Hi all,
Up to now, we had considered the DL TC Points contest to be the main, official “ARV Challenge”.
That is because it involves only predicting winners (and places and shows), whereas the ROI Contest involves betting fictional “@’s” on as many selections as you want – and it would be too hard to ARV bet amounts.
However, I have since realized that while anything can happen, it will be difficult for we ARVers to make a big impact in the Points contest. The reason for this is as follows: the typical handicapper follows the crowd, in the end. The crowd has been shown over and over to hit about 33% winners, and correspondingly higher places and shows.
But 33% wins is the best any one of our ARVers has been able to do, over time; our average ARV hit race is much lower, around 12%.
Our strength as ARVers is in hitting longer odds horses. That is how we we can still possibly show a profit even though our win percentages are relatively low.
Since the Points contest does not consider at all the odds of the winning horses, this strength of ours does not come into play here.
But the ROI contest does – the higher the odds on your winning horse, the more you win. So that is where it is more likely for us to make a good showing.
So, contrary to my previous recommendation, I am now encouraging everyone to bet the ROI Contest, with gusto!
The question is, how much do you bet, in imaginary @’a?
A good guideline for successful money management is to bet 3% of bankroll, per race. Since we start with 20,000 @’s, that means about 600 @’s per race. Note that if you enter “300” in the space for a bet on the ROI Contest page, you are really betting 600 @’s – 300 to Win and 300 to Place.
So, the average bet we make to start with should be about 300 @’s per race, as entered on the Contest page. You can bet more than that, but to stay within the guidelines, make that your average over time. As your bankroll goes up or down, you should adjust the bet to more or less than 300 @’s. Note that you are allowed to bet more than 1 horse per race if you like; total bet per race should be 300 @’s at first, if you are following the guideline.
HOWEVER: in the end, follow your intuition! Bet the amount of @’s on your horse that FEELS right.
Because everyone will do this differently, the outcome of the ROI Contest for us will be a result of part ARV, part intuition. That’s OK though – it’s all outside the 5 senses, right?