Using the Martingale system for horses to follow - profitable or crazy?

[mowgli77]

For anyone not familiar with the Martingale system there is an explanation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system) It is basically doubling your stake to cover losses on events such as coin flips or possibly on something like red or black on roulette. (although there is a green zero) I have had the idea of basically using this system and applying it to horse racing, with horses to follow, the difference being that the odds will be different the next time the horse runs but those odds could be higher or lower than the previous run. As an example if you back horse A and put £10 win on the horse and it loses the next time out you put £20 on the horse, next time out £40, next time out £80 and so on. For anyone confident that they have selected a decent horse that could be ahead of the handicapper or worth following, maybe an unlucky loser do you think this would be fatally flawed or a possible way of making money? The idea was to apply this to a select few horses to follow rather than a massive list. You may not need to double your stake to make a profit if the odds when you had £10 on it were evens and this next run it is 8-1 in the betting for example. You could quite easily stick to the £10 stake again. We all seem to have horses we follow and then the day we forget to back it we check results and see it has won at double figures etc. A good example would be Art Connoisseur which I mentioned in another thread. I backed it earlier this season at 10-1 but it finished unplaced. I did not back it next time out but if I had doubled up to £20 for the next bet I would have been placing that bet at 20-1 for a massive profit. All good in hindsight but what if it had gone off at 5-1, half the odds of the original race? My thoughts were to follow a horse until it wins then reset the stake or stop backing the horse. A horse like Borderlescott would prove expensive to follow, it is a personal favourite of many punters but always seems to fall short of winning. Using that horse as an example from when it was 2nd on 24/5/08 at 10-1. 24/5/08 - £10 stake 10-1 15/6/08 - £20 stake 7-4 fav 12/7/08 - £40 stake 11-4 2/8/08 - £80 stake 7-1 22/8/08 - £160 stake 12-1 WON Total staked £ 310, total returned £2080, profit of £1770 Level Stakes equivalent of £10 per race would have been £50 staked, £130 return, profit of £80. Any ideas, suggestions etc as to if this would be a good/bad idea and how you would adjust stakes in line with the fluctuation of the odds? Hoping this creates some interesting and thought provoking debate. :ok

[RussP]

Re: Using the Martingale system for horses to follow - profitable or crazy? Not for me Phil:ok 2 fundamental, similar issues to me:

• After it's initial run at £10 for example, how many more runs can you sustain with those increased stakes? Would you be comfortable putting £640 to win on a 10/1 shot, say?
• What if the horse never wins another race? A massive loss is possible

Don't get me wrong, if the horse wins in the next 2 or 3 runs, you are potentially onto a good system. Yes, there are some positives but the negatives are too strong to ignore. One other thing to consider is price. What if the horse goes off on its 5th run, say, at 1/2. You don't recoup losses. What about setting a profit per race but take into account any losses already incurred? That would seem more sensible but it still has the 2 main negatives as above so, for me, I'd be avoiding this. Good luck whatever you decide:ok