The Gambler Who Cracked the Horse-Racing Code Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time. Horse racing is something like a religion in Hong Kong, whose citizens bet more than anyone else on Earth. Their cathedral is Happy Valley Racecourse, whose grassy oval track and floodlit stands are ringed at night by one of the sport’s grandest views: neon skyscrapers and neat stacks of high-rises, a constellation of illuminated windows, and beyond them, lush hills silhouetted in darkness. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...nt=business&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business
Read this article few days ago and wonder why could he not crack the stock market code. May be number of variables influencing the stock prices are way too many to get hold of on reliable basis. Ex: a third world coup suddenly puts oil prices on a high. How to predict a third world coup (like it happened in Turkey couple of years back) or sudden attack by rebels on oil major refinery in Saudi Arabia etc. etc.
Very interesting. Thanks. Clearly, from the article, that lifestyle can take its toll on some people. Just like trading.
One of my "aha" moments as a trader was when I finally realized that trading is, in fact, gambling; and that successful professional gamblers played games with real, quantifiable edges. Here is another good article from 17 years ago: https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/03/magazine/the-wizard-of-odds.html
I actually got my start on trading by working for my cousin in Chicago as he was a bookmaker, I learned probabilities and how to make odds. Plus, it more than paid the bills...it was crazy times in my life. But he taught me baseball, football, horse racing and how to count cards for Blackjack up to two deck shoe and going to Vegas where in early 80s, they had one deck shoes-WOW-use to fly in every weekend. So the trick to any gaming is figuring out the nuances and don't get caught. But amazing how anything you do becomes like a job and one day you just stop. Now with six deck shoes, almost impossible without computer aid. You are right, your personality changes and for the worst, so I quit and went to the markets. I still go once in a while for sprints in horse racing, take a girlfriend and give her a fifty and bet on a horse, they get those incredible excitable eyes and jumping all and about when I tell them they could keep the winnings. Life is just patterns within patterns.
Not the first though, Portway Press Ltd was formed in 1948 by Phil Bull, who wanted to establish a mathematical link to a horse's performance, based on the time the horse recorded.
I started out in the early 1980s writing simple algorithm code for the first computers, for horse racing gambling. The stock market turned out to be easier and more profitable.