Hi all

It would be interesting to hear from some of the forumites that have been around for a while looking for answers.

Their journey for recreational punter to more substantial punter may be helpful to newbies and those looking for answers.

Sometimes a few short pointers can save literally 100s of hours of research.

What were the factors your dropped and those you kept. If that is too involved then the main criteria you kept and have made a fist of it.

Cheers
ubetido

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Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body,but rather to skid in sideways, BEER in one hand- PIZZA in the other, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming WOO HOO!

This forum isn't big enough to handle the size of my post, as it's quite some journey

But here goes, parts will be boring, and parts will be hilarious.

As a kid I remember watching the Penthouse Club where they crossed to the trots at the showgrounds in black and white.
I never knew about betting, or horses, but I loved looking at how the horses ran and how majestic a horse circling the field looked.

Wasn't til I was in my first job after I left school that we would have a beer on a Friday night at work and the guys would talk horses racing on the Saturday.
So Off to te TAB I went knowing nothing but backing Hyperno, the lady had to fill out the card for me!

Watched the race on Nine's Wide World Of Sports and I was hooked!

This started some kind of newbie lucky streak.
I knew nothing of form, didn't know even what the numbers next to a horse meant.
Next I backed Sir Dapper in Sydney and then Emancipation and it seemed like I couldn't lose. Every week one of them would win.
Then I got posted to another branch of the business and the lady I worked with, her son worked for a country trainer who had various city class horses.
(name escapes me). She also worked part time as a TAB operator.
She used to give me the heads up on horses "with a chance".

Week after week she'd give me three tips at decent odds, and all three would place. Some weeks just the placings, other weeks three winners.
Mostly one or two winners.
This went on for some months and then the worst thing imaginable happened.
She left!

And so the journey begins....

I was already hooked, and didn't know where to start.
I bought magazines, formguides, racing papers, you name it I bought it.
I remember trying to work out systems by placing the Sportsman on the floor of my bedroom, and placing past results from the Sun all around it.
There I was with my pencil, trying to write notes and make selections with my pencil going straight though to the 70's plush pile carpet and tearing the all important formguide.

Next came the excercise book I started which was a stable of favourite horses. It failed badly, I got some very good wins out of it, but too many losses.

I bought the very first edition of PPM, and in it was a computer calculation for rating horses. I then got a Commodore 64 I think it was, which had a tape recorder, so I could run the program.
The only good thing to come out of that mess, was the hours I spent playing frogger

I once went into the TAB and with $10.00 looked at the next race to jump without looking at the odds, and boxed the top three jockeys in a box trifecta.
Trifecta landed at enormous odds and walked out with the best part of $5,000 in a cheque.

Following that I was on holidays and it was a Tuesday afternoon either at Cessnock or Hawkesbury. Back then the tote closed 5 minutes before the jump and the prices were read out really early.
There was really no money in the pool looking back so it was a pointless excercise. But this day, I took another box trifecta on the three favourites (as read out prior).
After the race was over, I was stoked as I'd bagged the Tri.
Then they announced the dividends.
The winner was 25/1, second was around 17/1 and third was about 8/1.
A $6,000 trifecta was snagged because I didn't realise there was no money in the pool when they read out the early prices.

There endeth any hint of newbie luck, it went downhill rapidly and seemed to gather pace, the more I knew, the more I lost it seemed.

I followed horses, followed jockeys, followed trainers, followed tips, followed mates, followed other punters.
It added up to complete disaster which took years.

Back then I used to go to the races regularly and often did the double header, Moonee Valley races on the day and the trots at night, after they switched to Saturday from Friday.

This went on until I discovered other things in life, namely partying, which I dedicated myself to for the best part of 10 years, with only the occasional bet unless I was on holidays.

Years later I returned to the punt and it wasn't til I started to record everything that the concept of value finally set off a light bulb moment.
In those early days I often wished I had more data, if only I had a bigger sample size.
Well the rest is kind of history, my punting turned a corner.
I didn't win, but I lost a lot less.
It's funny, I think I actually threw out a lot of good methods along the way.
For example I remember looking at a Bart Cummings horse behind the barriers one day, and had a lazy $20 on it because it looked really good.
The horse was called Worth, and it won at double figure odds that day.
But my expectations were to say the least ridiculous, I expected to win each day, and threw out anything after a bad day.

Fast forward to today and basically my punting is much more boring.
I find little to get excited about, it's rare to snag a moment of excitement.
Usually it's mundane, but long term little fish are sweet.

Sometimes, I wish I was 18 again and knew nothing, I'd probably fluke a straight 6 or better, because sometimes the more you know, the more others also know and the value is sucked right out of your approach.

These days I run a couple of backing systems which are mechanical, but my main source comes from laying on Betfair.

I'd love to hear other people's journeys.

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Relatively new to the forum, so Hi to all.

My punting journey began mid 70’s when I was 9 years old & got a job at the Fannie Bay Racecourse on Saturday mornings - cleaning, stocking fridges, general dogs body. After I knocked off around midday I would hang around & began to get an idea of what dear old dad had been up to every Saturday – he was a penciller for one of the local bookies as well as a mad punter like most other there.

I instantly fell in love with the place, the horses, the bookies ring, the whole atmosphere of the place on a Saturday arvo, & one day got hold of a racebook & started trying to work out the winner of the next. After having a look at them in the stalls getting saddled up, my extensive experience & wisdom led me to select the only grey & it duly went out & won. Only problem of course was I had nothing on it. I struggled with this problem for a couple of weeks & eventually worked up the courage to enter the bookies ring, make sure the old man wasn’t around & tug on the shirt of unsuspecting punter & asked ‘excuse me mate, could you put a dollar on so&so for me?’ After getting told to ‘p.off’ & tried again a bit later & the kind soul layed the bet & even collected for me when I took the winning ticket back to him 10 minutes later.

My $1.00 had become $3.50 & I was hooked. It wasn’t until my mid 20’s that I really started punting seriously & have been doing so ever since. System development is still a never ending journey for me & while most efforts go nowhere, the very very occasional gem can be found. Much the same as Chrome Prince expresses, my main day to day punting is usually a dreary affair & nothing like I envisioned it would be when I was young fella. That said, I still great a great amount of enjoyment out of the carnivals each year & finding that winner (or loser) that’s most others didn’t will always make me smile.

I assume like many here, Betfair has completely changed my punting, adding a whole new dimension which has taken plenty of work to get handle on it all.

Like any pursuit, you will not succeed unless you put in the hard yards & this is one game that can break your heart very quickly & very often if you allow it, so to any newbies I would say – head down, bum up, don’t whinge or cry foul, do a lot of reading & study as there's plenty to be learnt from the past, it’s a tough game & you will get shafted on a regular basis, so be prepared to lose a lot before you can get your head around it all & consistently make a $, & if that doesn’t sound like fun theres plenty of 9-5 jobs out there.

I suppose i could share my interest in racing and where it started.

We have to go back to about 1989, up until then i only had a passing interest in the punt like every one else when the Melbourne Cup came around.

I had a girlfriend who's family were right in to the punt so every Saturday i would be down the TAB with her father and brothers watching the races.

This went on for months while i learned the in and outs of racing and form.

It was about this time that i came across PPM i used to buy that mag for about 10 years, despite what a lot say about PPM you can learn a lot from reading it and working out the systems that were worth looking in to from the junk.

One system that comes to mind and is the basis of all my ratings ideas was called "Form Book Power" they used what they called impact values where they looked at all the runners with certain form lines to work out the percentage of those horses that won.

Example.
Days
1 - 5 = 1.30
6 - 10 = 1.67
11 - 14 = 1.32
15 - 21 = 1.22
22 - 30 = 1.07
31 up = 0.65

They had these values for different form lines and all you need to do was multiply them together to find the best rated horse.

this was back in 1995 when ratings were not really used and i could come up with some huge winners.

I also used a form of Don Scott's weight and class ratings along with another set of ratings from PPM that focused on form, fitness and weight.

It was not unusual to get 20-1 winners every day of the week.

It is funny how we remember the wins but not the losses.

I backed Oompala in a G1 race when it won at 66-1
One Saturday I backed Chortle in Brisbane at over $60, i can remember i was on holidays and in some crowded pub and was jumping up and down screaming at the TV when it came down the middle of the track, people were asking how the ******** i picked that.

There were many other winners but these were the two i remember.

Back then i tried a lot of crazy things like the Martingale system backing favs and double up on the losers until a winner came, it worked for awhile and i made good money until the run of losers came, luckily i seen where it was going and quit before i lost it all back.

I never thought there was any funny business that went on in racing but i remember a horse way back then called Hayley's Belle trained by R H Thompsen.

I seen this thing one Saturday at Rosehill as a maiden that gave a fantastic run in some race that had some good horses of the day.

I decided to follow it at it's next few starts, well i followed this thing for ages and it never did a thing, got a few placed but that's it.

Can't remember the date but it was in a race on new years day and i was down the local TAB chatting to this nice teller operator about it as she had seen me back it a few times before, i told her if it don't win soon i will be sacking it.

Well as things happen i went out that night and didn't wake up until about 2pm and didn't get a bet on it, so checking the paper the next day i see it won and paid like $120 for the win, man did i feel sick.

Couple days later down at the local TAB and the nice teller chick tells me i left my book in there the other day and hands it to me, i am confused to say the least, i open up the pages to see all this cash between each page, something like 3k, she tells me that i won't see her for a month as her and the boyfriend are off the Queensland for holidays and thanks for the tip.

I never did see this horse run again and asked Mr Thompson once when i seen him at that racing expo they had in Sydney about it, he made an excusde he had to leave.

I guess these are just the things that happen in racing.

About 10 years ago i found this forum and have shared many ideas with members while at the same time learning what others do always trying to make it in the big time.

8 years ago i came across a very smart guy named Stuart he explained to me about his ideas and the maths behind them.

He was not a form kind of guy and more a numbers person and from that time i have looked at punting from the maths side, i still look at form and have done recent work with ratings but always with the main goal in mind, to beat the game with numbers.

There are a few people on this forum over time that have influenced my ideas, Mark and Chrome Prince to just name 2.

As much as my background is in form and ratings i feel that with so much information around today that to succeed on the punt you need to look at other areas.

Already some really interesting stuff here.
Shaun are you aware of Roger Bigg's stuff, I believe that's where the impact ratings came from.
I think he also posts as whitehorse on that other forum.

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I know of him and yes he does post over there but i was not aware those ratings were his.

Some guidance here

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Pixie

"It's worth remembering that profit isn't profit until it's spent off the racecourse." -- Crash

That is exactly how it was described in PPM and they used this technique on aussie races, this was done over 15 years ago would be interesting to see the changes with today's runners.

I am going to see if i can get some more recent figures using Chromes database, it only contains metro races but should give us and idea of how things stand.

I will make a new thread with results later.

One thing you have to be very careful of with impact values in days since last start, is the age of the horse, the last distance of the race, and training has changed since the old days.

We don't know whether the horse had a barrier trial, had a hit out on a private track (Freedman Hayes et al).
But as a guide it's useful.

I believe Biggs did a very intesive study of a number of factors.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 399,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 31/03/2024
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg