One of the characters, Boss Paul, made continual references throughout the film regarding the mental state of mind of each prisoner.

Boss Paul: “You got your mind right, Luke?”

Luke: “Yah. I got it right. I got it right, Boss.”

Currently my mind aint right! As I mentioned previously I am in the final stages of a house sale which if successful, decouples me from my ex partner of 18 years.

Given the normal stresses of a house sale (cannot understand how Solicitors and Estate Agents as so called “professionals” can command the fees they do and still make unbelievable mistakes) I would need to be super human to have the right frame of mind to punt in this environment and expect to be profitable.

However what if I were a professional gambler? Regardless of the situation or context of my personal problems, what if I have no choice regardless of my state of mind and needed to bet to earn profit to pay the bills?

I now have a healthy respect for those who are able to command the title “professional gambler”. Currently I can take it or leave it and get on with the house sale in the knowledge that all I need to do is keep the plates spinning at work.

My thoughts go out to the family of legendary bookmaker Freddie Williams who died of a heart attack yesterday aged 65.

In a world where bookies are more risk managers, Freddie was one of a dying breed who would stand by his opinion and was prepared to put his hard earned on the line in taking bets from anyone who thought otherwise.

I never had a chance to meet the man, but It would have been an honour to have retained a losing betting slip in his memory.

Article About Freddie 1.

Article About Freddie 2.

Article About Freddie 3.

Putting has suffered as a consequence (having trouble concentrating) so decided to take my mind off things and attend Bath racecourse.

It’s not an understatement to say that Bath is the pits, the facilities are poor and probably the worst course I have attended but with coach party’s and local punters by the boatload, there is no incentive for Bath to up its game. It is clear what the main motivation is for some race goers and some paid the price for over indulgence.

Currently my Baseball, Notebook and Dosage betting strategies are not yielding profits. This was to be expected as they are basically new and I am taking a long term view with these strategies while I iron out some procedural issues so, decided to revive my approach in betting in low grade handicaps.

The strategy was shelved after the demise of Superform, however in the meantime I had time to reflect on the nature of chaos and its effect in horse races. As I wrote in my research article, there is nothing to be loved in the formbook in low grade handicaps but

In lesser of evils races, there are many horses that are one dimensional in their running style and predictably so. One paced plodders and speed balls that fade in the final furlog (though early pace in low grade races can prove to be a decisive advantage especially on the all weather) can usually be eliminated from consideration if the pace shape is against them. If the horse is basically “slow” in pace terms or gets taken on for the lead when it likes to dominate, no amount of money or the will of the crowd will ensure a positive result.

The race pace shape is unique to each race event and will never occur again. Will the winner be the early pace horse? Will the winner come from off the race? Will the draw bias aid or hinder? In my opinion race pace factor is undervalued by the public therefore an understanding of how the race will be run (including post position analysis) provides that all important edge when tackling lesser of evils races.

In addition, I have replaced Superform with information from Turftrax. At £5 per month I find that their service provides all the information I require to handicap a race and I wanted to trial some of their data in real time.

The Bath card last Saturday was full of lesser of evils races and my experiment was to determine if pace analysis allied to simple handicapping and stats could identify a list of contenders.

Obviously I paid my normal education fees (small; so I must be learning) to the gambling gods mainly due to the fact that I have been out of the saddle for a while and did not spend much time creating a tissue to determine value bets. At least I got the placepot up to offset a proportion of my loses also contender selection using pace analysis looks promising.

If I can retain my concentration, or exchange of contracts occurs soon on the house sale, the next direction is to explore further pace handicapping once I recover from my hangover!

CORAL on Monday accusedJim Bolger of treating punters with “total contempt” following his decision to run New Approach in the Vodafone Derby, an about-turn that fellow trainer Sir Michael Stoute described as “good for the race”.

Unleashing a stinging attack, Coral claimed Bolger’s actions would “do nothing to maintain punters’ faith in betting on racing”, while Totesport spoke in similar vein and alleged that the trainer had given ante-post backers “the runaround”.

Coral spokesman David Stevens said: “Although connections of any horse are perfectly entitled to decide where they run, the saga surrounding New Approach and the Derby suggests punters have been treated with total contempt.

“First, we were told that the long-time Derby favourite would not be aimed at Epsom, then informed that New Approach had only been left in the Classic by mistake. Now we’re told he’ll run on Saturday, much to the frustration of many ante-post punters.

“Although there will be some backers who are delighted to get a run for their moneynow, any punter who placed a bet on this year’s Derby in the last six weeks did so on the understanding New Approach would not be running.

“Episodes like this, along with the ‘will they run, won’t they run’ comments about Lush Lashes, Casual Conquestand Chinese White in recent weeks, do nothing to maintain punters’ faith in betting on racing.”

If you put faith in what ”connections” said to the hacks then punting would just be a matter of reading the racing press reports.

Let’s face it, everyone knows that trainers and jockeys make the worst tipsters and especially applies to the lower grades of racing.

At higher levels of racing with breeding/stud fees at stake, reputations on the line why would trainers make their intentions public domain or not change not their plan/minds at the last minute?

I have a simple rule. Ignore trainer comments in handicapping!

Avoid Ante Post and back what you fancy just before the race. Handicapping is already hard enough without the added difficulty of trying to second guess trainers!

On Saturday, May 31st at 4:55pm CDT in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room. Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no customer servers were damaged or lost. All servers are down.

We have determined that no servers in the data centre have been damaged. Nonetheless, they are down because power is out. Teams across the board are working to take appropriate action.

In our latest assessment, we have determined that networking gear has not been damaged, but we are without power so assessments continue. All disaster recovery systems are in motion, and we have teams already working in the data center.

The ISP maintains 6000 servers and hosts as many (if not more) web sites. Even with a disaster recovery plan (all good businesses have one) it still took Linksky 4 days to get back to normal.

Nil effect on slipperytoad (bar a few days downtime) the same cannot be said about some commercial sites hosted by the ISP and the ramifications of 4 days of lost revenue for some businesses will be far reaching.

The incident could be construed as an act of god, bad luck or poor risk analysis and got me thinking about risk management. What lessons can be learned from this event as applied to betting?

A good selection method which achieves better that random chance is critical for all punters. Here risk mitigation is easy; you trial your method “on paper” until you get a positive result. You gain confidence in the method with no financial consequences and no harm done.

Buoyed with a positive result and confidence you now start punting with real money from the betting bank.

We all know that our betting bank is our life line, blow it and you are out of the game until you can build up another one (I’m on my 4th or 5th bank). If you are foolish enough to bet with money you cannot afford to lose then you are done for.

Therefore, for punters the objective of any risk management strategy is to reduce the risk of decimating the betting bank to zilch.

Assuming a good selection system, the main threats to the betting bank are

1. You
2. Poor Money Management

(1) is related to the classic and well documented human behaviours of “being on the tilt”, “chasing loses”, “anger”, “frustration” etc and I have enough personal experience of these psychological traits to know that in my current state of mind I have these tendencies well under control.

Betting baseball helps a lot. The games are in the early hours of the morning UK time and hence I cannot get emotionally tied to the result by watching the game. The process thus far is game analysis, “fire and forget” bets, go to sleep, wake up, check the betting account for profit or loss, reload and fire again.

With horse racing, if a notebook horse is not running in a race or a grade 1 meeting is not carded for the day I have no involvement is racing whatsoever. Again I am not tied to results or motivated to “get involved” because it’s on or I’m watching.

For (2) it all about bet sizing/staking. A robotic same bet regardless of odds (level % stakes of bank) is the preferred method at moment but I do recognise that once I experience a positive expectation then this approach needs to be optimised.

The incident above also got me thinking again about chaos and chaotic events as applied to horse racing.

Because things are ticking along nicely, I may revisit the methods outlined in my lesser of evils investigation to determine if I should add a small element of risk to the betting portfolio by putting in low grade races.

• Moneyline
• Totals
• Run Line

“Try chewing a few prawns before you announce to the world that you intend to devour an entire lobster” 

 Sir Ranulph Fiennes

From this menu I have chosen to focus on totals.

With totals (over/under), you are betting on the total number of runs scored in the game by both teams with extra innings included.

For example

Cleveland Indians v Texas Rangers

Total: 8.5
Over: 1.8
Under: 2.05

A punter could choose one of two over/under wagers on this match-up.

Betting on the Over 8.5 @ 1.8; if the total runs of both teams combined are more than 8.5, then the player wins at the odds indicated. Betting on the Under 8.5 @ 2.05; if the total runs of both teams combined are less than 8.5, then the player wins at the odds specified.

Seems simple enough; especially if you are in possession of a crystal ball which allows you to predict the final score (and the winning numbers of the national lottery).

Like all forms of handicapping the gambling gods require blood, sweat and tears in return for their spoils therefore, when handicapping baseball totals, your main task is to determine those factors that are critical in creating and limiting runs.

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and everything is 42

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

To determine which of the two choices offer value, in baseball the magic number is 9. The following table details the percentage of runs scored and bet total from 1998 to 2006 (courtesy of King Tao)

As you can see from the numbers, more games land on 7, 9 and 11 runs than any other number.

The reason is well documented; a tie game in baseball requires at least one more run to score before its ends. A game tied at 4-4 in the late innings more often than not will end with nine runs scored in the game; just like 3-3 games will usually end within a 4-3 victory from one team. Notice also baseball totals are more likely to be odd than even.

Using the above table, a punter can calculate the true over/under odds using the value set by the bookies. You can guess which numbers the odds compliers try to keep the right side of when setting the over/under odds.

Next week I shall start experimental selections so I can take them on at their own game

Baseball 101
The game of baseball is played between two teams, each consisting of nine players.

The nine players are a pitcher, a catcher, first baseman, second baseman, shortstop, third baseman, left fielder, center fielder and right fielder.

A game of baseball consists of nine innings. One inning is divided into two halves; in the top half of the inning, one team plays in the field and the second team comes to bat, and in the bottom half, the teams reverse roles.

The team that is batting during a particular half-inning is trying to score runs.

The team with the higher number of runs at the end of the nine innings is the winner of the game.

During an inning, a player on the team in the field, called a pitcher, throws a baseball toward a player of the team at-bat, called the batter. The batter will try to hit the ball using a wooden stick (called a bat) in a location out of the reach of the players in the field. By hitting the ball, the batter has the opportunity to run around four bases that lie in the field.

If a player advances around all of the bases, he has scored a run. If a batter hits a ball that can be caught, or that can be thrown to first base before he runs to that base, then he is said to be out, and cannot score a run. A batter is also out if he fails to hit the baseball three times or if three good pitches (called strikes) have been thrown. The objective for the batting team during an inning is to score as many runs as possible before obtaining three outs

There are some fundamental truths to the game which make it attractive for sports betting

1. The primary objective for baseball teams and players is to win games.
2. The number of games that a team wins in a year can be predicted by the number of runs it scores and gives up. 
3. The role of a hitter on a team is to produce runs, while the pitcher’s role is to avoid letting the opposition score. 
4. Certain player statistics depend as much as on the player’s team-mate’s performance as it does on the player itself

Fortunately for us punters humans are more predictable/deterministic than our equine friends.

The game of baseball generates a huge amounts of statistics. Where there are numbers there are people who love to collect and study the numbers (no I am not a closet train spotter).

SABR, the Society For American Baseball Research, has sprung from the efforts of a band of dedicated fan-statisticians who delve into the statistical nooks and crannies of the game. They call their work Sabremetrics.

The wealth of statistics their work provides, finding the winner of the game should be a simple matter of matching team/individual statistics right?

While one could make a case for any one of a zillion stats to be factored into handicapping base games, there are some more important than others.

To identify these is easier said than done and our plight does not end there.

Handicapping baseball is no different from any sport. To be successful you need to identify “value”.

We all did it, me included. Hey, Roger Clemens is taking the hill against Glendon Rusch the biggest gas can in the league? -200? Lay it! Bam, Rusch has his best outing of the year and I’m down -2.00 units right out of the game. It doesn’t take a mathematician to figure out that -2.00 means that we are now playing from behind and have to win 2 games just to break even.

The point of the story is picking winners is easy. Beating the odds is not. More times than not, the -200 favorite will win a game like that. The problem is every time the much favoured pitcher doesn’t, your put in a hole.

Fortunately for a hard working and dedicated wannabe sport investor like me there are various sources of information available to help me develop my own baseball handicapping process. At the end of May I shall go live with the process.

During the day my focus has been meeting final deadlines for a major project at work. During the evenings; serious research into Sports betting.

It took a while me to recognise that all successful investment strategies require a diverse portfolio.

The question is what’s the best sports to punt, um I mean investing in?

This dilemma is answered in an article on the The Punters Paradise web site. The results of their evaluation is as follows (in order of preference)

1. NFL
2. NBA
3. Soccer, domestic
4. MLB
5. NHL
6. Motor Racing
7. Golf
8. Snooker
9. Men’s Tennis
10. Women’s Tennis
11. Horses
12. Dogs

Notice where horse racing is ranked?

The next question is which sport to invest my time in?

The NFL season is over; the NBA season is coming to an end along with NHL. Over this side of the Atlantic the domestic football season is almost over though the European championships are fast approaching.

Unfortunately there is not enough time to put in place and test a profitable strategy for this event.

The next post will bring you up to speed with my statistical endeavours when analysing Baseball games.

In order to make money betting on sports, you must either have information that is not being used by the betting public, or you must have a superior ability to process the information that is public

Dosage is a mathematical analysis of the strengths in a thoroughbred pedigree based upon the location of certain outstanding sires in its family.

Originator of the contemporary Dosage System, Steve Roman has created a web site on the subject and associate book.

I first tried to utilise Dosage in my handicapping when trying to asses the relative abilities of un-raced juvenile 2yo horses. I had some moderate success with my initial experimentation and when assessing suitable betting strategies for life after Superform, I decided to include Dosage into my investment portfolio.

My intention is to handicap British Group 1 stakes races applying Dosage principles.

Stakes winners represent the highest level of Thoroughbred performance. Horses competing in stakes races are generally in better physical condition than those competing at lower levels. If physical problems do exist, the problems are likely better managed.

Horses competing in stakes races are more consistent. If they stay healthy they can be expected to put in a competitive effort on a continual basis. Horses competing in stakes races will usually be suited to the particular race conditions. With larger purses on the line, and with a limited number of races in a horse’s career, the connections of stakes horses tend to make management decisions that optimize opportunity.

This isn’t always the case at the lower end of the class structure. Cheaper horses are often raced into shape and their native talents easily can be obscured by chronic injury. Their form cycles are more erratic than those of their more gifted peers. Therefore, the intentions surrounding these runners are not always apparent.

With stakes horses, on the other hand, there is an excellent probability that they belong in their race. By the time they are mature they will have found their best distance profile and most competitive racing class. They are in to win, or at least get a part of the purse. The result of superior talent that is well managed and purposefully intended is that the outcome of races involving those animals is a better reflection of their innate qualities.

In the background I will conduct experiments to determine if Dosage is applicable to lower grades of  racing or National Hunt.

Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory and few calculations to defeat? How much more no calculation at all? It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.

Sun Tzu - on the art of war

It is now time to stop tinkering with the web site and get on with it.

What “it” is are a set of profitable betting strategies and each needs to be grown from seed, developed and nurtured toward profitable maturity

I considered switching allegiance to a sport other than horse racing, but that would require a protracted period of study. For the moment, I have suspended betting on the All Weather surface until I can 1. Find a winning method and 2. Find a replacement form book or alternative data for pre race analysis.

For the moment I will use the Racing Post as my source of data given that their information is freely available on its web site and the paper version is cheap to purchase if required.

Sticking to what I know (horse racing), the first strategy I have chosen is simple to implement and plays into my strengths as a handicapper.

The strategy is called “Virtual Stable” and its objective is to identify horses who in my opinion are winners in waiting.

Originally documented by American Handicapper Steve Davidowitz as the “Key Race Method” and applied to British Racing in the book Seconds Into Winners – An exploration of time and pace; my version of the technique is implemented as follows

The first stage of the process is to identify races that were faster than class at the following courses

• Grade 1: Ascot, Chester, Goodwood, Newbury, Newmarket, Sandown, York
• Grade 2: Ayr, Doncaster, Epsom, Haydock, Newcastle

The rational here is that form from these courses is competitive but more reliable so when a horse drops in relative grade (either course or race) it is more likely to disadvantage its rivals especially if the horse was disadvantaged in its previous run.

Races which are run faster than class do not automatically equate to every horse coming out of the race as winner in waiting. What they do, and very effectively, is to point out certain races which MIGHT contain potentially superior runners.

Flat festival meetings (i.e. Guineas, Ascot, and Glorious Goodwood) and competitive bookie sponsored races are a goldmine of future winners and I will pay particular attention to the results from these meetings and races.

The next step in the process is to identify horses that are potential winners and add them to the virtual stable. I will also note impressive winners who must be followed during the course of the season.

From this point I will pay close attention to each horse next run(s) as potential betting opportunities; this is the final stage of the process.

So, does membership in the slipperytoad stable mean an automatic bet next time out?

Well it depends on a host of different factors, the main one being the conditions of the race being similar to that previously noted plus other handicapping factors. The overriding veto is our friends the bookies and our old adversary the crowd.

If they have also identified my virtual horse as a lively contender consequently the odds of the notebook horse will offer no value. To militate against the lack of value, I will consider taking an early price the night before or prior to the race.