Heuristics – are we all system users?

How this sub-conscious mental approach can control our way of betting
 
One of the people I follow on Instagram is a guy called Rory Sutherland.

He’s an advertising executive / public speaker who talks about a lot of things business-orientated, but does so from an angle of trying to (a) understand how and why decisions are made and (b) how they could be made better.

He talks a lot of sense, to be fair, and is well worth checking out – this is one article about him taken from The Guardian (read here).

Now a favourite term of his is “heuristic”.

A word I’ve come across before, but never fully understood in terms of its meaning and, more importantly, its application.

So here goes.

Let’s define the word

Go onto Wikipedia and their definition is…

So a heuristic approach is one where we use mental shortcuts to make decisions quicker and more efficiently. Saving us both time and mental energy.

Big business uses this all the time in how they operate – to build factories, recruit staff, design products, develop advertising campaigns – and this is where Rory Sutherland adds interesting and insightful real-life examples to explain why, among other things, McDonalds is a better place to dine than a Michelin Star restaurant. It’s true – go check him out!

And in terms of betting…

Well, I mention this as I was chewing my pen the other day, thinking about profitable horseracing betting systems.

For some people these are an absolute non-starter. Designed to fail. Back-tested. Never deliver the future gains that past records seem to “guarantee”.

And I get that.

From my early years in this business back in the 1990’s, when the likes of Clive Holt’s Fineform was doing the rounds… and the Brimardon System (was it?)… there have always been systems touted as the way to surefire success.

Fast-track strategies that provide you with quick, easy and limitless gains by simply following XYZ.

And I wouldn’t disagree that a healthy degree of scepticism is deserving of many so-called systems – just like any other sports betting services you might encounter. They can often be over-simplified and/or under-tested flights of fancy.

But to fair…

In certain circumstances, you can make a case for following a system, or possibly a matrix of strategies that dovetail together to form a consistent yield. With the right methods this can be possible – and I’ve dealt with several professionals who work this kind of arrangement (very profitably I might add) to supplement their day-to-day betting.

I freely admit I do have a soft spot for betting systems, and having dealt with a number of system builders and users over the years – Nick Mordin immediately springs to mind – I can understand their appeal… both for what they promise to deliver and (in some cases) the money these profitable betting systems actually do generate.

So are we all system users, consciously or not?

This is the point about applying the term heuristic to betting.

Because some readers of this article will be ardent non-believers in betting systems.

They might have tried them in the past, and failed, attempted to create ones themselves, and lost, or simply found the whole idea of stumbling across “Sid James budgie” (a great reference if you get it!) impossible to believe in.

But what they then go and do… while leafing through the formbook and studying the day’s racing by themselves, coming up with their own personal bets… is to create an almost systematic (or heuristic) approach to their own bet selection.

So examples of this would be…

Betting solely the flat, or All-Weather, instead of the jumps, only betting to win (at the head of the market) or only taking “value” EW prices. Following certain stables, looking for the same type of horses (young and improving, tested and reliable, 3yo’s, novice chasers), those running within so many days of their last outing, not backing runners first time out, swerving maidens (or concentrating on them), avoiding Class 4/5/6 races, only getting involved in listed events, betting handicap debutants, latching onto market movers, being led by maximum/minimum field sizes… the list goes on.

There are, as we know, a myriad of criteria by which we can distil down all the runners and riders on the card and eventually select the horses which we choose to back.

We give greater/lesser weight to some variables… but whether we realise it or not, there’s a general mental checklist we all engage when faced with picking our one or two bets from the day’s card.

This is a heuristic approach being used.

A mental short-hand, often sub-conscious, that leads us to selecting any particular horse in any particular race.

It’s not as constrictive as a system, which if rigidly followed will always deliver the same outcome whoever picks the bets…

But from a personal perspective, it’s pretty close to a system. And if nothing else is certainly deserving of being called a “systematic approach”.

Point being, and I know this from my own betting, if I sat down and tried to write out the way in which I pick my own bets, there would be broad (yes) but certainly visible framework within which the vast majority of them would fall. Certain horses would always fall within consideration, others would never be entertained.

A system? Not in so many words.

But then again, not too far way!!

[If you have a killer system by all means drop me a line and let me know – click here]

 

OPINION: In the final analysis, it’s fair to say there’s a visible gap which between a bona fide “betting system”, with its rigid rules and guidelines, and the “systematic approach” many punters take in selecting their own bets.  But what I find interesting is that for those who might look down their noses at racing systems and the like, their own bet selection process isn’t a million miles away from the very same. As such, the use of a heuristic definition to our actions means there is, quite possibly, a system user in all of us.