There's always a question "when is enough enough?" This is especially true of any Racing selection method. Is it a good selection service when we have 35 winners from one hundred selections? Or do we need 350 winners from one thousand selections?

When we first issued the Winline Gt-w program we used the system maker to produce several system ideas. One of these was the Hotshots. We originally named it this way because the first few winners were all at pretty short prices. This has changed now that more data is in but the name remains.

After nearly 800 selections the original strike rate has actually been improved and so too has the average price of winners. Recent profits have been in the order of 20% or more and even the TAB place dividends have shown a small profit.

The tables below show just how consistent the performance has been, from a low of 26% in January 1998 to a high of 51% in May 1998. Overall we have 36% winners and 68% placings and it is how we use this information that is important.

The old six point divisor plan would have been a good option but it is rare for a winner to be over $7. This simply means that everytime we start a new sequence, the first winner takes us down to a low divisor.

Malcolm Knowles appears to have overcome this problem with his book, Bet Smarter and Win. In this book he is able to show you how to work out the right divisor for various types of selection method. The method is geared to the average dividend and strike rate and bets are in sets of ten. This leads to well controlled betting and the restriction to sets of ten bets means that we are not waiting forever for a result.

Even though a lot of people don't like "target" betting, it can be very productive if used on the appropriate set of selections. The Hotshots do look like the right set.