Dogs delivered again yesterday, and both versions of the 7-dog trial took significant leaps forward. Once again, the numbers were on our side.

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Neither of the rules sets is out of the woods yet, but the 50x trial jumped to 80% of its best win to date and it's early days!

Dognostics take half-hearted potshots at me from time to time, suggesting that somehow I am cooking the books to support my nutty ideas.

Given that each day's bets are usually posted several hours ahead of game starts, and that when I'm occasionally beaten by the clock, it is never by more than a few minutes, I don't see how I could do that.

But the folks out there who believe with every fiber of their being that there is no way to beat the book (or the house) will do whatever it takes to dump cold water on anyone who dares to differ.

And that includes...cooking the books!

Response to my recent post about video poker has been tepid, but so far no one has suggested electric shock therapy or a straightjacket.

Breaking away from the consensus that high cards should always be held in pursuit of what usually turns out to be a push at best takes intestinal fortitude, I agree, but at least according to the iPod sim, it's worth it.

Here's the current state of play (although I promised myself that I would stop at +10,000 units!).


To those who say the app has to be flawed, I can only repeat that I have yet to see a single royal flush, and have only hit two straight flushes to date. The rest of the wins have been plain old fours, flushes, straights, threes and pairs.

The same skeptics look at my results against the iPod blackjack app, which would be much higher but for the $5,000 table limit, and grumble that I must have found some way to hack into the program and crank up the numbers.


I suppose it's possible, but I sure as hell don't know how!

Back to business with today's 7-dog trial updates:





Thursday, February 25 at 11:50am:

A nasty, nasty day yesterday. What more can I say?

Insult was added to injury when one of the only two winning picks dropped below the magic break-even point (+100) when the time came to place the day's bets.

%@it happens...

Here's the dreadful data:





My online meanderings yesterday led me to a British website that pitches a tip service focused on European professional football, or soccer to American readers.

Current results at Smarter Gambler show the service just under 10% ahead in terms of right picks over wrong ones, which is good.

The same summary shows both of the two separate "banks" that the service ties to its selections making a loss over the same period, which is bad.

How is it possible for a punter to be right more often than he's wrong and still lose money?

By backing favorites, that's how...

An important reminder: The only person likely to make money out of this blog is you, Dear Reader. There's nothing to buy, ever, and your soul is safe (from me, at least). Test my ideas and use them or don't. It's up to you.
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