View Single Post
Old 08-28-2010, 12:40 PM   #2
Ted Craven
Grade 1
 
Ted Craven's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada
Posts: 8,853
Some Fundamentals of the Sartin Methodology

Some Fundamentals of the Sartin Methodology

1. The horse runs the race. Humans 'hang on for the ride' (i.e. jockey, trainer, connections – are either supplementary, redundant or unnecessary extra information).

2. You must make it 'your own'. The Methodology consists of a tried and true collection of race analysis tools and wager decision guidelines. You must discover the components and approaches suited to your own style and temperament – not blindly adopt someone else’s. These rewards require time, personal effort and self-honesty - there is no substitute, short-cut or black box.

3. Mental skills are more important than handicapping skills. Any method or software tools will work in the hands of a mentally and emotionally prepared individual. You get what you expect to get – you filter information through your expectations and beliefs.

4. Consistent approach is everything. Horse race wagering is a game of risk where the short-term results are often unpredictable, but the long-term results of a consistently applied approach are predictable. If you make the best decisions in each race, you may win or you may lose your individual wager (because literally anything can happen in a single race). But if you determine (by ongoing review of your decisions – a feedback loop) that your approach has an 'edge', then long-term you will win more than you lose.

If you vary your handicapping analysis and wager approach race-by-race or day-by-day, winning or losing a given race, you won’t know whether your result was because of the success of your current approach or because of the short-term random nature of racing. By being consistent (e.g. consistent paceline selection to represent horses, consistent reference to pertinent readouts, consistent wagering pools, bet sizing and decisions) over a series of races (the long-term) you will know if your approach is succeeding and what to do to incrementally improve it. Unless you employ consistency, you will produce erratic results and will become discouraged, blame the tools and ultimately believe that the source of any failure lies outside yourself.

You cannot control external events, but you do control your response to those events. Losing races is guaranteed – suffering is optional.

.
__________________

R
DSS -
Racing Decision Support System™

Last edited by Ted Craven; 08-28-2010 at 01:09 PM.
Ted Craven is offline