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Racing Gold
Pattern Recognition For Finding Spot Plays
It's been said, "To see what has not been seen before - look where no one has looked before."
I don't think there are very many handicapping factors/variables that haven't been investigated during the multi-thousand year history of racing horses. But - what about the combinations of those variables? They are numerous - too numerous to ever fully research and test them all.
How many things do handicappers look at? That is, how many factors/variables are used to some extent in the whole world of handicapping? 50? 75? More?
Let's be ultra-conservative and say 35.
Now, consider this - it may astound you: Say that we might only use at least 2, but no more than 4, of those factors in our approach to handicapping a race. Let's further say that we use different factors from among the 35 for different types of races and that different "weighting" of those factors is often required (that is - making one or more of the variables more or less important than another).
There are 519,600 possible combinations of those factors!!
The natural response is, "My God!" I mean - how could a handicapper ever even hope to touch the complexity of the handicapping puzzle?
We have one thing going for us . . .
The brain is master of pattern recognition - and much more adept at it than even the most powerful computers.
A two year-old child can far out-perform the fastest computer when it comes to recognizing and identifying a person's face. Our greatest forte - the skill that has evolved through thousands of generations of the human family and the human brain - is the ability to process visual images.
So then, how can we make best use of this skill in handicapping and betting the horse races?
First, no matter how amazing our capabilities in this area - I think that everyone would agree that trying to identify profitable patterns from among 519,600 is asking too much!
We need to get the number of variables down to a manageable few - this is key.
I think it was Doc Sartin who once turned me onto a study done by a stock investment company for an article in Forbes magazine. This study showed that the more information (numbers of handicapping factors) an investor (or race bettor) had - the more confidence he had in his decision-making.
Unfortunately, the accuracy of his decision-making decreased with the excess of information! It was concluded that 5 is the maximum number of factors with which an investor or race player can deal before diminishing returns sets in.
Serious handicappers should begin immediately to whittle down the number of handicapping factors they use in making wagering decisions.
It shouldn't be done arbitrarily of course - testing, research, and accurate record-keeping are a must ( I know you didn't want to hear that!). Draw your factors from the major groups; Class, Speed, Pace, Connections, Odds. Develop your own "looks" and then begin to let the brain's natural abilities at pattern recognition work its magic.
Always remember too that our own observations affect the results of what we are tracking - and - our preconceptions (of which we are often completely unaware) affect our judgments and the decisions we ultimately make.
Then - whatever data you are studying - your results will be unique.
This is a good thing in a game where having a different reason to bet on certain horses than the "crowd" has will tend to keep you on the under-bet horses and off the over-bet, low-value ones.
Doing your own research on a restricted number of variable combinations will reveal to you what I believe is becoming crucial to overall betting success: High ROI spot plays.
Most players bet more races than they should - that's a given. I just seems to be a natural response. They do the handicapping work the night before - they're at the track (or in front of the computer screen) - they've got money to bet - and they don't want to miss out on a good winner. All this creates a subtle, yet powerful motivation to place several more wagers each day than is likely optimal.
Those extra wagers tend to be long-term money eaters.
For this reason, the identification and introduction of high ROI spot-plays into ones betting becomes a necessity.
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