Just a joke to wind you up:

What do you mean by 'believe in 仁者無敵'? This is one good phase but how is it applied to horse-punting? Do you hand out money to strangers on the street once you have had a big wins?

...yeah that was really a joke. It kind of reminded me when my brother-in-law got into the med school at HKU. I said 仁者無敵 to him and wish him to become a good doctor.

Well, that's all history. Since then I had given that name to my son.

Horse-punting? That means betting on horses and win money. I am sorry that I should be typing in Chinese but I did not learn that skill at teenage. Now it is hard to teach an old dog with new trick.

Frankly, I really like your  ideas of finding a way or formula to beat the races. Let me share some of my experiences with you here:

Firstly, let me guess your age.  You must not be too old because old bats don't use internet. You also must not be too young, young ones would not bet on horses, their concept of studying the form is beyond them. You and me belong to the cyber age. And Cyber age are mostly well-educated.

When I began punting, there were two main schools of thought to beat the races. Some people only studies weight and class and others are 'time' students. Weight&Class were a Aust/english approach while Time was used mainly by Americans. As a young guys with a science/math background, I spent time to study these two on top of my own 2 approaches--'Application of Game Theory in Horseracing' and ' Collapse of Super-position and probability wave function used in Horse Racing'.

The first two were popular among everyone and we discussed a lot at internet forum ( BBS era!). My own two approaches were never got understood because they involved too much maths and theories. Among the two popular topics, the Time students were really crazy; they would study the speed of wind, the hardness of the tracks and who-who could ride 1/100 sec faster.... The Time students would say the class&weught students were not scientific etc etc.....I can tell you now, they are all broke. However, is Time-stydying really useless? The answer is no. Time can e useful if you know how to apply it and factor it. One common observation from anywhere is that good horses can all run good times. But how come the Time students all went broke....?

I then studied the HK races and the focus of most people was on trainers and jockeys, rather than on a horse's ability. All I can say is that, if you are betting on their mind ( go or no-go), you might as well give it up and play lotto. So I never got too involved in those data-mining on Jockey-Trainer stats.....I am not saying they are all wrong but it is just not my cup of tea.

So, keep it up with your studies. You will learn a lot on the way to become a better punter.

Whatchee,

I happen to start liking you ( ie quoted from a Chow Sin Chee TV show).
That 'Collapse of Superposition' etc etc was also meant to be a joke and my wife still makes fun of me till now. Since it is a nice day, I think I will share the background of this.

Not sure if you had heard about a thought experience of putting a cat in the box and there is a poison gas flask in it as well. A hammer is connected to a particular detector and if will break the flasj and kill the cat if the particle spins up or vice versa. Yes the Sch Cat argument. Until we open the box, we would have no knowledge to which the cat is alive or dead, hence the cat is in a super-position , being alive and dead at the same time until the box is opened.  Doesn't it sound similar to where a horse is positioned before and after the gate opens??!! Before the starter hits the button, all horses are in 'super-positions' and there locations during the race is best described ( and hence predicted ) by the wave function. I had this similar idea and purposed some wonderful thought ( not on horses, though) to my supervisor as my PH.D. thesis. And the Professor jokingly suggested that I could do that on race-track to save research funding to set it up in the LAB.

No, it has never formed in any sense at all for the horse-punting but the idea sounds cool, doesn't it?

小胖 ,
Actually, Weight&Class or even Time Theory are not complicated at all.

Firstly, my *Time* experience was that at early 90s, I developed a Time scaled rating myself ( just input the run time and its carried weight of previous races.[ I did not use it at Australia but HK was that HK at that time was racing on sand-meshed grass. *Time* never works on grass but work fine on dirt; sand-mesh grass was grass but being raced like a dirt track.].  I took this piece  of system to HK and won a lot at the beginning ( HK winter ) but then this system started to fell at Spring. Moreover, it only worked on C2 horses and especially horses stabled at Kan Bing Chee. Luckily, I slammed on the brake and stopped because I knew I was sucked into the *Time * trap. I never looked back since and I would suggest everyone be cautious with Time [ ** Being a punter, one should not disclose a secret but I am doing it to avoid more people to jump off their windows**] I only want to win their money, not their lives.
.
Then I went back to the traditional weigh&Class method.... No, it did not work at HK AT ALL because HK used a rating based system. All horses were already scaled up and down by the HKJC handicapper. That was also the time the so-called God of Horse controlled the races.... Since he is dead already, I should not say anything on him but you guys all got it wrong about his ability. While we bet 14 horses per race, he only bet 4 or 5  horses....you know what I mean.

What saved my punting life was David Hayes' arrival to HK. He brought a batch of horses , mostly PPG and started at rating =46 from CLASS 4. It was like throwing a tiger into a group of sheep. But then HKJC changed the system and also hired a new Handicapper.We all had to think of some new methods.

Nowadays, racing is much easier. You might disagree but here are my reasons:

1. troublesome trainers are history. No more silly man--Kan Bing Chee who raced his horses TOO often and only he knew when they were ready and 'go'. No more Hutchison, no more Wong Siu Darn.

2.  troublesome jockeys are also history. Kinane--I only bet his horses while he raced in Europe. no more Steven King, no more Gauci, no more Basil Marcus. Among all, Basil Marcus was the worst.

3. Lots of new PP with exposed oversea form

4   Except TK Ng, nobody waits anymore for better odds.



I think your idea is good. We all improve by sharing info. Nowadays, I write here to exchange my ideas with you guys to polish my punting. I like looking into new angles, too.