Art or Science ?

[Trotter]

I've been on a bit of a bad run as far as picking winners......... It's dawning on me that my bad runs coincide with over-studying and in particular with those periods when I try and reduce winner finding to a numerical exercise. By that I mean scouring the various ratings and speed figures, stamina quotants, working out my own ratings for speed, class etc. In other words trying to assign numbers to each horse. The scientific approach ! During these periods I look in depth at every horse in the race and spend equal amounts of time on the 100/1 shot as the 6/1 shot, tho' I'm never thinking it has a chance of winning. All this is very time consuming and usually unproductive in that the final conclusion is that I can't even pick one..........usually because I convince myself that most of them might win. When I'm more successful is when I spend much less time on a race, go on 'hunches', look down the card and mentally have a short list without any research, pick my selection - then look at the form to confirm why it might win. I wouldn't even look at the basic form for three-quarters of the field. I think of this as 'flair' or the artistic approach Does this ring a bell with anyone else ? I'm sure people are all different and different methods will work for some and not for others. In my mind I like to think that the scientific approach must be better - it's more informed and more in depth. But for me it just doesn't work. Trouble is - I keep getting drawn back to it and wasting lots of time Is it a matter of confidence - lacking confidence in selections unless you can pin some numbers on it ? Are you a scientist or an artist ? Sorry for the ramble, but I can't get into tomorrow's racing and my posting fingers are getting itchy.............:lol

[billy the punter]

Re: Art or Science ? Picking winners is definitely an "art". The "scientific" approach will only get you so far. This "artisic" or "flair" way all comes from race-reading I believe, rather than hunches. NB race-reading does not mean unlucky in-running etc. Sorry don't mean to sound patronising there but some (not all) sometimes get the wrong end of the stick. :ok