Chapter 17 - Dabbler’s Delirium

How to avoid systems that can't possibly work.

Most players, when they talk about their "systems," believe they are being as "scientific" as the man in the laboratory with a test tube and Bunsen burner.

Most times they simply have put together a collection of illogical rules, ranging from a mumbo jumbo of hunches, tea-leaf readings, dreams and astrological observations, to a sincere but misguided effort to arrange the major and minor variables into some kind of an orderly pattern. The pattern, then, is used as a basis for making predictions that, at times, astonish even the "inventor."

As a matter of fact, most average players have no ideas of the variables involved in trying to set up a system. They have given little, or no, serious study to racing except from tidbits, gossip and miscellaneous information they pick up on the sports pages. They have neither the time nor the inclination to pore over hundreds of results charts as well as past performances.

A sure bet is that a man who starts with a system of his own devising will, within a few days, start revising it by adding more rules, eliminating some of the original provisions and improvising as he watches the results from day to day. It becomes necessary then to distinguish between two kinds of systems.

The one kind consists of those systems designed by men who study racing as other men would study any other vocation. Their systems are made through long study of horses, tracks, jockeys, owners, and trainers. They are well aware of all the standard patterns such as the number of favorites, second, third, fourth, fifth and so on, which win and under what conditions they win most. They know the percentages against a card of eight races being run without a favorite winning as well as dozens of other patterns of statistics.

These are the types of systems to be discussed in detail later. All of them may not be infallible, and indeed, even the professional "inventors" may get a little too enthusiastic at times. But the player's best chances of success come from studying these products of men who take racing seriously.

The other types of systems consist of those dreamed up by the casual player or fan. He may note that on the day he was at the track, six of the eight winners ran the farthest in their pre-race warmups. Presto, he has the makings of a system. Watch the horse which runs farthest in the pre-race warmups.

Soon, this magic string plays out and the player hastily adds more rules to take in other factors which he observed. Perhaps he shifts to weight. The horse running the farthest in the warmups must not be carrying more than three pounds over the horse which ran the second longest distance.

In no time he has put together more gibberish with no better results. Then he scraps the whole idea because he has observed other factors which intrigue him. If, by some miracle, he should put together a profitable method, he immediately begins to sabotage his own creation.

Let's assume his new method has for its chief rule the requirement that a horse, to be a selection today, must have finished no worse than a length behind the winner in his last race. Since this is a rigid rule, it does two things. First, it restricts the number of plays. He finds horses that would be selections except they finished a length and a half or even two lengths behind the winner. Otherwise, their records look good.

Then he notes that one of these horses—one which finished more than a length behind the winner—wins fairly easily and pays a good mutuel. So to get more action and to avoid missing any future winners, he changes the rule to read: "must have finished no worse than a length and a half behind the winner."

The first play of his revised rule might bring him a winner. He is sure the new rule is justified, and the more the winner pays the more convinced the player is that he has improved his method. Soon these length and a half horses begin to lose, and the player is torn with doubt.

Usually, instead of revising his rules still further he scraps the whole plan and starts afresh in quest of another method.

Weight now may intrigue him. Along with other rules, his principal requirement about weight is that today's possible selection must not be picking up more than three pounds over what he carried in his last race. Soon he starts the same old cycle. He finds he has restricted plays and also has passed up some winners. To remedy both situations, he changes the weight requirement from three pounds to five pounds. But he begins to lose again.

Now he may switch to other factors, the chief of which is distance. He might stipulate that a horse today must not be going more than the distance of his last race. This, too, forces him to sit and watch some horses win which would have been selections had it not been for the rule. Possibly one of the good-priced winners ran a mile and 70 yards as compared with just a mile the last time.

It takes no effort for the player to convince himself that the rule is too strict. He changes it to read: ". . . today's race must be ABOUT the same distance as the last race." This revision permits him to regard a mile and a sixteenth or even a mile and an eighth as being "about" the same distance as the mile of the last race. He quickly learns that the horses do not care for the technicality of "about," and he begins to lose more times than he wins.

In desperation, he may start returning to his original ideas but may discover a new rule he can add. Perhaps he finds that his system based on not more than one beaten length produced most losers among horses not picked on top by professional selectors. He thinks he can solve the problem by adding this rule: ". . . furthermore, the horse to be a selection must be picked on top by at least two of the Racing Form's handicappers."

Later, when things go badly, he turns again to weight and finally to distance, but each time he draws up a new rule or two designed to cut down losses. The systems which he started so enthusiastically to catch winners now have deteriorated into a negative method. The player's chief interest had switched from picking winners to preventing more losses. In his panic, he almost becomes as bad as the fan who skipped into the track with the comment: "I hope I at least break even today because I need the money."

The less experience a player has the more enthusiastically he will start out on the quest of winners by means of his own system. For the variables he noticed and the winners he saw them produce make him believe that picking winners is a "cinch" or that above all other mortals he has been gifted with the golden touch.

One player, on his third visit to a track, became convinced that the way to gold was to keep doubling up on the selections of a newspaper selector until a winner was hit. Then the wagers started again at $2, and continued until another winner was hit. Three days of watching the selector's choices made him feel certain the method was "fool-proof," provided the player had a "reasonable" amount of capital. It developed that his idea of a "reasonable amount" was $100.

What excited the player was that the selector on the second day had a winner paying $82. How could one lose with such box-car payoffs although they came only every other day?

What the player didn't know was that the "selector" was simply an office boy who liked to dabble with horses. The sports editor, knowing nothing about racing, was glad to have someone else responsible for seeing that the day's results and the next day's entries were sent to the composing room on time. The office boy added his selections on his own authority, and the sports editor, wishing to humor him because of his extra work, let him print his choices.

The player could not have known how the paper arrived at its selections. But he could have checked them over a long period to see whether a pattern of consistency showed up. Since the office boy spurned all the usual handicapping variables, his chief reliance was upon "hunch." Frequently, he went two or three days without a winner.

The office boy was interested only in box-car mutuels. To obtain them, his first choices also were horses picked by no other selectors. On rare occasions when he hit a winner, such as the $82 one, he called the attention of the sports editor to it. He was rewarded on those rare days by a little box bragging about how the paper's selector was snaring real sleepers. The sports editor never bothered to check on losers, for he had no interest in racing as a sport or a diversion.

In one two-week period, with 96 races "handicapped," the office boy ran through 25 successive races without a winner. A player who was doubling up would have needed more than $33,000,000 to make his 26th wager. With that kind of money, the player could buy two or three major tracks and operate them to suit himself.

Obviously, any method that requires doubling up after each loss must be a system that picks winners consistently. The only possible hope for finding such consistency is among the low-priced horses which further complicates the possible system. For a low-priced winner anywhere along the line might not recoup all previous losses.

But hope springs eternal, especially in the chests of racing patrons, and today at every track there are fans hurrying through turnstiles eager to give their method a real workout. They know it will work because didn't it produce two or three winners yesterday?

Soon, however, they find that horses, unlike history, do not repeat.

How To Behave With A System

A system is simply an arrangement of all racing variables into a definite pattern. A system is "mechanical" if it leaves nothing to the player's own judgment. A handicapping system calls for some decisions on the part of the selector.

The purpose of a system is to produce winners over a period of time. A system cannot with certainty predict the winner of a specific race although it may point to the probable winner.

The player, in dealing with systems, must keep in mind:

1. The fan with limited capital must choose a system which either provides few plays or one which returns frequent winners.

2. The more winners a system unearths the more likely it will deal with short-priced horses.

3. Any system designed to catch "long shots" always will have extended losing streaks.

4. Choosing a system to fit a player's individual temperament is as important as choosing one to fit his available capital. Some players can't stand losing streaks. Others can't get excited about frequent winners if the
prices are small.

5. A system, once chosen, must be persevered with. No rule must be changed while the system is being operated.

6. In a system requiring some judgment, the player's decisions must be uniform. For example, he can't decide today that weight is not too important and tomorrow decide it is very important. Or he can't pass up odds today of less than 3 to 1 and tomorrow decide to play 2 to 1 or lower. Today he can't decide to take as closing odds the figures on the "tote" board when the first horse enters the starting gate and tomorrow decide to wait until most of the horses are in the gates.

7. Systems cannot be devised on the basis of a few days or a few weeks play. They must be checked over long periods.

8. To be effective, a system must steer the player off losers as well as tip him to probable winners.

9. A system must be definite about track conditions. Either it permits play on all types of track conditions or it restricts play to specific track conditions. It must be definite also about play on all kinds of horses and races or whether play is restricted to particular races and specific types of horses.

10. And finally, the player when he finds a system to his liking, should check over a protracted period not only to see the pattern of the winners it uncovers but also to see whether he himself can operate it. An obvious example, of course, is a system requiring that closing odds must be known before a wager is made. If the player does not have closing odds available to him all the time he cannot use that method.

And the player should keep in mind at all times that horses do not make the system.

A system won't make a horse run better or worse.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here….