WAY TO GO?Let's call this gentleman John.John uses online services to make his investments and he only bets on Wednesdays and Weekends.He always tries for what we have more or less coined the "Lotto Bet", on a quaddie. One day, he says, will be his, and meanwhile it beats the sox off the amount he loses by simply taking a Lotto bet at the corner newsagent's store.Rightly or wrongly he doesn't regard these as part of his bank. Of course he does keep a record. He has a flat allocation of

WAY TO GO?

Let's call this gentleman John.

John uses online services to make his investments and he only bets on Wednesdays and Weekends.

He always tries for what we have more or less coined the "Lotto Bet", on a quaddie. One day, he says, will be his, and meanwhile it beats the sox off the amount he loses by simply taking a Lotto bet at the corner newsagent's store.

Rightly or wrongly he doesn't regard these as part of his bank. Of course he does keep a record. He has a flat allocation of $40 a day (that's probably twice a week, maybe three times), and he pulls in enough minnows to keep himself solvent.

Little fish are sweet, but I think somebody has said that.

John uses PPD (he has for a decade) and is at present working three systems as well. These are early and fixed bets each time they come up.

He can get (and so can you with judicious shopping around) Best TAB, or Best TAB plus SP, or Top Fluc, or Better than Best TAB, or even Best of Top Fluc and Best TAB, and so on.

A rich smorgasbord indeed!

SInce it's easy to take the wrong one, he has settled for two of these and he wears the rough with the smooth. They're all excellent offers.

Now...

John then watches the racing, and notes the likely state of his daily balance and its potential at various stages:

After each of his fixed bets has run.

After each leg of the quaddie(s) has been run.

He has a "Plan B".

That is to ensure he has a LATE runner in whom he, or his method(s), has strong confidence.

Last Saturday it was Lucky Eighty Eight in Melbourne.

You will recall that this fellow got in by half of half by half of half of a short half head.

Exaggeration? Not really. The cameraman, who always has a go and is usually dead right, was wrong.

The caller sounded 75% wrong but on the fence (a wise move).

I was wrong.

Actually I had also backed this horse, got the best offer, and I believed I had lost my cash.

It was a hell of relief when I saw the picture. Of course, as you did, I knew immediately, owing to the clarity of modern technology.

But it was still hard to take in.

Anyway, John cleared all impending losses (including the lost quaddies, which as I say are a separate part of his day - but do represent real money, nonetheless).

His decision was to have another $160 on the horse at $3.50. It firmed to around $3.30 best, and less on some TABs.

He says it was his all-time maximum "add-on" bet but he believed the horse WAS a good thing and everything he knew about racing was more or less on the line.

And, mind you, it was a mere 0.2% of his annual bank budget of some $80,000. We can't all be that fortunate in our betting money, but as a retired developer, John can, and he is.

If you had outlaid, say, 1% of a bank of, say, $5,000, that would have been a $50 additional bet and should have been enough to get you out of any bother.

It returns you $125 profit, and with the $5,000 bank and (say) 2% per week maximum outlay, you'd be outlaying $50 per week.

In effect you outlaid the equivalent of a week's betting on the "get out of jail" horse which you probably had something on (it WAS your Plan B Best Late Runner, after all), but not enough.

This is a manoeuvre that's worth a great deal of thought. Perhaps a separate bank is necessary.

What do you think is the best way to go?