[The Pook]

I somehow find it therapeutic to share all this stuff with likeminded people. One of the reasons besides learning that I wanted to set up The Matchup Challenge was to see over time what could be done with The Matchup by more than just myself. There is enough of my own experience now (outside and in the Challenge) I think to start sharing. Maybe some will find it enlightening. This information is all real. No bull man.

I am lucky enough to be in a position to play pretty much full time, now being past the necessity of 5 and 6 day work weeks. I am doing this to try and profit and eventually draw supplemental income. Since taking this handicapping method more seriously in the fall of 2014 and being pleasantly surprised by my performance that is what I have done playing mostly 2 tracks a day. For 6 months, matching on paper, I showed enough of a profit to encourage me to bet real money starting in May. (Profit on paper or otherwise over that amount of time has never happened to me before. I have tried it all including modelling etc. but couldn't get them to work for me.)

Here are my numbers matching without getting too personal:
Win bets only
A PrimeBet is 4X a SubprimeBet
A PrimeBet is mostly a single.
A SubprimeBet usually involves 2 horses.

May and June
PrimeBets 133. Hit 35 for a hit rate of 26%. ROI of 67.1%.
SubprimeBets 278. Hit 84 for a hit rate of 30%. ROI of 24.2%.
Overall 48% ROI. This is over 2 months and enabled me to double my pool.

My aim now is to double at least twice more and maybe three times to get to a point where reasonable money is made. Am hoping that I would have the accrued confidence to bet those amounts. I certainly couldn't do it now. This return over time is the best I have ever done. I think it is respectable but probably some of you have done much better. I have no idea. Maybe I won't be able to keep these numbers up. Maybe two months isn't really much time even though it was set up on 6 months of paper profits. My hit rate is no where near Jims 50% and that is something I really would like to improve. Probably still not selective enough. My pattern recognition skills are probably still too limiting.

So I think my numbers above are good but to keep things in perspective here is July. I've only played 3 days so far but they are horrible.
July
PrimeBets 0 for 14. In that 14 there are 6 seconds and 3 thirds. Nipped by chalk at the wire. Headed by a no-hoper longshot. Go Early get caught by late. Go Late and don't catch the Early. No return at all but am heartened by being close and only having played 3 days. Subprimebets not much better.

I shall soldier on. One thing I have noticed is that when I setup The Challenge over a relatively long period of time (1 year) I thought that that would be enough to even out randomness and replicate full time play. In 5 1/2 months we have played 35 races. Nobody has actually played that many, but even that from my betting experience is only representative of 2 weeks of full time play. 2 weeks isn't much for those with not great numbers yet (including me)!

Happy Matching my fellow Matchers!
Pook