horse racing with cancellation strategy

I read the section on wizardofodds.com about the cancellation strategy. I can pick a winning horse about 60% of the time at close to 1/1 odds. What are my chances of losing it all and how much of a return should I be looking for to build the bankroll. I'm starting with $1000 and want to get to $100,000 so that I can just go for say $5000 a week but I don't want to wait for years to build it up.

nothing? nobody? calling all math geeks. And just to clarify, I can't sit down and look at a tracks 10 races for the day and pick 6 winners, it's way more complex than that. I end up betting on about 70 races a week out of the hundreds that run.

Quote: adamhubert

I read the section on wizardofodds.com about the cancellation strategy. I can pick a winning horse about 60% of the time at close to 1/1 odds. What are my chances of losing it all and how much of a return should I be looking for to build the bankroll. I'm starting with $1000 and want to get to $100,000 so that I can just go for say $5000 a week but I don't want to wait for years to build it up.

If we assume the payout is really 1:1, then the math is pretty easy. You should wager (PW-L)/P=%-of-bankroll-wagered, where P is the payout (P:1), W is the probability of winning, and L is the probability of losing. So, if you can pick with 60% accuracy and a 1:1 payout, then you should wager ((1*.6)-.4)/1=20% of your bankroll on each race.

That sounds interesting but I had a 5 bet loosing streak last week. My strategy then was go for 5% and if i lost - my next bet would be for 5% + what i lost + the 5% I didn't win. As you can imagine it got out of hand quickly and i chickened out. took me like 2 days to recover most of it and still not quite there.

You recalculate what you bet after each bet. So if you win, your next bet would be at 44% of your original bankroll. If you lost it would be at 16% of your original bankroll. A five loss losing streak has a 1% chance of happening and it would put you at about 33% of your orignal bankroll.

You probably are overestimating your edge on horse racing so its closer to 55%.

This is all explained under the wikipedia article on Kelly Betting.

Edit: Also as a counterpoint, if you truly have a 60% edge, then a 5 win win streak would multiply your bankroll by 2.5 but have a nearly 8%! chance of happening. If you ran equally lucky with regards to those five races, you would have won 9 in a row and increased your bankroll by a factor of 5.1.

Quote: adamhubert

That sounds interesting but I had a 5 bet loosing streak last week. My strategy then was go for 5% and if i lost - my next bet would be for 5% + what i lost + the 5% I didn't win. As you can imagine it got out of hand quickly and i chickened out. took me like 2 days to recover most of it and still not quite there.

Your chasing the loss, expecting the next bet to be the one you get right... did you think it was more likely? Probably not, yet your placing more importance on that result than the previous bet. Not a good plan...

If I were you, I'd bet around 5-10% of my current bank roll each time.. if you have the edge you actually do. If you over estimated it, then you might need to drop it lower.

You probably don't need to increase your bet until the roll gets up to $1200, just for ease of calculation. At 5% per WINNING bet you need 14 winners to double your roll. That would be 14 more winners than losers, or about 70 races bet on. 1 weeks work by the sounds of it.

Quote: thecesspit

Your chasing the loss, expecting the next bet to be the one you get right... did you think it was more likely? Probably not, yet your placing more importance on that result than the previous bet. Not a good plan...

If I were you, I'd bet around 5-10% of my current bank roll each time.. if you have the edge you actually do. If you over estimated it, then you might need to drop it lower.

You probably don't need to increase your bet until the roll gets up to $1200, just for ease of calculation. At 5% per WINNING bet you need 14 winners to double your roll. That would be 14 more winners than losers, or about 70 races bet on. 1 weeks work by the sounds of it.

I don't know what tracks you are betting, but unless it's NYRA or Hollywood/Del Mar/Santa Anita, betting more than a few hundred to win will affect your return, and betting in the thousands will definitely lower your odds. Just to throw it out there.