A funny thing happened on the way to Christmas: the 7-dog trial hit a new high, then slid back a few bucks. The only one who wasn't surprised was me.

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Something I learned about modern technology this year, with just a few days to go before we start a new decade, is that sometimes, things don't go as planned.

I figured that with Touch in hand, I would be able to read all the data I needed on www.freescoresandodds.com and stay on top of each day's bets that way.

Not so.

The service (which is excellent, by the way) is naturally set up for wide screens, so with a PDA, the choice is between illegible and inaccessible.

Then the WiFi went down at my son's house, rendering two Mac laptops and a Mac desktop and the Touch virtually useless.

By then I was cross-eyed from squinting at the small screen on my gizmo, and about ready to defenestrate it next time I hit the freeway.

The problem was solved when Santa came early with a new laptop that has an 18.4ins screen, plus six times the ram and 120 times the storage of my dying Dell.

Combine that with the blazing speed of the Wi-Fi at my friend Pat's gorgeous B&B in South Pasadena, and you have easy access to anything anywhere in the 'Net.

I won't have final figures until I get home, but the preliminary pre-Christmas bottom line for the 7-dog trial is a win to date of $3,720 or 86% of the new BWTD.

LTDs have dropped to less than $6,000 and that keeps us on target for an overall win to date (WTD) of a little over $10,000 when all the series are back to minimum bets after full recoveries.

Four of the seven series are substantially in the black right now, and we can be sure that the others will fall in line in due time.

It stands to sense that we're going to take it in the shorts on days when underdogs underperform.

But it also stands to sense that as the sample grows, the DWR will move closer to 45%, or the win rate at which a profit is inevitable.

A couple of updated screen shots:





The first shot above illustrates how target betting does much better than flat $100 bets against the same sample of underdogs, and the red line tracks the futility of betting a fixed $100 against every favorite in the same set of games.

There is, clearly, no money to be made from backing favorites.

If you were a bookie, your money would be on underdogs, but you would be perfectly happy to take bets on so-called sure things knowing that even if your customers win more bets than they lose, they can't beat the odds and walk away with a profit.

Christmas brings a two-day near shutdown to the world of bettable sports, so I won't be looking for more investment opportunities until December 26, or Boxing Day back in the old country.

We're also descending en masse on Santa Anita Racetrack for opening day that day, so there will be plenty to think about...

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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