Seven year book project was turned into software that not only gives me a winner selection, but also structures the exotic wagers. It has proven to be extremely profitable. The techs at IBM and I initially were going to JV and develop a software on their Neural Net platform, but we could never work out the little details. They were even kind enough to only tell me that the development cost would ONLY be approximately $250,000. I then undertook my Beowulf cluster project. Now, the system downloads the race cards the night before, calculates what I should do and then provides me with a framework for a static wager. Then as the races come up, I'll phone bet (while watching my dish coverage of the races). Every now and again, I'll take my laptop and head to the local OTB and log back in to the server for real time updating. I don't do this much anymore as you can imagine the crowd that grows after a few larger exotic wins.
I had developed a system for sports wagers earlier this year which gave me about 35% weekly increment. It was like printing money. I did about one hundred bets a week for about one month then they changed something in their system and the odds became so bad that I was constantly losing money.
I was reading this thread and remembered this article. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/10.03/betting_pr.html
Yeah... this is a cool story. Were you trading at the time or how did you get into trading from racing bets(vice versa)...
"Thoroughbred Handicapping With Confidence" (first edition) was completed in '95. I completed the last revision in '98. Originally I had envisioned a book for sale but it proved so successful that I decided against marketing it. It then became the outline/guide for further strategy development. I then decided to turn it into proprietary software and I sat down with the folks at IBM (software division) late in '98. When we couldn't agree on how to proceed, I struck out on my own. I now run the actual handicapping software in two flavors, Windows and Linux. The Beowulf cluster does all the real data crunching, sorting and assemblage and the windows desktop/laptop's just provide a Windows based onsite/remote access capacity. The software provides and allows straight wagering as well as determining when I need a Dutch wager for higher success probabilities. And I do successfully wager regularly on the Hong Kong circuit. But it's still fun sitting down with the local OTB regulars and doubters and causing a raised eyebrow at the luck/success from time to time.
Hose racing was the outlet for entertainment and the project was launched with a dare from a client who told me that it was impossible to use a computer to do a better job handicapping than a human could. Something about a computer/blackbox system not being able to "FEEL" when a bet was right. Stocks were something I was already into as I felt I could do as well with my capital as most of the clowns who were professionally losing my money could.
To the "Computer Cluster" crew and other CS majors: Is there a rough equation that will tell me (assuming all of the computers have equal processing power) how much faster than X (X being the processing power of one computer) a collection of Y computers would give me? Example 1X (one computer) = 1Y 2X (two computers) = 1.6Y? I know you cannot double your power with two computers since their is overhead in negotiation between the two, but perhaps there is a rough formula involved. I am interested in knowing how much power I will get from a cluster of (10) 3.0 Ghz Pentium IV.