In racing, and betting, patience often pays off. Patient trainers wait for the right races, patient punters, too, wait for the right races in which to bet.
How patient are you? If you’re impatient, impetuous, well, you may as well skip this article and move on through the pages of PPM. Because what I’m writing about involves a degree of patience. If you have it, read on.
Oh, I guess you can look at the staking plan I’m suggesting and say, yes, it’s worth a flutter but you probably won’t follow it. That’s fair enough, each to his own.
But I stress the plan is for the really patient bettor who comes up with one good bet per day. Is that you? Could it be you if you applied yourself a little more?
We’ve all heard that one bet a day is the best way to go if you’re interested in having a chance at long-term success. Some punters say having just one bet a day is impossible to maintain and takes away a lot of the fun, joy and excitement of betting.
There is, though, plenty of truth in the ‘one bet a day’ approach. It makes you very selective but it’s also a big blow when your selection loses, perhaps beaten a nose by a 20/1 shot that you quietly fancied.
But let’s assume that you use the single bet per day as an isolated approach, and maintain your other areas of betting. That makes it easier to adopt. But you should always keep the profit/loss account separate from those other bets.
Let’s say that it suits you to do it, and you decide you’ll have one bet on Saturdays in Sydney, one in Melbourne and one in Brisbane. How you select them is up to you. This article is about staking, not selecting.
So we have these three excellent horses picked out, and now we apply the Patient Day By Day Plan as follows, for each selection.
THE APPROACH
Bet 10 units to win.
If a winner, put the returns away until next week.
Next week:
Have 10 units to win as usual, plus 33 per cent of the profit from last week. If a winner, put the returns away.
Next week:
Again a 10 unit win bet plus 33 per cent of the profit from the carryover.
Now, you might ask, what on earth is this all about? It’s very easy, really. What you are doing is betting level stakes on your selection, then carrying forward 33 per cent of any profits onto the next week’s selection.
If your selections are any good you could make a mint! If they are average, you will only ever be reinvesting one third of your profits in an attempt to boost your bank substantially.
That is because as soon as a selection loses, you pocket the rest of the money and go back to the basic 10 units.
Look at this example:
DAY ONE: Horse A wins at 3/1. Your bet was 10 units, your return is 40 units, the profit is 30 units.
DAY TWO: You bet the basic 10 units on Horse B PLUS 33 per cent of the profit from last week’s bet. You won 30 units so the added bet is 10 units, making it a total bet of 20 units on Horse B. Let’s assume that Horse B wins at 4/1. You bet 20 units so the return is 100 units and the profit is 80 units.
You pocket the 20 units, plus two-thirds (66 per cent) of the profit (about 54 units). The remaining third of the profit from the bet is carried forward to Day Three.
DAY THREE: The bet on Horse C is 10 units plus the 26 units from last week’s profit, making it a 36 units bet. Let’s say Horse C loses. Your next bet will be the basic 10 units on Day Four.
You have made a nice profit and had the chance of a big rollover of one third of the profits.
You see, each win allows you to take out 66 per cent of the profit plus all the stake, so it is far less adventuresome than all-up betting. If you can pick a fair number of winners (say an average of one in three best bets), this could be just what you have been looking for as a safe progression.
I know that a couple of followers of Alan Jacobs at the PPD Club use this betting approach and they say they have been absolutely thrilled with the outcome.
Alan’s best bets (which were published in full in the December PPM) are an ideal set of selections for the Day By Day Plan. Alan tips only a few times a week so the approach would easily be able to be followed.
By Jon Hudson
PRACTICAL PUNTING – JANUARY 2006