Bert, you see, didn’t believe in complexity, and exotic pace-line formulations, etc. He was truly an old-fashioned ‘seat of the pants’ type of player, who relied heavily on information from the same pps that were staring everyone else in the face — he just saw them in a different way.
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Quoting Bert, ‘I was always good at mathematics and thus, at ‘logic’. When I look at the past performances it’s like a jigsaw puzzle completing itself right before my eyes. I know almost immediately who the main contender(s) are, the likely pace scenario and the top jock/trainer teams.
‘I also have a knack to know, almost immediately, if a race is playable or not. I initially assumed everyone could see the same numbers, or combinations thereof, that I was looking at – but after seeing so many of my picks go off at big odds, when I thought they should be among the favorites, I realized I might indeed have been bestowed with a bit of ‘gift’ where the ponies were concerned.’
Bert boasts a string of high ratings from Phillips Racing Newsletter, the ‘consumer reports’ of the horse racing system/software industry including a ‘Very Good 8’ (out of 10) for the system we are about to discuss here, his ‘Maximus!’, which is now on Software for the first time. (Bert also received ‘8’ and ‘9’ ratings for his Quick Figure Plus, Speed Key, Monster Daily Double System and others)
Bert designed Maximus! to provide Precision Consistency for the Player. Below find his Introduction. While Bert focused on the Top Three/Four contenders as his ‘base’, with the software program Len was able to introduce some really neat algorithms that get the likely winner down to just one or two horses (and you can make it even more precise by sticking to the ‘Best Bets’ as outlined in the Manual).
The Value of ‘Negative’ Elimination Handicapping
What Bert does in Maximus is employ what he calls ‘Negative Elimination’ Solution Handicapping.
While many systems produce selections based on positive handicapping factors, Bert’s theory promotes finding the horse(s) that show the fewest ‘negative’ qualities/factors.
👉👉You will note in the screenshots below that the horses with the LOWEST positive or highest negative scores in the TOT column are the selections.
Bert says: ‘My approach in Maximus, and in a few other of my methodologies, is to find the horse(s) who have the fewest ‘negative’ handicapping factors. So I’m looking for a horse who is very hard to knock because he/she simply has done very little wrong recently, and who I simply cannot eliminate based on normal negative factors.
As you will see in Maximus!, this approach may work equally as well as a method that focuses on positive factors, but the problem with those methods is that you often end up with the chalk, because just about everyone is approaching handicapping from a ‘positive factor’ standpoint.
With Negative Elimination Handicapping, your prices will inevitably be higher, without sacrificing win/place/show hit-rate percentage.’