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Old 03-08-2010, 09:19 AM   #10
barb craven
Grade 1
 
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: Bobcaygeon,On,Canada
Posts: 1,308
The Gift (Follow Up #78)



THE GIFT (Follow Up # 78)

‘Tis the season to show we care by giving gifts. And to receive gifts. What do you tell others you want? What do you get for yourself? Take a few minutes to think it over ..... OK. Now here is my suggestion. Give yourself the gift of winning. Once you give this gift to yourself you can use it over and over again. Christmas can be everyday!

Horse players are simply amazing. They attune themselves to any variety of “mainstream” theories and apply them in any variety of ways .. When they continue to back losing selections they continue to go through the same losing process, achieving the same old results - losing. Then the law of averages steps in, and they win a race. Rather than trying to understand what they did right to get the winner, to repeat the winning event, they exult in their system and return to their same old losing pattern. They end up lamenting and whining that the horses do not run to their system. Imagine that. They want the horses to run to the criteria they have selected. Is this how you look at the races? Do yourself a favour and become a Wagercapper. Be a winner.

Magic? Clairvoyance? Luck? What are you looking for to reach the cashier's window? If you are looking or wishing for an external helping hand to isolate profit generating selections you are in for a long, disappointing and losing wait.

What do you NEED to win? Most of all you need yourself. You make the decisions. The cash through the windows is your cash, earned at some cost to you. Why give it away based on someone else's whim or supposed "inside information? That money is too important to me to let me let anyone else invest it in a stochastic event like parimutuel investing.

What do YOU do that prevents you from being the winning 'Capper each day you go to the track or OTB? After all if you always handicap the way you have always done it, you will win what you have always won. Or the converse is also true, you will always lose what you have always lost. Approach the races with the knowledge that you are going to win. And understand that it is YOU who is going to win.

Having done enough of my own muddling I share with you a couple of personal somewhat abstract aides to my Wagercapping. PATIENCE. I remember in the not so distant past how little time I had to handicap a card from the time the Form arrived at the newsstand until I was arriving at the track just before post time. Now with the advent of computerized downloading and the Validator I can get through an entire card in the time it previously took me to work a single race (about 45 minutes). I was impatient before to receive the Form to work a nine race card. I am impatient now to get through as many races as possible, somehow believing that more is better. NOT SO. I learned that I must still spend the time to evaluate each race in its entirety before moving on. What good does it do to overlook a major factor or even a seemingly insignificant factor and lose a race even if I have handicapped another 20-25 races? It does not do any good. It is self defeating. Doc calls it the Thanatos complex or death wish. It is certainly a losing wish when I give in to it.

One of the joys I receive from handicapping, and I am sure you do also, is to see the important factors in the past performances and use them to enter the correct pacelines and contenders into the program. It is the solving of the mystery of who is going to win that thrills me. It is the collecting of the winners share that rewards me. However, there is the pitfall on the other side of impatience, doing a race too quickly, and that is spending too much time on a race. Overanalyzing a race can be just as deleterious to ones bankroll as under analyzing it. Doc's computer programs help out with this one. Enter the contenders, run the program and utilize the readouts. Simple. Easy.

How many questions can you ask yourself about the contenders in any given race? And how many times can you re-ask them? Will he get the lead? Will he break well? Will the outside horse press him? Is he fit off the layoff? Is he well meant today? Will a speed duel set it up for a closer? These are, for the most part main stream questions. The computer will take care of them for me. I know that, I can not win every race, even though I do not invest in a race with the thought of losing, it does happen. The computer sorts out the majority of the questions for me, and remember most of the questions are main stream ones which the programs take right out of the equation. If I am not comfortable with the contenders, I pass the race. It does little good to continue to obsess about contenders, trainers and infinite possibilities. Plus, if I am overanalyzing then it does start to cut into the time I have for the other races, available in which to invest.

As a computer-using Wagercapper the worst time for me to overanalyze is not the night before the race or the morning of the race but in the time between races. It is this time when I review the next investment that I begin to look for insights that just are not there. OR I look at a race I chose not to invest in and again start to look for an unfindable key. This is a great time to input the data from previously run races into the Wagering Decision Form.

Forget the past. I mean leave behind your old handicapping axioms. Leave behind the par and time charts. Leave behind the 'authorities and experts’. Leave behind your personal biases. Yes, even leave behind yesterdays Methodology. Get with the new. Get with today's Methodology. Use what the Methodology gives to you, to each of us. Do not get caught up with trying to 'discover' the one nuance everyone has been seeking and has not found. Use what we have now, today. Change your outlook. Change your approach. Change the size of your bankroll.

This is the gift giving time of the year. It is also the beginning of a new year, a new era. As the year ends, allow yourself to make the changes necessary to being a successful Wagercapper. Give yourself the gift of WINNING. It Can be a transformational gift. One that keeps on giving. One that sets you free.

The 'Capper here with a race day reminder .... work the plan, be profitable. Til next time.


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Last edited by barb craven; 03-08-2010 at 11:21 AM.
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