By Brett Craig

Believe me. I know what it feels like. I may have been in Canada for the past few years but there is no escape. A losing day is a losing day and we all have them. That is one reason why I joined the team that developed the original Money Factory software project.

But I am getting ahead of myself. I wasn’t originally a punter but a computer programmer and only got right into punting as a result of working part time at Winform while I paid my way through University.

I had noticed that many of Winform’s clients (in the mid nineties) were doing very well and often called to say how well they were doing but then a few weeks later some of those very same clients were on the phone saying what a “bad” run we were having.

I experimented with a few staking plans and even helped write a floppy disk program for Winform entitled Countdown To Profits. That Staking plan had been released in the eighties and was such a good program that the chances of losing with it was, and is, 1000 to 1. Unfortunately, my programming skills at the time weren’t all that good and I never did make a total success of the program. It worked for $1 base units but as soon as you tried to use say $10 units it stopped working.

The drawback for many punters was that for each $1 unit you wanted to bet you needed over $300 in your bank. It was a big ratio and a turn off but look at the experience I had one Saturday in February.

Twenty four selections altogether and I bet over $8,000 in total on various combinations for a return of just one win at $1.80, one at $4.70 and a loss of over $6,000. Now to get that back I would need a big run of winners and at decent prices. It’s like looking up at a very steep hill, knowing that there is no other option but to climb it. I felt sick!

Dear reader, if you are a $10 punter, just imagine a loss of over $200 on the day. It still hurts doesn’t it but somehow when you add a “k” on the end it just seems so much more serious and sickening.

How much better off you would be if those losses were just a part of a calculated Staking program such as I helped put together all those years ago? At the end of the Saturday you are up to only a three unit bet and after a small number of winners on the next betting day (best price $5.50) you are back in front. Now I admit that the winnings would not be enough to send your kids on holidays but betting just level stakes, after five winners from nine bets, you are still at least five good winners away from even getting square.

After my recent experience I have gone back to my own program and I did make a profit myself the next betting day. I don’t like the feeling of losing and I think I prefer the Countdown To Profits or Money Factory approach where a bad run does not threaten my bank even though the potential for big profits is far more conservative.

Do you agree? Isn’t it the most terrible feeling to see bet after bet go down? I can still see one horse looking so good that I wrote the dividend down and then along comes some chaff bandit that I never even heard of and wasn’t even in the picture with 100 to go and steals my lowly $2.70 dividend in the last stride.

Then to top it off my $2.30 chance finally gets to the front only to see a $31 longshot slip through an impossible opening on the fence.

You know, they say to be a winner you have to learn how to cope with being a loser. I really got to know what they mean that day. As for Brett Craig, well, I’m on the way to being an executive with a worldwide software company on over $100,000 and my position in Canada allows me unlimited access to some of the best skiing in the world. It’s hard to imagine that I started at Winform on $60 a week and my experience there was enough to get me a start in IT.

I haven’t forgotten about Racing though, it still forms a big part of my income and I do intend to contribute the occasional article to the magazine. I find that the Winform rating method works over here in Canada just as well as home but the dividends available here and the short Racing season don’t suit, so more often than not I am sticking to betting Australian races even though the hours don’t quite suit but hey! There’s only the same old crap on TV here too!