Hi Bhagwan!
You are right the letter R is missing, must have left it out of the control array.
May run it again. As you can see the number of records involved is quite large well over four years of data, but I think it is only of curiousity value.
Just for fun really, although I have seen systems sold for money that performed worse than some letters.

Hello Bhagwan,

To someone who has a Science degree, I find your claims and those of others here in a similar vein rather odd, especially when comparing Horse racing probability to Casinos or Science. You are all correct as long as you are working with known data. If unknown data is involved, the larger the % of unknown data, the greater the result variable will be the more times it is tested.
Casino game variable data is a known quantity, so the odds can be easily calculated. In other words the casinos certainty of winning increases the more one plays. The less bets the player has the greater his/here chance of winning. Mathematically speaking, one play only is the best chance a player will ever have because the odds are against them. From there on the players odds of winning diminish. The reason Casinos are rich is because players keep playing at odds that are against them. The more they play, the more they will lose regardless of player strategy or staking methods. Players believe otherwise and are encouraged to do so by the Casinos. Something similar is at work here it seems.

Horse racing cannot really be compared to casino games nor scientific probability experiments with known data. Isn't unknown data in horse racing greater than 50% ?

Anyway, just my $0.2 cents worth. I'll let you boys get back to solving the mysteries of winning probability. I'll stick to my Tea leaves as my main selection process in picking winners at the races. It seems to work just as well as anything else, and I get to drink the tea !

All the best,
Zoe

Hullo Zoe
I guess when you live with someone for so long, your philosophies tend to become aligned with that other person.
You sound so much like your husband, it's scary.

RE ZOE - TEA LEAVES AND SCIENCE
 

Gees Zoe ./Sounds like my latest SUPER DOOPER .

MURRAY BRIDGE XMAS CUP

SYSTEM 1
1 - 2 - 5 - 7 - 8 ( bet as many as you can as to make a profit Whichever one wins)

System 2 - numerology (a bit like the tea leaves )

1 +2 + 5 + 7 + 8 =23 = 2 + 3 = 5 ( for 1 horse a race bettors)

Cheers.
darky.

I think Chrome's parameters for a winning system are a bit too rigid but he makes a couple of excellent points about keeping it simple and retro fitting.

It looks like a few people have very different veiws on retro fitting,to me it is looking at past results and adding rule after rule untill the POT is high enough to make you happy.

Trouble is that unless the added rules are very logical and have each been tested over hundreds of races all you are really doing is finding anomalies of the time that probably will not stand up when it comes to future racing.

An example would be to include a rule like must be in the top 5 weights to an angle you want to pursue,a short test could show this helps the POT a little but the reality of the situation could be that whilst the rule got rid of quite a few losers,during the short test period you performed those in the top 5 weights were running hot and those outside the top5 were going through a dry spell,when it comes to betting the system the situation corrects itself and your system goes bust.

So in the above example your intitial angle that showed a lot of promise was destroyed by your own over eagerness and greed when you applied a rule that was retro fitted.

Keeping it simple and putting say 80% of your systems fate in the hands of your inital angle is about the only way to make mechanical systems work.

Coming up with that inital angle is the hard part,get that right and yes you can make a profit from a mechanical system,dont let those black hats who are oblivious to their own mechanicaly influenced handicapping tell you otherwise.

Yes Crash that last bit was directed at you,your own words about how you are very strict about betting only on certain race types proves how oblivious you are to your own mechanicalism.

Zoe,
I don't see how you can think a larger database doesn't help in formulating systems. Taken to extremes if you have a database of one race you might find that barrier 5 at track x wins 100% of races, an obviously false conclusion. With a database of 100,000 races you would probably end up with a reasonable sort of curve biased towards the better barriers. Something you may want to use as part of a system.

Dale and Bagwhan,
I tend to agree with Dale's view of the word retrofitting and that was what I alluded to with the "letters in a horse's name" system. I'm sure you could retrofit a reasonable number of races backfitting an assortment of letters in an assortment of different positions until you get some impressive results. But having said that I suppose we all retrofit in a way to try to invent systems, even handicapping is retrofitting of a sort, so Bagwahn's view holds water too.

Chrome and Marcus,
Thanks for those posts. Interesting and informative.

KV

Sorry, double post.

Hi Kenny Victor,

Yes a large database helps in formulating systems. I never would disagree with that. But winning systems not necessarily. You can make curves about known facts like your above example and they are useful. It's the unknown ones that become the problem. We get into probability here and chance. The greater the sample of unknown 'events' rather than facts the greater the error in interpreting them correctly to be of future use.

Lets look at a probability example:

In any case of probabilities of an event, the individual probabilities of the situation must add up to one. However, in horse racing the odds often add up to more than one. How come?

Let me first clarify the difference between probability and odds, just to be sure we're using the same terminology. The probability of an event is:

(Chances for)
P(x) = ---------------
(Total chances)

So, for example, the probability of drawing an ace in a single deck of 52 cards is 4/52 = 1/13 (or about 0.077 = 7.7%).

Odds, on the other hand, are given as:

(Chances for) : (Chances against)

Of course, (Total chances) = (Chances for) + (Chances against), so we can determine (Chances against) as (Total chances) - (Chances for).

When the odds are converted to probabilities, they usually add up to more than 1 to give the house or bookies their "edge" - that's how the Casinos and bookies make their money.

Let's take a simple example. Suppose we have a series of 12 races with 4 horses, given the following betting odds (for simplicity, we'll only consider the odds of winning each race):

Horse Odds Probability (from odds)
----- ---- -----------------------
Horse A 1:1 1/(1+1) = 1/2 = 6/12
Horse B 2:1 1/(1+2) = 1/3 = 4/12
Horse C 3:1 1/(1+3) = 1/4 = 3/12
Horse D 5:1 1/(1+5) = 1/6 = 2/12
-----
Total Probability = 15/12 > 1

Now suppose I were to bet $1 on each horse for each race. In order for me to break even on each horse, horse A would have to win 6 of the 12 races - then I'd win +$6 on the races A won and lose -$6 on the races A lost. Similarly, horse B would have to win 4 of the 12 races for me to break even -- I'd win 2 * $4 = +$8 (because of the 2:1 odds) on the wins but lose -$8 on the losses. Horse C would have to win 3 of the 12 races (3*$3 = +$9 on the wins, -$9 on the losses), and horse D would have to win 2 of the 12 races (2*$5 = +$10 on the wins, -$10 on the losses). Of course, this means that all together, they have to have 15 wins in 12 races, so somewhere they're going to fall 3 short of my "break even" requirement.

If, for example, horse A only wins 5 races and horse C only wins 2 races, then I've lost -$2 on horse A (+$5, -$7) and -$6 on horse C (2*$2 = +$4, $10).The bookie has just collected $8 from my pocket.

As long as no horse wins more often than its "probability" (based on odds), the bookie wins. Of course, it is possible that horses D and B will win 4 races each, horse B will win 3 races, and horse A will only win 1 race. In this case, I will lose -$10 (+$1, -$11) on horse A, break even on horses B and C, and win +$12 (4*$5 = +$20, -$8) on horse D for a net winning of $2 - But you can "bet" that that won't happen too often. ;-)

Systems have a notorious lack of selecting their odds that are in their favor, and very few punters really understand them anyway. So big problem number 1. Next, with relying on data that includes what, 30 to 40% max. known facts [like your example] and up to 60% or even more, unknown facts collected from thousands of races, you are really up the creek because the more the unknown facts collected the greater the chances of the conclusions being incorrect for future prediction.

Hope this helps, but I really don't want to get into this crazy system business.
Zoe

Massive generalization in that statement.

The second part is a throw away line to justify your personal view.

The variables you have outlined apply just as much to handicapping as they do to mechanical systems.

Did it occur to you that some purely mechanical systems (the good one's) actually contain within them, one of the most powerful handicap techniques available?

Chrome Prince,

Ah, it was a reply to your 'statement' of what constitutes a winning system by 'Crash' [he called one of your points 'a load of crock'] that had him banned from the forum, that was the only reason I visited this thread really in the first place, to have a look at what the fuss was about.

Crash also said Darkydog was 'gullible' in answer to his post here about having [tongue in cheek] bought over 300 systems [now there is a way to make money from systems!]. Crash then went on to try and sell Darky the Sydney Harbor Bridge for whatever money he had left. He wants to buy it and expects delivery on Xmas day:-)
After reading this thread and the posts concerned, I really can't understand the fuss. There was obviously no malice in either comment from Crash. Blatantly obvious regarding the post to Darky, but his 'load of crock' comment was perceived by you as 'harsh' according to your reply post. The one member who complained to management perhaps? I'm not saying you did though of course.

I would have used different language than a 'load of crock'. Crash is just a bit old fashioned. 'Massive generalization' would have been my choice of words.
Interestingly, I was looking at another thread of yours: 'Chrome tipped arrows'.
One of your rules that Crash didn't criticize, mentioned 'must not rely on occasional long shots'. I notice your 'Chrome tipped Arrows' does exactly that. Decide a few rules and chance is doing the rest. Nothing scientific there. If it's making a profit at the moment, it's chance at work not probability.

Beyond explaining some probability in my post with some simple maths., yes I indeed summarized my final point with a bit of reason. 40% facts collected into a database and 60% 'events', collected over thousands of races is going to provide long term, predictable future profitable outcome? You really have to be joking right? Are you involved in selling systems or something?.

'Generalized' is your claim about my final point in my post. OK if you like, I'm not trying to prove anything here. If I was I would have decided not to summarize, but used another language completely, advanced maths. which was not needed for the simple explanation about probability.This is a punting forum, not a science forum right?

If you would like to change the language of your disagreement with my point of view here Chrome Prince, I'm willing to oblige if you also can speak the language. Crash would not be able to, but with a Bachelor of Science degree, I certainly would have no trouble.

I tried to keep my post's point simple. Do I get banned now too:-)?

No offense meant Chrome Prince and all the best,
Zoe.