Betting Advice

If you are unfamiliar with CompuBet’s Betting Pattern Reports, take a look at them now!

Since the CompuBet selections are made only by the computer, they will, over time, form a reliable “pattern” which may vary from track to track.

No “system” or “handicapping approach” can ever produce uniform results at every track or even at any given track every night. There are many variables, such as quality of horses and weather, and number of contestants, to name a few, which play an important role in the outcome of all races, and, ultimately, the success of the “system” one uses.

It would be unrealistic to believe that any selection process could “guarantee” a betting profit. Many well accomplished professional “handicappers” have good nights and “not so good” nights. That’s where money management comes into play.

The most important thing any bettor should employ if he or she wishes to realize a profit is consistency! Make your selections consistently, select your types of wagers consistently, and wager amounts that are consistent with your money management system and your “betting budget”. We will discuss money management later in this report.

With all that in mind. let’s review some ways to bet profitably using the CompuBet Reports.

One obvious strategy is to bet all of CompuBet’s “first picks” to win. Remember our “first pick” is listed as the first horse for a given race. That is the horse with the highest point rating. Before you do this, you should review the CompuBet “Betting Pattern” Report for the track you wish to bet and make sure our win% at that track, over time, is at least equal to the percent of winning favorites at that track. Generally, CompuBet does produce a win % even greater than the percentage of winning favorites, but you should make certain before placing your “Win” wagers.

Another strategy is to bet all of our first selections to “win and place”. Again, check the production percentages. over time, to make sure that is a good bet at the track in question. This type of bet is very good because it gives you a sort of “hedge” against losing your win bets.

One favorite type of “straight” bet however is a plain old “Place” bet.  A little less risky, and if your handicapping information is sound, you’ll cash over 50% of the time!

There is a very interesting betting strategy or “system” which works very well to maximize profits from both WIN bets and PLACE bets! I call it the Controlled Progressive Betting system. Let’s illustrate the use of this system with an example. This example illustrates the comparative “bottom lines” us 1000 ing a straight place betting system and then a Controlled Progressive place betting system:

	Amount Bet ($)	Payoff ($)	Collect ($)	Progressive Bet ($)	Collect ($)
Race #1	$10.00	Lose	$0.00	$10.00	$0.00
Race #2	$10.00	$3.00	$15.00	$20.00	$30.00
Race #3	$10.00	Lose	$0.00	$20.00	$0.00
Race #4	$10.00	$2.60	$13.00	$30.00	$39.00
Race #5	$10.00	$3.60	$18.00	$30.00	$54.00
Race #6	$10.00	Lose	$0.00	$10.00	$0.00
Race #7	$10.00	Lose	$0.00	$20.00	$0.00
Race #8	$10.00	$4.00	$20.00	$30.00	$60.00
Race #9	$10.00	$2.40	$12.00	$30.00	$36.00
Total	$90.00		$78.00	$200.00	$219.00
			LOSS OF:		PROFIT:
			$12.00		$19.00

As you can see, we actually made a profit using our Progressive Betting Strategy, whereas we lost $12.00 betting a flat $10.00 per race. Two additional points to make here are that, first we only cashed slightly over half of our bets (this system generally will produce a profit as long as your overall selections produce a minimum of 50% winning bets). 55% or more is preferred. Also, we realized a profit of almost 10% of our investment, not bad for a fairly conservative betting approach.

Should you wish to utilize this particular technique, there are a few simple rules to follow.

Begin by deciding what your base bet will be. One suggestion is to choose an amount which represents no more than 10% of your daily budget. An amount of 5% of your budget is recommended. In any case, you would then place your first wager using the base bet amount. You would continue at that amount until you lose a bet, at which time you would increase your bet by the amount of your base bet for the next race. You will continue to increase your bets in increments of the base bet until you win a bet. Then you will continue at that same amount for as many times as you lost prior to the win. And you always revert back to your base bet whenever you win two bets in a row.

Notice in our example that we wagered $30.00 on race #5; that’s because we had lost only one race prior to winning race #4. Had we lost race #5, we would have increased our wager for race #6 to $40.00. But since we won race #5 (which made two in a row), we revert back to our base bet.

Now, there are many variations of this technique. You can experiment with it if you wish, and I’ll give you a couple of things to consider. First, the size of the track, and the number of contestants may suggest you adjust this procedure slightly. For example, you would expect to win a smaller percentage of your bets at a mile track with ten or more contestants per race. Therefore you might want to revert back to your base bet after only one win, instead of two.

Another situation might be that the payoffs at your particular track might be larger than is generally the case. Therefore, you might want to increase your bets by an amount less than your base bet amount. For example, I sometimes start with a five dollar bet and increase my bets by only $2.00 when 1000 I lose. This works very well when applying this technique to “Win” bets, it also works well for place bets at the larger tracks and tracks with “borderline” place betting production statistics.

And you could even decide to continue at the previous bet amount for three consecutive wins instead of two, when you have lost at least two races prior to the win, before reverting back to the base bet. All these variations make sense at certain tracks and in certain situations. The most important thing to remember is to decide on the technique that serves you best and then stick to it….remember….CONSISTENCY!

Now for the really GOOD stuff!

What we have talked about thus far is great if you want to employ a betting procedure which is relatively conservative and has a very high percentage of success but a relatively low return on the dollars invested.

But, if you want to hit some juicy exactas and trifectas, we have a system which works very well. It involves more risk obviously, but the beauty of the system I will call a “Part Key” betting system, is that it virtually guarantees you will collect a reasonable percentage of your bets, while offering the potential for some of those “really nice” payoffs; Exactas of $100.00 and more, and Trifectas ranging from $100.00 to $1,000.00 and more. Meanwhile, you will certainly hit numerous payoffs of the chalk variety, they will keep you in the hunt until you hit the “big” ones.

The most important thing to remember is find the most successful type of bet at each track. The Betting Patterns Reports will provide that guidance.

Then you should look at the actual Point Ratings to see which horses are real contenders. We generally plan to use the top three, four, or five horses in each race. There are exceptions however, and you must learn to recognize them. If the point spread shows a huge gap between the third and fourth horse, that would indicate that you should not play the horses below that “line” very heavily, if at all. Conversely, if the points are very close between the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth horses, you might just have to include all of them in your numbers. As a rule of thumb, a 40 point spread is significant (equal to more than one full second). A 30 point spread is usually a good place to draw the line. Even a 20 point spread is enough to eliminate those contestants below that line, especially if the next horse on the list has a poor post, lesser speed rating, and lesser driver (at least two of these ingredients would suggest that you can safely eliminate the horse below that 20 point gap)

Playing Exactas:

Boxing: Box 2, Box 3, Box 4, depending on the point spreads and “gaps”. Boxing is a very productive type of bet because it often produces the winning combination even when the favorite doesn’t finish first or second. The problem with boxing, especially when there is a “true” favorite in the race, is that you can win the bet and lose money. Check the odds board against our selections to avoid that.

Wheeling: Wheel the top pick with the next 2, 3, 4, or 5, again depending on the point spreads. You will often want to reverse wheel the same horses, and you’ll find yourself hoping your top choice gets beat at the wire by one of your other numbers at higher odds! This works well when you have a real solid choice (good point spread, good speed, good post, good driver) and hopefully hasn’t been hammered too hard by the betting public. I love these when the odds are 3:1 or higher! Again, check our Betting Patterns, do a little evaluation on your own using the CompuBet Selections, and then stick to your most productive strategy. Another variation of this is to find races where our top picks show a wide separation over the third pick. Then use both of these horses as win keys over the same two, plus the next two or three, depending on point spreads. this works especially well at tracks where our combined percentage of winners from our top picks plus our second picks is over 50% (closer to 60% is ideal!).

Let’s talk about the Trifecta Part Key system.

I would use our first selection as a key horse in all positions with the other three or four highest rated selections. I generally use the top five selections, and will eliminate the fifth horse only after very careful consideration. The numbers would look like this, I would play the (1) with the (2),(3),(4),(5) and then I would play the (2),(3),(4),(5) with the (1) with the (2),(3),(4),(5), and then finally the (2),(3),(4),(5) with the (2),(3),(4),(5) with the (1). This gives me a winning trifecta as long as my key horse finishes in the top three (and obviously two of my next four selections must be also in the top three finishers). This bet costs $36.00 and if you eliminate one of the horses (probably the fifth selection) the cost will be $18.00. Remember, by reviewing the CompuBet special reports on “….BettingPatterns…” you will be able to find the tracks where the “key” horses are the most reliable.

Money Management.

There are many ways to use money management to your advantage, whether betting on horses, football games, or at the casino. Let’s discuss an example of money management. Let’s say you decide on a base bet of $5.00 and your wager of choice is to “Win”. Let’s say you’re betting on harness horses racing on a half mile track. O.K., so you win the first race. Then you lose the second race. You then might increase your bet to $10.00 for the third race, hoping to win your next bet at an increased amount so that you will recoup some or all of your losses from race two.

Now, if you were betting at a mile track, you might only increase by a dollar or two, because you don’t expect to win as often, and when you do the payoffs will be larger. So there are a couple of variations of “money management” These types of betting strategies can often enable you, the bettor, to realize a betting profit when another bettor, betting the same selections for the entire night (but always betting the same amount) might incur a loss!

A second aspect of “money management” is to set a limit on your losses. In other words, if your loss limit is $50.00 and you reach a point where you are out that amount, you should quit for the night. The next night you will hopefully have a better night and it will not be so difficult to make back that $50.00 as it would if you had lost a couple hundred! Now, in conjunction with this approach, let’s say you are having a good night. When do you quit? There are several techniques, you will have to figure out which you like the best. I happen to like the following approach to winning: I know betting on anything can be “streaky” at best, it seems like your “luck” can be good all night, or it might just go all to pieces in a real hurry. That’s why I like to protect my winnings when I do get ahead. For example, Let’s say I get up $50.00 (that’s ten times my base bet of $5.00) and it’s only the third race so I really don’t want to go home. What I’ll do is take half of that profit, along with my original investment, and put it away. I still have five “betting increments” to play with so I should be able to continue making a profit as long as my “luck” holds. And if it turns bad, well I will still go home with a profit.

I do not generally start limiting myself until I have won ten times the base bet because it is almost certain that you will lose if you don’t have the proper capital to play with. That’s another important “money management principal; don’t expect to make a profit if you haven’t got enough capital to start with….you will never win if you’re betting “scared money”!