet, or if you risk more for your profit.

ROI quantifies how much profit is generated compared to how much you've bet. If we re-visit the earlier example of the two betting strategies - one making 100 units profit and the other making 20 units profit – we calculate ROI figures of 50% for System A and 400% for System B.

It’s now plain to see that in terms of making the optimum return on your investment, System B is actually eight times better than System A.

When you employ Return On Investment as a statistical tool you can compare selections directly with each other without any bias.

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