FTS Betslip – How Long Do I Wait

and there are two ways that people get this wrong and they can look like they are completely opposite the first is the better who bins a system after 30 40 bets because it is two points down they feel they've done you know done whatever three four weeks been doing this haven't got anywhere And the second is the same better or another different better who has been forward testing the same idea or the same three ideas, one idea, whatever it may be, for 18 months at stakes so small that they're never going to make any difference in their life and they do not matter.

And the reason he's testing at small stakes is because of uncertainty, they're not sure.

So one looks like recklessness, binning a system early, and the other looks like caution.

For me, they're actually the same error in different clothes.

Both of them are treating certainty as the thing they are waiting for.

They are waiting to be absolutely certain this will win before I continue.

One gives up when the certainty doesn't arrive fast enough, the other waits forever because certainty is never ever gonna arrive at all in this game.

And that is what is really key.

One of the elements I've mentioned over 20 years of doing this, the maths of proof, betting is mathematics, the maths of proof and why it is worse than you think when I mentioned those big numbers at the start of the episode.

so let me be absolutely precise by what i mean by proof because it is a word that people throw around without meaning anything much by it and it comes in different ways people want to see proof that somebody wins as proof that they will win but the two don't correlate whatsoever two different people different executions different mindsets so there is real one test and it is this let's assume that your system has no edge whatsoever assuming is churning at correctly price odds and you are getting nowhere now Ask yourself, what is a chance that a system that would be a major tool produces a record this good purely by luck? If that chance is under 5%, we say the result is statistically significant and we are entitled to say we have found something.

That is the standard used pretty more or less everywhere serious.

It's a standard I tend to use.

Now, Here's a bit that matters.

We can rearrange that test to tell you how many bets you need before it could possibly come out positive.

And when you do, you get something surprisingly simple.

The number of bets you need is roughly 2.7 times your average odds minus one divided by your return on investment squared with the ROI written as a decimal.

I'll say it again, 2.7 times your average odds minus one divided by your return on investment squared with the ROI written as a decimal.

I'm not gonna apologize for that formula.

That's what it is.

You do not need to memorize that.

You need the examples.

There is a written blog alongside this episode of the podcast as there with all of them and the examples will be there.

I'm going to go through some of them right now.

So five percent ROI average odds of two is one thousand and eighty two bits.

5% ROI at odds of three, number I gave you at the start of the episode, 2,165 bets.