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    Friday, May 13, 2005

    競馬

    hmm... promised to update you guys on a lot of things... pretty tired from work now, so thought i will take a little break and write about something...

    let's start from where i left off -- or rather, first promised.

    horse racing.

    hmm, for those who are like me, have never been to horse racing before (before this time at least), i guess our mental picture of horse racing is a place filled with dirty old man, probably those kinda lao ah peks with a polo T, berms and old-man-sandals getup, holding newspapers or some other almanacs, shouting and cheering on their horses. thankfully it wasn't like that, at least not in Tokyo.

    i was surprised to see many youngsters like me (or even younger) there... many young couples were there too, as if they were there for a date or something. most were dressed rather well, well, not ginza-standard, but at least got kawasaki-standard bah... they were generally unboisterous, polite, and watching the races like ppl you see in tv watching a pga golf tournament, with the occasional cheer or sigh...

    so, i was rather impressed with the ppl who were present.

    ticketing-wise, i guess the picture of stephen chow buying tickets from counters in the movie "赌圣" is still in my head. i dunno about hk or singapore now, but here... everything is computerised and you buy tickets from an automatic teller machine. okok... the fun of shading the betting slips is still retained... you basically feed the completed tickets into the machine, pay the money, and collect the betting tickets. way cool.

    as for the horses proper, hmmm... not as exciting as i had expected, maybe partly due to the nonchalant spectators. the start of the race is not signalled by a blare of a horn like what you see in sports meets. suddenly they just start running, and the commentry just say "スタートしました"... not particularly an exciting way to start a race. also... can't hear the sounds of horse galloping... wonder whether if it's because we were not seated very close to the course.

    anyways, as for betting, yes, i did try my hand at it. minimum bet was 100 yen, and there were 12 races per day. so i betted an average of 100yen/race => spent 1200 yen. heng i won on 2 or 3, albeit small wins.... so i recouped some and actually had a net loss of ard 200 yen (plus another 200 yen for entrance = 400). not too bad for 1 whole day of entertainment.

    i went together with calvin, yasu, mika (yasu's wife), and 3 other yasu's friends. his fren won ard 400 SGD in one race... lucky chap. (and he only treated us to a 147 yen drink each....err... so generous of him...)

    after 1 day of observation, i found that the chances of recommended or popular horses winning the race was not particularly high... in many races, unheralded horses came out tops... and that's when ppl who bet on them won big. i betted on 3 good horses for top 3 spots and won 490 yen only. compared to someone who bets on 1 popular one and another unpopular one, he can go home with 30,000 yen or more (with a 100 yen bet)...

    so there you see... winston's "sure-win"* tip of the day:
    pick a super duper popular horse (those sure win kind), and pair it with all other horses. eg. buy horse1-horse2, horse1-horse3... and so on.. if got 10 horses in the race, you will need to pay 900 yen. sit back, and hope that this popular horse dun cock-up, and that an unheralded horse comes in second. now, if the popular horse is in top 2, at least you can recoup something (since you betted on all others), so worst off, you end up like me winning 400 yen (net-loss 500 yen). however, if an unheralded horse comes in together with the popular one, you win about 20-30k yen!! of course, if your popular horse dun come in top 2, you lose all.

    if you do some calculations, let's say 1000 yen for each race, as long as within 20-30 races, something like this happens, you will definitely win. if so suay, then too bad, dun come and look for me... ;p

    but on that day when i went, out of 12 races, i remember at least 3 races, a popular horse and an unpopular one came in top 2, and ppl won like 400 bucks (SGD of course) in that one race...

    i remember the last race, if you predict the top 3 horses in their respective orders correctly, you win over 600,000 yen with a 100 yen bet! (an unpopular horse was in top 3).

    anyway, it was quite an experience i must say, and i am pretty satisfied at that... dun think i will go again anytime in the future, so all concerned frens and family, dun worry. (^v^)

    leave you with this next tip:

    winston's confirm-sure-win tip of the day:
    dun gamble... dun bet... you dun lose anything, you win.


    * in the events if the "sure-win" tip doesn't win, note that the "sure-win" is in inverted commas.


    posted by winz at 4:08 PM   0 comments

    ~|=|~

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