The Law of Ever-Changing Cycles

By Ramesh Akkineni

excerpts from Robert L. Bacon’s classic book on racetrack gambling, Secrets of Professional Turf Betting

Few players take into consideration the principle of ever-changing cycles of results. The would-be professional player must always understand that the form moves away from the public’s knowledge.

The beginner plunges ahead on a favorite that loses, then bets lightly on a fair-priced horse that wins. He keeps switching amounts and positions, so that he never has a worthwhile bet on a winner at a worthwhile price. He is always one race behind the form of a horse and several races behind the rhythm of the results sequences.

There is no danger of the public ever finding any key to the secret of winning. The crazy gambling urge and speculative hysteria that overcomes most players at the track makes that fact a certainty. But, if the public play ever did get wise to the facts of life, the principle of ever-changing cycles of results would move the form away from the public immediately.

The principle of ever-changing trends works to force quick and drastic changes of results sequences when the public happens to get wise to a winning idea.

The public can never catch up to the form – or the game ceases.

Some amateur players carry inconsistency to such a degree that they demand consistency from the horses, while at the same time being utterly inconsistent in their methods of play. It’s not the races that beat these players – it’s the switches!

Racing is simple. Everything about the game is logical and common sense and elementary. All the figures and the mathematics and the mechanics of racing can be understood by a child in junior-high school. But the game is decked out in an endless number of minor contradictions and open switches and deadfall traps, in order to lure the average player into doing everything wrong.

If the average player – the public play – kept out of all these switches and traps, then the powers-than-be would have to make the game far more complicated in order to insure the fact that the majority of players continue to lose and thus continue to furnish money to keep up the game.

The amateurs who play so carelessly and who fall into all the wrong switches do not stop to consider the percentages of their rightful losses. When an amateur goes to the track and loses nine bets (eight races and a daily double) and loses all his capital for the day, he has lost many times what the percentage calls for. He has no right to lose so much. It’s almost as if he did it on purpose!

Look at the percentages. For example, suppose the track’s total legal “take” is 10%. If so, a blind play on the Number One Post, Number Eight Post, or any mechanical designation, an ONLY lose 10% per race, over a period of time.

The player who bets eight races and a daily double a $2 each is not entitled to lose all his money – on average. He is only entitled to lose 20 cents per race if the take is 10%. The balance of his losses are ON PURPOSE, as it were. They are losses caused by his stepping into all the switches and traps.

Any system is better than no system at all. But, of course, we are not studying here to play any senseless systems or methods.

In actual racing, the percentage of winners does not remain constant as the public’s play beats down the prices of horses picked by any set scheme.

Some well-to-do horsemen who sent their horses out to do their best for probable betting prices of 3-to-1 “cooled off” as the prices sank below 5-to-2. Instead of trying their hardest to win, they sent the horses out to win, if they could win easily. But the boys were told not to punish the animals, told to pull them back out of the money in the stretch if they saw an easy winning was not possible.

The horsemen knew that this pulling back out of the money would make a bad race show as the last outing in the past performance charts, thus putting the public off the horse for next time.
But there is no use kidding: The professionals keep out of switches by waiting for the sound overlay spots. They don't play the bad races at both ends of the daily programs. They don't play bad races -- period! When they feel the least bit of doubt, they walk away from the mutuel windows and step into the bar for a leisurely drink that will last until a better spot comes along. (p. 27, 1975 edition)

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