A Disappointed RDSS Evaluator

[BJennet]

Originally Posted by J2EEDeveloper

As I said before, I have had a lot of good results using the Sartin Methodology and pencil-and-paper methods. As BJennet pointed out, there is a finite limit to the number of bettable races that can be located and bet successfully. Paper trials excepted, betting in the real world requires either a large number of bettable races or large bets on a small number of bettable to provide a return commensurate with the effort involved.

Thirty bets a week at $50 is $1500. A 15% (VERY good) POI means a net take of $225 a week--which is peanuts considering the time I have to spend locating and analyzing those 30 races. If I stick to major tracks, I can up the bet considerably without affecting the mutuel pools too much, and betting $200 a race brings my expected return up to $900 a week. Better, but still a long way from giving up my day job.

However, if I can model the races competently, and model the process of selecting contenders and pace lines, then create algorithms to implement that information, the time invested decreases, with little or no loss in accuracy. Because the decision-making process is structured, errors are eliminated, which usually increases accuracy. In the bootstrapping process of modeling expert selections, the automated process is usually able to substantially increase the accuracy of the "expert's" selections by eliminating errors and structuring an unstructured process.

I would really like to use RDSS. I like the interface, I like the readouts, and I like the underlying processes. About my only real complaint is the time involved; I am much more comfortable with "full-time" handicapping in which I (normally) bet 40 to 50 races a day at a dozen or more tracks. Unfortunately, my all-too-infrequent vacations seem to be the only times I am able to handicap races at that level competently, and then only by specializing in specific class levels and distances. I hoped RDSS would enable me to do the same thing by automating the most time-consuming processes--contender selection and pace line selection.

There is nothing "wrong" with RDSS software, other than that it is not a significant improvement--for me--on what I can accomplish with a stack of TrackMaster past performances, a yellow hi-liter, a red flair pen, and a graphing calculator (I don't use the graphing capability for handicapping, but the TI-94 is easy to program with the limited number of calculations I use in handicapping.) I also have stacks of nicely marked PPs showing pace lines, contenders, and notes to myself about why I chose what, so I can continually improve my own processes and discover my own analytical deficiencies. Just like Doc Sartin told me to do.

J2EED,

This post makes clear that you have a fairly good grasp of the reality of what you're up against. You're correct in your assessment that most of the people who post who here are social and recreational players rather than professionals, and I think that's always been the case with the Methodology. I think that few have career aspirations. And Doc himself perhaps misled clients into believing that this was a possibility, although a couple of the more talented practioners of the Methodology, such as Dick Schmidt and Tom Brohamer, played professionally for a time. But the very important point you bring up, and which their careers underline, is that it's really impossible to think about making a living from the game betting less than $200 a race, which was their average bet size - and remember, this was the '80s.

Re your point about increasing volume - certainly this is the way to go - but in that direction, one runs into the problem of bumping up against pool limits at smaller tracks, a problem we've discussed here. With a $200 bet at smaller tracks you would be seriously cutting your odds, so the question remains as to how many tracks have pools large enough to handle these bets. This is actually a problem I'm getting some consultation on now, and will post about as I learn more.

However, I think you're generally headed in the right direction, and I wish you luck.

Cheers,

B Jennet

[Ted Craven]

J2EE Developer,

Some interesting back and forth! I agree with many of your points, and at the same time, I cannot understand some of your assertions at all.

I acknowledge it is my responsibility as proprietor/developer of RDSS to provide not only the software but the learning tools, and I am sorry you found not all the tools you had hoped for, for example: automated paceline/contender selection, more integrated modeling tools, search for race/betting opportunities among all races today matching your observed situational strengths (i.e. a 'portfolio' of types of races you're good at). These specific tools do not exist yet, though as I mentioned, I am working on each of them, and more, for RDSS 2.0.

Other users are currently making use of 'good-enough-for-now' versions of paceline selection (the Perceptor ranking in concert with Total Energy and Primary Line Score on the Primary Screen), and factor modeling (including mutuels and tote info) via the Export to Excel feature. With some practice, you should expect be able to select consistent pacelines and winnow them down to 5 contenders in just a few minutes per race (some races demand a bit more investigation); exporting to an external model keeper and collating the output - a few minutes more.

If you thought you might be getting the foregoing tools and improvements on teh Methodology you knew - and didn't - I accept your disappointment, though I note that Sartin, Bradshaw and others always advised that if you don't have all the data (or tools) you need, use what you've got...

I believe you are evaluating tools from a specific point of view of how optimally you might 'ramp up the volume' so as to get enough bets at your current hit rate to make it worthwhile without breaking the pools (and your psychological wager limits). Also, since you can see Synergism 6 as a baseline for at least modest profit, you are seeking to improve from there. Completely reasonable goal.

Some things I don't understand at all: you say RDSS (or the modern Methodology of circa late 1990's forward) offers no improvements to figures you are able to compute by hand entry to your TI calculator, or which dozens of other software provide equally well. If you have read all the Follow Ups 3 times, including the later ones, you will know that Sartin considered his later figures (adjusted by TrackMaster DTV and ITV variants) far superior to earlier efforts. Perhaps you either disbelieve him, or you have succeeded in reverse engineering those formulae and have them already embedded in your calculator (though I wonder at the source of the inter-track variants). If RDSS is no better at compounded incremental energy calculations than dozens of other software (or your own manual efforts) - I am alarmed that the sometimes generous mutuels which various folks post screenshots pointing to - often by selecting lines from the most recent 3 races - continue to persist, given that users of dozens of other software must be seeing (and if so, why not betting more on) the same horses. I submit that RDSS has a few tricks up its sleeve, which enable a practitioner to gain insight into more races, or more formerly obscure races, than some of its peers (or predecessors). If this last assertion is true, perhaps you could gain a few more playable races per track than presently, or perhaps a few more ROI points than before. If you think it's not true, or at present too much work - well, just keep doing what you're doing.

I also don't understand your assertion that a practiced user can do no better currently than zigging and zagging in their paceline selection, employing largely intuition, certainly not applying their method consistently enough that their demonstrations, or screenshots, or analysis of approach is mostly useless to a new user. Sure, in a post-mortem of a lost wager, one might frequently see that another line selection, or contender decision would have obtained a better bet - but that's not what the mature analyst does! The mature analyst creates a consistent line selection method and contender winnowing process (by reading published materials, observing others' strategies, their own trial end error and 'bootstrapping') then applies it rigourously - winning where they win and losing where they lose (and with equanimity), always focused on their records which tell whether that method is producing profit over reasonable session lengths (e.g. 20 cycles). If it is - one the one hand, who cares of you lose 50% of your bets (though post-mortem zigzags may point to a winner in every race): that is a fantasy which must be surmounted to get a method producing a base of profit from which one can fine tune. I assert than you can develop and apply currently a rigourous enough approach that it could later be captured as rules in software. And the proof is in one's own betting records. Different people may have differing line selection and wagering approaches, and win and lose different races with that. Doesn't mean one can't develop a rigourous approach.

If you don't have access to RDSS, you can't answer the question: would I have done as well over a card of races as whatever poster did (and there are several almost full card workups posted recently and ongoing for new users to model). But you could if you wanted to. Maybe you don't bet 'those kinds of races': no maidens, no 2 years olds, no 3 year olds, no Turf, no artificial, no routes, no Mountaineer, no Penn National, no Tampa - no exactas...whatever filters one has previously identified as requirements to success using your method so far. Well and good. Though, consider expanding your horizons...

As for the Law of Small Numbers, and Messrs. Kahneman and Tversky, I only understood enough of it to suspect that neither were horse-race bettors, or at least, were discussing measurements from longitudinal enough samples and domains which did not require very recent, small sample intel from the very current time frame in which we need to be making a wager. Headline: "statistician drowns in average lake depth of 18 inches!" I want to know how deep the water is 2 feet in front of me (cause I need to make a wager now, not at any average point over a race meet or track's entire 4 year history). I don't need to know that a small local sample doesn't necessarily conform to other small local samples taken from hundreds of locations over the lake's surface (or a given handicapping factor's 6 month or 4 year history). I'm sure that analogy has been answered a thousand times in Statistics 101 classes (which I never took). But I believe it is pertinent. Anyway, some people haven't yet discovered that they can be making more money than they currently are if they only used a factor model.

I really enjoy an informed (and articulate) skeptic's point of view, and hope that you find that some views of others shared so far (some contrary to your own) are offered not only from a need for self-justification or as knee-jerk protectionism, but also from a helpful stance. I almost want to offer you a long-term software and data account so that you can challenge RDSS as it evolves, and be challenged to disprove, that the toolset offers distinctive abilities compared to the dozens, and is both in the spirit of Sartin's prior work but an evolution of it - and capable of professional level use.

Wishing you well in your further explorations.

Ted

[jms62]

Very well put Ted. By the name J2EEDevloper it isn't a stretch to assume said user is a software developer. Maybe I am cynical but I can't help to wonder if there is an alterior motive at play?

[Ted Craven]

Absolutely he's a software developer, and I knew that before the beginning. As RDSS is available (so far) on demand, I don't see how I can prevent reverse engineering attempts, though naturally, commercial exploitation of workalike factors thought to be currently proprietary would be pursued legally to the greatest degree possible.

I am not expecting that of our friend.

Ted

[Ted Craven]

One thing I meant to add in my last reply to Mr. J2EE (but forgot), is that I have several times over the past 6 months contemplated simply removing RDSS from general availability to new users, due to the fact that the educational materials and current state of the program were not all I wished they were, or had time to make them, given my concentration on rewriting the whole program. Early in 2009, in my design plan, I though about 50% rewrite was what was going to happen. The more I rewrote, the more I found I needed to. RDSS 2.0 will probably be about 80%+ new code, largely self-documenting, but at least significantly different enough from the current version that I have felt loath to offer more tutorials or promotion.

Soon enough, I'll start discussing the range of new or improved aspects, along with screenshots and videos and requests for commentary on approach. (Don't worry - it will produce the same or better numbers and at least be configurable to look like the current one does). But I have fretted about people thinking that what RDSS currently is - is all there will ever be (memory problems, crashes, no printouts, models, automation, Result Charts, etc), and that's not the case by miles. It's the reason I resist TrackMaster's bugging me to advertise more, or Mike's at PaceAdvantage.

Should I just take it down for the time being?

Ted

[trotman]

Ted I would pat yourself on the back, Mr J2EE is only knocking RDSS because he wants something,deep down he likes it a lot. First e-mail you got as I read it you could tell he was a software developer or wannabe.

[BJennet]

Originally Posted by Ted Craven

J2EE Developer,

Some interesting back and forth! I agree with many of your points, and at the same time, I cannot understand some of your assertions at all.

I acknowledge it is my responsibility as proprietor/developer of RDSS to provide not only the software but the learning tools, and I am sorry you found not all the tools you had hoped for, for example: automated paceline/contender selection, more integrated modeling tools, search for race/betting opportunities among all races today matching your observed situational strengths (i.e. a 'portfolio' of types of races you're good at). These specific tools do not exist yet, though as I mentioned, I am working on each of them, and more, for RDSS 2.0.

Other users are currently making use of 'good-enough-for-now' versions of paceline selection (the Perceptor ranking in concert with Total Energy and Primary Line Score on the Primary Screen), and factor modeling (including mutuels and tote info) via the Export to Excel feature. With some practice, you should expect be able to select consistent pacelines and winnow them down to 5 contenders in just a few minutes per race (some races demand a bit more investigation); exporting to an external model keeper and collating the output - a few minutes more.

If you thought you might be getting the foregoing tools and improvements on teh Methodology you knew - and didn't - I accept your disappointment, though I note that Sartin, Bradshaw and others always advised that if you don't have all the data (or tools) you need, use what you've got...

I believe you are evaluating tools from a specific point of view of how optimally you might 'ramp up the volume' so as to get enough bets at your current hit rate to make it worthwhile without breaking the pools (and your psychological wager limits). Also, since you can see Synergism 6 as a baseline for at least modest profit, you are seeking to improve from there. Completely reasonable goal.

Some things I don't understand at all: you say RDSS (or the modern Methodology of circa late 1990's forward) offers no improvements to figures you are able to compute by hand entry to your TI calculator, or which dozens of other software provide equally well. If you have read all the Follow Ups 3 times, including the later ones, you will know that Sartin considered his later figures (adjusted by TrackMaster DTV and ITV variants) far superior to earlier efforts. Perhaps you either disbelieve him, or you have succeeded in reverse engineering those formulae and have them already embedded in your calculator (though I wonder at the source of the inter-track variants). If RDSS is no better at compounded incremental energy calculations than dozens of other software (or your own manual efforts) - I am alarmed that the sometimes generous mutuels which various folks post screenshots pointing to - often by selecting lines from the most recent 3 races - continue to persist, given that users of dozens of other software must be seeing (and if so, why not betting more on) the same horses. I submit that RDSS has a few tricks up its sleeve, which enable a practitioner to gain insight into more races, or more formerly obscure races, than some of its peers (or predecessors). If this last assertion is true, perhaps you could gain a few more playable races per track than presently, or perhaps a few more ROI points than before. If you think it's not true, or at present too much work - well, just keep doing what you're doing.

I also don't understand your assertion that a practiced user can do no better currently than zigging and zagging in their paceline selection, employing largely intuition, certainly not applying their method consistently enough that their demonstrations, or screenshots, or analysis of approach is mostly useless to a new user. Sure, in a post-mortem of a lost wager, one might frequently see that another line selection, or contender decision would have obtained a better bet - but that's not what the mature analyst does! The mature analyst creates a consistent line selection method and contender winnowing process (by reading published materials, observing others' strategies, their own trial end error and 'bootstrapping') then applies it rigourously - winning where they win and losing where they lose (and with equanimity), always focused on their records which tell whether that method is producing profit over reasonable session lengths (e.g. 20 cycles). If it is - one the one hand, who cares of you lose 50% of your bets (though post-mortem zigzags may point to a winner in every race): that is a fantasy which must be surmounted to get a method producing a base of profit from which one can fine tune. I assert than you can develop and apply currently a rigourous enough approach that it could later be captured as rules in software. And the proof is in one's own betting records. Different people may have differing line selection and wagering approaches, and win and lose different races with that. Doesn't mean one can't develop a rigourous approach.

If you don't have access to RDSS, you can't answer the question: would I have done as well over a card of races as whatever poster did (and there are several almost full card workups posted recently and ongoing for new users to model). But you could if you wanted to. Maybe you don't bet 'those kinds of races': no maidens, no 2 years olds, no 3 year olds, no Turf, no artificial, no routes, no Mountaineer, no Penn National, no Tampa - no exactas...whatever filters one has previously identified as requirements to success using your method so far. Well and good. Though, consider expanding your horizons...

As for the Law of Small Numbers, and Messrs. Kahneman and Tversky, I only understood enough of it to suspect that neither were horse-race bettors, or at least, were discussing measurements from longitudinal enough samples and domains which did not require very recent, small sample intel from the very current time frame in which we need to be making a wager. Headline: "statistician drowns in average lake depth of 18 inches!" I want to know how deep the water is 2 feet in front of me (cause I need to make a wager now, not at any average point over a race meet or track's entire 4 year history). I don't need to know that a small local sample doesn't necessarily conform to other small local samples taken from hundreds of locations over the lake's surface (or a given handicapping factor's 6 month or 4 year history). I'm sure that analogy has been answered a thousand times in Statistics 101 classes (which I never took). But I believe it is pertinent. Anyway, some people haven't yet discovered that they can be making more money than they currently are if they only used a factor model.

I really enjoy an informed (and articulate) skeptic's point of view, and hope that you find that some views of others shared so far (some contrary to your own) are offered not only from a need for self-justification or as knee-jerk protectionism, but also from a helpful stance. I almost want to offer you a long-term software and data account so that you can challenge RDSS as it evolves, and be challenged to disprove, that the toolset offers distinctive abilities compared to the dozens, and is both in the spirit of Sartin's prior work but an evolution of it - and capable of professional level use.

Wishing you well in your further explorations.

Ted

Hi Ted,

Thanks for having the courage to make public a complaint which has produced a very interesting thread. First, I don't think you should feel too much of a need to defend the Spec 160/RDSS software - most of the members here, including myself will attest to its high value. And I don't think this poster was being very critical of the program per se - but was simply looking for functions that are currently not part of it.

Also, although I usually agree with most of your posts, I think your comments on Kahneman and Tversky really represent a misunderstanding of the application of their work to handicapping. Bear with me if I'm repeating familiar information, but the basic nature of their work deals with the difficulty the human mind has in grasping the nature of randomness. In particular, they uncovered a misperception of reality based on an overemphasis on the predictive power of recent events, as characterstic of the human mind.

As one of many examples, I'll mention their exposure of the 'hot hand' fallacy, in which an study of the Boston Celtics shooting percentages found that the likelihood of a given player to be 'hot' - to hit a number of shots in a row - was well within the range of the normal distribution, rather than an aberration.

Thus the poster is reasonably asking for more statistical validation of, say, the Brohamer Model, which is unavailable. The usual response is - 'Well it just works.' But, as with almost all of the Sartin material, the response demonstrates a lack of awareness of the difference between correlation and causation.

Sartin, in the later Follow Ups, also mentions that both he and Brohamer had abandoned the model, feeling that it was less predictive than the BL/BL, and that he himself modelled nothing.

You say that Kahneman and Tversky are irrelevant, as non-horseplayers, but it's worth keeping in mind that their frequent colleague in the world of behavioral finance, Richard Thaler, has collaborated on articles on the nature of handicapping with William Ziemba, who needs no introduction here. Ziemba was also an advisor to William Benter, who employed long-term statistical studies in the creation of his enormously successful handicapping model. And it's safe to say that all of these people understand the nature of stochastic processes, of which a horse race is an example, better than we do.

I've touched on some of these issues before, and I don't want to seem to be haranguing anybody, but given their crucial importance to the nature of gambling, I think it's worth continued discussion.

Thanks for your efforts, as always.

Cheers,

BC

[J2EEDeveloper]

Ted,
I appreciate your detailed comments. There are three "gray areas" that I would like to clear up.

First, yes, I am a software developer. I have no intention, nor have I ever had any intention, or reverse-engineering or copying RDSS software. My interest in RDSS is exclusively in the area of personal use, in my own race analysis, for my own personal wagering. That is based on a very simple assumption; if RDSS can generate a consistent and meaningful profit, I can benefit far more from using it than I can from attempting to steal and market it. I am a professional bettor first, and a software developer second.

Second, zigging and zagging seems to be causing a bit of confusion. I was not referring to pace line selection, but rather to the approach to racing in general. When everyone else is focused on early speed on the rail (for example), that is "zagging." In that case, locating a decent wager on a deep closer that may benefit from a speed duel of early-speed types would be "zigging." In essence, looking for opportunities beyond the simplistic "horses that run fast tend to win more races than horses that run slow" approach used by many racing fans.

Third, the easiest way to understand Tversky and Kahnemann is the display of what is essentially a Brohamer Model at every roulette table in Las Vegas. If a passing bettor sees a table at which black has appeared a disproportionately high number of times in the most recent 20 or so coups, there is a strong tendency to believe that red is more likely to occur in the next few coups. It is called the Gambler's Fallacy. (The inverse would be to consider the wheel biased, and bet on black--both are equally foolish.) In essence, short range models don't mean much when considering long range results.

Do short range models work? No. If you happen to win, it is not because the short range model predicted you would win; it is because the result of your win was within the normal range of a larger scale of events. One of the most difficult things to accept in horse racing is that there is no such thing as "statistical pressure" in short runs. That is the reason for building long-term models.

I look forward to working with RDSS in the future, as time permits.

Best Regards

[wilbur porter]

I had sat down earlier tonight to read this note from a dissatisfied customer to Mr Craven after putting away my computer this evening after failing to win again today. It pretty much expressed my feelings after less than a week of using the Rdss. I read some of the positive responses from Barb Craven and others - my wife and I both responded that these were probably "plants" by Ted and associates to market their product. Despondent, I went to bed at 2 am and couldn't sleep so I got out of bed at 6 am to return to my computer.
I guess that I am one of those "smart people" that we all here about. I've read the books, handicapping, positive thinking, New Thought and psychology. I've handicapped thousands of races the last 3 year using other Sartin-based software, astrology and numerology. I was very good with the astrology as I could sometimes predict 7 consecutive winners at a time - that is, when I didn't bet! But I never could seem to win regularly when it mattered most - when betting. It occurred again on Tuesday when I decided to place my first wager. I had picked horse #4 "Diva in Training" as one of my horses but missed the post time (12:30 PM, not 1:00 PM. Diva paid $55.00 to win.
So when this pattern repeated itself earlier, I felt so frustrated and hopeless. Yes, I have been ravaging the videos, the "Follow Up" and manuals, etc. What's wrong? This software doesn't work.
So when I woke a few minutes ago, I decided to go over my Rdss picks and list them - as demonstrated by Barb Craven...AND LO
Out of the first 5 races that I have listed, I would have won 4 and lost 1 ( (This one selection finished 2nd and paid $5.00 to place and $5.20 to show). I didn't bet.
As for the other 4 selections, $20.00 going out, net profit of $19.20. It was an eye opener. I had felt certain that the software and methodology had worked only once or twice in over 40 attempts. It was all in my mind and attitude.Perhaps this is why many people fail to succeed with the Sartin Methodology. Perhaps there is a certain amount of "surrender" to the process (and to yourself, your deity, to your God) and "listening" that is needed for success. It's difficult for some of us who think that we "know it all" to step back and work "with" a system. I may or may not succeed at working with Rdss but come on new folks, open up and give the process a chance!

[JimG]

The following is not directed at anyone in particular, just an observation based on my years of reading horse racing boards.

It's human nature to try to blame something else when we fail. Regardless of what software anyone is using to assist in horse investing, it is the player making the decision to play.

No matter what software one chooses, it is vital to learn the software and give yourself much time to evaluate your strenghts and weaknesses with it.

Nothing makes me cringe more that to hear "the software picked this..." BS. The horse player makes the picks and decisions based partly or wholly on the software output.

Good luck Wilbur in the future and always give yourself much more than a week to determine if any software tool is a good fit for you.

Jim