Everyone can have their own view on everything but personally I prefer the term selection process cos I don’t really distinguish between method and system other than a ‘system’ tends to mean it’s more open to automation and more fixed, however who is doing the automating makes a big difference as to what is possible i.e. a professional vs a have go hero who’s recorded a macro in excel.
But I'm somewhat sceptical of any method/system which wouldn't necessarily come up with the same selection if you looked at the race again with exactly the same information available on paper, on screen or in your head etc whether before or after the race has run.
I see a selection process as a repeatable set of steps, they can be based on hard data and/or soft data and not all applicable to every race or horse, and some can alter according to xyz criteria i.e. from very simple such as back top OR if trainer a, b or c. To a big decision tree containing a myriad of variables.
In my experience, even the ones that work to whatever degree don’t always stay that way for various reasons.
Losing runs can be hard and the lower your average strike rate the worse they can be, I’ve done the maths in excel and built a bets simulator that I can plug in parms such total bets, strike and avg win odds, and they both came up with the same results e.g.
For a 1000 bets
a 20% strike you can end up with a losing run of 30
a 30% strike you can end up with a losing run of 19
a 40% strike you can end up with a losing run of 13
The clustering of wins and losses over an extended sequence can be very interesting i.e. whether backing doubles, trebles etc would have any mileage.
From what I've seen an incorrect/bad staking plan can turn a winning selection process into a losing one very easily.
