So, I guess the bosses have just remembered that I'm working
down here. I'm not sure if they realise that I've actually moved
in. I was spending so much time here tinkering with the droid that
eventually I just stopped going home. That's dedication, if you ask
me, but apparently they need me to be writing articles and coming
up with tips, otherwise there's no point having me here.
Well, I guess there is a lot to report. You'll remember that I
was working on getting the Tipdroid right, and then I was calling
it the Laydroid because it was doing such a great job of picking
losers. Then I designed two separate modes for it, Laydroid mode
and Placedroid mode. The Laydroid was a great success, the
Placedroid not so much and in my tinkering to fix the Placedroid, I
may have accidentally ruined the Laydroid. I lost confidence in it
and I suppose I've been a bit quiet ever since. But I've been very
busy working on the next incarnation and I think I have something
that can be very useful, particularly if you understand its
limitations.
Allow me to introduce The Quadinator.
Punting Form's System Builder is a remarkable tool that can help
punters make informed bets with only a few minutes spent on the
form guide, and I realised that with unlimited (and free) access to
not only the builder but also Punting Form's unique sectional data,
I could do things that the average punter could not. While most
users of the System Builder will only subscribe to a limited number
of systems (as they will have to pay for each subscription), I can
build and subscribe to as many as I want. This allows me to create
dozens of "sub-systems" - systems that may not be profitable on
their own, but can highlight runners that stand out from the field
in some way.
So, this is how The Quadinator works. Every morning, I spend
about 10 minutes transferring information from the Punting Form
database into the machine. It then sorts runners by race and
presents me with the horses in each field which have triggered a
hit on a profitable system or any of the sub-systems. Most races
will have at least one runner that stands out from the field in
some way and most races will have 2-4 such horses. Generally, the
higher the quality of the race, the more runners that will get at
least one hit and strong fields could have as many as 6 or 7.
The next step is to feed Punting Form's sectional ratings to the
droid. With this data, it can identify further contenders and/or
strengthen the case for the system and sub-system hits. By this
time there will usually be 1-3 runners per race marked as strong
contenders with possibly several more that have attracted The
Quadinator's interest in some way. In 10-15 minutes, The Quadinator
can tell a story of an entire meeting, yielding a shortlist for
every race that might have taken hours to compile the old-fashioned
way.
The question then became how to best use this information. At
first, I just tried to pick out the individual horses that hit the
most strongly and bet on those. It was marginally profitable but in
too many races, my pick was beaten by one of the other runners that
The Quadinator had put forward. Race after race was won by a horse
on the droid's shortlist and rather than try to predict which of
them would be the winner, I changed direction. I dabbled in
trifectas and first fours, but the main focus became quadrellas and
it was then that the droid was given its new name.
I've been using it for about a month now, putting on a quaddie
at every meeting using the runners from The Quadinator's
shortlists. It usually results in somewhere between 60 and 200
combinations, and over the month it's picked close to a dozen
quaddies and I've won back slightly more than I've spent. With
quaddies, I'd need a much, much bigger sample size before I could
say it's a profitable method, but I'm optimistic.
Still, there are some things that no machine can do better than
a knowledgeable punter. An expert eye could go over The
Quadinator's selections and sack a few useless ones. They could go
over the form and find something that the machine missed. The
average meeting for The Quadinator results in winners for three out
of four legs, which means most days, there's one, maybe two winners
missing. There are also a few useless selections that are making
the bet more expensive than it needs to be. For that reason, I
reckon it's best to use The Quadinator as a base and then take at
least a quick look at the form for yourself, adding and subtracting
as you see fit.
But if you don't have the time for all that, The Quadinator will
provide you with informed selections in minutes. So, to keep the
bosses happy, I'll be posting The Quadinator's selections a few
days each week. You lot can then decide if/how you'll use that
information and if you figure it all out, let me know.
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