Money Matters - Record Keeping

Keeping a record of all the bets you make is not an easy thing to do. Not only can it be time consuming, but when you're losing it can also be depressing to have that reminder constantly in your face.

Overlooking the task of record keeping may make your punting life easier, after all, ignorance is bliss... but the consequence of your negligence is that you'll never improve beyond your current level of achievement. After all, if you don't know where you're at, or what factors contribute to your success, then how can you possibly improve?

If you want to keep improving your results and become a long-term winner, you must keep records, there's no escaping it!

What To Record?

The easiest way to keep a good set of betting records is through an Excel spreadsheet, which has a number of useful features that you can use to analyse your results. Before starting though you should put some thought into what details you want to keep and why? The purpose of betting records is not only to keep an account of your profit or loss, but also to provide information that can help you to understand and improve those results. It's only worth keeping details that can contribute to these objectives.

It goes without saying that you should keep basic details of each bet such as date, track, going, horse name, bet amount, price obtained, finish position etc. but you may also like to consider recording one or more of the following:

1. SP and TAB dividend: Compare your average dividend against the SP / TAB to assess your price effectiveness (see Jan 06 issue).

2. Market rank: Compare your results when backing favourites as opposed to those ranked further down in the market.

3. Type of bet: Did you place your bet at Top Fluctuation, a fixed bookmakers price, tote price or one of the "best tote" products offered by Corporate Bookmakers? It's worthwhile knowing which provides the best returns and by how much?

4. In Run Position:  Where do you expect the horse to be in the run? Where did it actually race? How do your results compare on leaders as opposed to midfield and back runners?

5. Bet Confidence or Basis: Do your bets come from specific selection strategies? If so, it's useful to measure the results from each. Alternatively, you may like to allocate A,B or C to each selection based on your confidence.

6. Comment: It's often useful to reflect back on your bets and recall important details that help put your results in perspective. i.e. protests, photo finishes that go for or against you, poor rides, unpredictable failures etc.

The number of details you can record is unlimited and comes down to how much time you want to spend keeping records and most importantly, what details you think can contribute to improving your results.

Analysing Your Bets With GTX

With the GTX Program you can use the User Horse Flags feature to flag each bet you make and then analyse the results with the System Developer, applying either a level or proportional staking method. 

The hundreds of variables in the GTX System Developer gives you extraordinary power to discover exactly how you can improve your results. For example, consider the bet record below, with all bets analysed by their GTX Rating Rank:

It's clear that the best results have come from those bets that were also top rated by GTX. In the future this punter may want to think twice about back non-top rated runners.

What about the same set of bets analysed by Trakform Rating Rank?

Bets that were top rated by Trakform have been remarkably profitable (20.9%) against the overall average of 11.8% POT.

By refining the analysis further we can see the results of those bets that were top rated by both GTX and Trakform Ratings:

An overall POT of 28.6% from 374 selections shows an incredibly profitable group of bets.  Without the use of the System Developer it would be virtually impossible to identify these type of opportunities to improve your results. Using the GTX System Developer can take your record keeping and future results to a whole new level!

CLICK HERE to see a list of the System Developer parameters you can analyse your bets by.

How Seriously Do You Take Your Betting?

Keeping records on a consistent basis can be a challenge, but if you want to treat your betting as more than a casual hobby and hope to make regular profit from it, then they are an absolute must!

Your betting records not only show you how much you are winning or losing, but also provide information to help you better understand your results and make improvements that can boost your performance in the future. As with all things in racing though, the more you put in, the more you will get back. The choice is yours!