The following is an email received from a long-time and very knowlegable Sartin Methodology student/teacher -
Tim Y. He has a very interesting take on the potential practical uses of order within Chaos, as described by Dr Sartin and by other great minds who have written on the subject, particularly as relates to wagering strategy - a crucial aspect of this game which perhaps does not receive as much intelligent discussion as it ought to.
Discussion welcomed!
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When great instructors come along, they, of course, leave many things to different people. I found the Sartin Methodology the freshest, newest and most innovative way of approaching a horse race I ever found.
One of those innovative, PHILOSOPHIC aspects that many do not get was his idea of the either/or, the yin/yang, or the blending of opposites. Many times in the Follow Up he suggested good reading material to bolster this idea from Eastern philosophy (Chaos, Complexity, and my favorite of the group, The Tao of Physics by physicist Fritjof Capra. In this text (surprisingly) he compared the duality of life (at the molecular level) to the inherently similar philosophies of the great religions of the world. He, like Dr. Sartin, proposed that NOTHING is an absolute, that within each extreme of any concept, a little of the polar opposite remains. The very representation of the famous yin/yang symbol demonstrates that. IN other words, the combination or fusion of the two cosmic forces; freq. attrib., esp. as yin-yang symbol, a circle divided by an S-shaped line into a dark and a light segment, representing respectively yin and yang, each containing a 'seed' of the other.
I have been an avid photographer most of my adult life and prefer working in black and white film. In the darkroom each and every print one makes demonstrates this idea as there are rarely any complete whites or blacks in a print, but rather a 256 step gradation between these polar opposites. In the real world we must understand this same cosmic truth: most of our world is made of shades of gray not either/or. He is saying, I believe, that there are no pure early horses and no pure late ones but that EACH has some of the opposite (potentialities) within it.
While this aspect of the idea might be hard to relate to handicapping (knowing how to balance the best earlies with the best lates), I have found, through his teaching, a completely workable application of the either/or and the yin/yang. It is on the other side of the coin, in wager creation.
We work (in the methodology) with facts: segmental velocities, % medians, and the compounded ratings made from those observed and measured truths. We calculate, based upon the match up, which, if any, of the racing styles or total energy, etc, will be better suited to the projected pace of today’s race. This is all well and good. But even with all this very powerful data on our side, we often miss out on the other side of the coin: proper wager creation. How many exotic bets had that one horse that did not fit the facts we so closely adhere to?
Over the past four years I have been hard at work investigating that transition to the other side of the equation. I was fortunate enough to have many of the statistical anomalies answered by quite a few marvelous texts on the study of RANDOMNESS. First, two by Nicholas Taleb, Fooled by Randomness and his second book The Black Swan show how our cognitive abilities have glaring holes in them even within the dome of factual statistical truth. This has also been substantiated by Nobel prized winning economist Daniel Kahneman in Thinking, Fast and Slow. A final contribution comes from the very good book, The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow. These authors discuss GOOD statistical evaluations and their limitations. There is much in the statistical field that is made inaccurate by confirmation bias and the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy: predicting horse performance based upon pedigree, for example, is chock full of holes.
Now think about it: we have at one extreme an ordered factual evaluation of the elements we know are salient to understanding a horse race’s genesis. On the other side of the duality, there lies randomness and unpredictability. This is the same duality, the yin/yang that Dr. Sartin promoted all those years ago. To embrace both his, and the Eastern philosophers’ idea of opposites, we have to do the same thing: realize that a little bit of both exists within the polar opposite of the other. Each betting experience must then work with the idea that we only have LIMITED abilities to predict the future based upon the logic and statistical realities of PAST performances, and must then “fill in the blanks” with that polar opposite that randomness brings to that future reality.
Just about all this applies to exotic betting rather than the two horse straight win bet dutch that has so long been the backbone of wagering.
Example: we all know of the 55% solution and the place horse often being a contra-energy animal. Many times that place animal is one of the many random aspects of the day and often produces big profits. You only have to look at the past few Kentucky Derbies to see that. IN the trifecta, I have found an ongoing pattern of my best two top WIN picks running 1st and 3rd (the famous, though uncashable SPLTIZACTA that I hit so often) and applying the randomness philosophy of including many choices in that open spot, some big numbers at the payout window have suddenly appeared.
Think of what I call it: Order within Chaos, the either/or, the yin/yang applied to wager creation. It will help you get over those wagers when the logical horses run 1 2 4 in a trifecta.
Tim
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