Thinking Small
POSTED Sep 27, 2012
By
Derek Simon
I’ve had a
bad couple of weeks on the betting front.
My best
handicapping angles and methods have taken an extended vacation from winning
and, for the first time since I started betting seriously, I lost my head on
Monday and turned a small losing day into a major red-ink debacle.
But I
realized something as my selections were spitting out the bit at the 1/8-pole (or, perhaps, I re-realized something): I don’t handle losing very well…
and that’s probably never going to change.
For better
or for worse, we are who we are. Unlike the man or woman “trapped inside” a
body of the opposite gender, no amount of surgery can help folks like me reach
the sane bettor within — that little voice pleading with us not to bet the
eighth race at Thistledown simply because our fifth-race “goodthing” at
Arlington Park imploded like Vince Young’s pro football career.
We can kick ourselves for being idiots in this regard — a surgeon may be able to help with a shoe
trapped... well, someplace it’s not supposed to be trapped — but, ultimately, overcoming
psychological issues, habits and addictions is no easy feat (just witness Dr. Drew’s “success” rate).
It is
especially difficult when one is trying to change a single aspect of their
behavior, but not the behavior as a whole. For example, while most of us would probably
agree that one can avoid alcoholism by not drinking, how many of us believe
that an alcoholic can successfully manage his/her addiction simply by drinking
less?
In other
words, there is a difference between quitting and controlling. Yet, the latter
is what sound money management at the racetrack is all about: passing bad
races, seeking value, taking the good with the bad — still gambling, just smart gambling.
So, with
this in mind, I have decided to steal a page from Howard
Sartin’s book.
Who is Howard Sartin, you ask? Well, in addition to being a very controversial figure, Howard
“Doc” Sartin was the founder of the Sartin
Methodology, a form of pace analysis still used by many handicappers today.
According to Sartin, in 1975 he was asked to counsel a group of truck drivers who were
also degenerate gamblers. Rather than preach abstinence or attempt to delve
into the roots of their destructive behavior, however, Sartin took a different
tact, a tact that became the rallying cry of his methodology.
Sartin
realized that this group of truck drivers had a problem with gambling not
because of the gambling per se, but rather because they lost money as a result
of it. Hence, his novel solution: “The cure for losing is winning.”
Of course,
this is tantamount to Sigmund
Freud telling women that the cure for one of his better known theories is
to consult that surgeon I was talking about earlier. On the surface, such a
notion seems silly, almost childish. Of course, the cure for winning is losing! The cure for baldness is hair, but that doesn’t help guys with receding hair
lines, does it?
Still, there is something to what Sartin says, something even a little
profound. The fact is my batty betting is always triggered by the same thing — losing.
When I’m winning, I wager like a pro. I treasure every dollar earned and every
dollar bet; I structure my bets based on the value they offer; I pass races
that appear to be dubious (for whatever reason).
When I’m in
the throes of a losing streak, I do the opposite. I throw money around like I’m
Floyd
Mayweather at a strip club; I let the tote board alone dictate value; I
froth at the mouth. (That last bit isn’t true, but it conveys my demeanor rather
well, I think).
Hence, it
seems to me that I have two options if I want to wager successfully: 1) Quit betting irrationally during extended
losing streaks; 2) Avoid extended losing streaks.
As you might
expect, I’ve tried the former time and time again with varying degrees of
failure, but the latter? Not so much. So, just for grins, I decided to look
into it.
Of course, the first thing that came to mind as I pondered how to avoid extended
losing streaks was finding ways to increase my success rate (a higher percentage
of wins equals a lower percentage of losers and, as a result, fewer long losing
streaks).
Toward this
end, I looked at the average winning odds of my best methods and found that,
with few exceptions, most were in the 5-1 area. My “Top LSR” method, for
example, has averaged a $12.70 mutuel this month and a 51.4 percent ROI, which
sounds great until one considers that method selections have won just 23.8 percent
of the time and are 0-for-9 since Sept. 16.
This got me
to thinking: What if I restricted my play — at least the bulk of my play — to horses
with lower odds. Clearly, I’d still be looking for overlays (this must always be the case if one hopes to win long term), but by focusing on
shorter prices, I’d surely cash more tickets, right?
To test this theory, I used my Win Factor Report (computerized fair odds line)
and looked for the following:
A) Fair Odds of less than 3-1.
B) An
in-the-money (third or better) finish last time (within seven weeks of today’s
race).
C) A 25
percent Win Rate or higher.
D) A 0.25
Class Rating or greater.
E) Last-race
Brisnet speed figure equal to or better than today’s par.
I then added
the crucial ingredient to this small-overlay concoction: morning line odds or
post-time odds greater than the horse’s
fair odds, but less than 5-1.
 |
(Click on image to enlarge) |
Somewhat
surprisingly, the morning-line odds criterion produced better numbers (40 percent
winners, 24.7 percent ROI in August and September) than the post-time odds
criterion did (38.0 percent winners, 14.1 percent ROI), but both
techniques provided an abundance of profits, as well as consistency.
So, the next
time you find yourself in the midst of a wagering slump, give this lower-odds approach a try.
It won’t make you rich in a day, but it might keep you from going mad... as you gradually pile up the profits.
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