The reason I got into horse racing in the first place was probably bad company. No, I’m kidding, it was the color, the emotion, the humor and the company (bad or not). The truth is that in the early days my betting was very much a matter of hit or miss. Relying on the advice of others. Who I thought knew more than me and sensed another word to guess. Many friends also did it by choosing the colors of the jockey.
Still, I’ve been luckier than many of my friends because I’ve always been fairly controlled in my game and can stop before my wallet is empty. Some of them couldn’t and it cost them dearly.
Fed up with the good days, bad days syndrome a few years ago, a friend of mine decided to buy a system. He asked me to go halves with him and since it wasn’t a lot of money, I accepted.
We got our money back, so the system had some merit, but the math turned against it and it started to crash.
Despite this, we felt there might be something to work on. He had taught us that in all races there are horses to make numbers. They are not supposed to win or get high. I don’t want to say that they never enter, of course they do. It’s just that it’s too rare an event to consider. Leave them to the cups who always lose in the end.
Now one of the tricks is to figure out which ones make up the numbers and which ones are supposed to work well.
The first thing we had learned was to be very careful in our selection of breeds. More particularly the number of runners. For many, their odds of picking a winner are drastically reduced. We found that a dozen or fewer produced the best results.
The next thing we needed was a way to weed the wheat from the chaff when it came to runners. Although I don’t like to spend a lot of time on a form guide, I had to spend some time with one. We then choose a selection of reliable informants from the press, etc. We combine the results and produce a much better image than relying on a single source.
By allocating 3 points per tipsters choice for a winner, 2 points for second place and 1 for a third place, you can easily come up with a final total for each horse.
Okay, you need to find reliable informants and this may take some time, but they are there or they wouldn’t keep their jobs for long. There may also be times when one of them is not at its best, which is why it is necessary to have several to counteract this.
I suggest six is a good number more than that it just gets confusing. Now go and have fun.