Betting Systems
In the never-ending quest to beat the bookies, betting systems are a wonderful thing. Indeed, for some people they are essential - they neither have the time, nor the inclination, to spend hours studying form and so on in order to gain the necessary expertise to make their own selections.
And there’s nothing wrong with that. We live in a very busy world and not everybody can gamble on the horses as a profession.
But betting systems aren’t perfect. Every system has its good and bad times – even the most successful ones. It’s all part of the statistical variations that are inevitable when dealing with strike rates, average odds, return on investment and so on.
And sometimes the system’s strength can also be its weakness.
You may have a brilliant betting system that says something like ‘ back every horse ridden by a jockey wearing green provided that it’s a Monday and the sun is shining’.
But what happens if the sun isn’t shining? Or it’s a Tuesday?
Sure, the system says ‘no bet’. But you have a sneaking suspicion that it’s going to win even though it’s a Tuesday.
Or it’s a Monday, the jockey is wearing green, the sun is shining and the system says ‘always bet’ but the going has changed and the horse just doesn’t look right?
Well that’s where your experience comes in. And experience means just that. It takes time to develop that ‘gut feeling’ when you just know that the system is wrong this time.
And how do you know if you’ve finally got enough experience to buck your system?
Well. You’ll never be 100% sure, but if you keep kicking yourself because for the umpteenth time this month you’ve said to yourself something like: “I knew that horse wasn’t right. Why didn’t I listen to myself?” then you’re probably on the right track.
If that’s happening to you then I suggest you keep a record of all those selections that you really weren’t sure about and see who was right – you, or your system. If after a few weeks your results show that the system outperforms your intuition then you’ll know you’re not quite there yet. But if you get to the point where your gut feeling outperforms your doubtful system selections then you’ll know you’ve cracked it.
And that’s when you’re on the road to self reliance, can have the best of both worlds and could even start thinking of putting the word ‘professional’ in front of ‘gambler’!
