In casino circles, the concept of a basic strategy is applicable to several different games, most notably, blackjack and baccarat.

These guides aren’t designed to guarantee wins or make people rich. They exist to ensure that the player is making the most optimal moves in any given scenario and to minimize the amount of money they stand to lose.

While that’s not quite as exciting as a system that beats the casino, basic strategy guides are considered essential reading, nonetheless.

To elaborate, the objective of the standard strategy in blackjack and baccarat is the same, namely, to play with a low house edge. However, there’s a distinction between how this is achieved in both games. In blackjack, the goal is to play in such a way that easy mistakes are eliminated.

Baccarat only allows for a single decision, though - your wager. In this case, guides to basic baccarat strategy and tips suggest that the player bets as little as possible on the side with the lowest house edge. This should lead to a more equitable battle with the dealer.

Of course, blind luck does still play a large role in both games.

So, what about horse racing betting? As a sport, the outcome of horse racing events is dependent on all sorts of unpredictable factors, which makes the use of a basic strategy a little less likely. Still, efforts have been made to produce a viable system that can be used repeatedly. A few examples include wagering on beaten favourites, Dutch betting, and lay betting. These strategies seek to take advantage of research and analysis to give fans a decent chance of picking a winner.

Betting Systems

Like in blackjack, these systems are deceptively simple. The beaten favourites system is based on the idea that a previously winning horse is unlikely to post more than one or two failures in a row, so it can be wagered on despite a previous loss.

While this strategy does have echoes of the gambler’s fallacy, the belief that a loss means a win is owed, horse racing is not a game of chance, rather, it’s one of form. Factors like whether a horse has run on a particular track before still come into play.

This kind of strategy actually has more in common with betting systems like Martingale, d’Alembert, and Fibonacci, based on the sequence of the sequence of the same name, than the blackjack strategy mentioned earlier. For instance, Dutch betting has some similarities with the James Bond system of wagering in roulette.

In this style of betting, the player attempts to cover as much of the board as possible to hedge against losses. Unfortunately, research suggests that this system produces a net loss over time.

The Martingale system is actually quite easy to apply to horse racing betting, as it only has two rules - double your stake on a loss and reset it on a win. The major concern with wagering in this way is that it’s incompatible with lengthy losing streaks, as the amount of money the player needs to bet after a loss increases exponentially. Whether you’d actually want to want to use a betting system for horse racing is, of course, a personal decision but it can be unwise to reduce your options to a series of rigid rules.

Overall, while betting systems and strategies do provide unique ways of wagering on all kinds of things, they can introduce a lot of risk into your bet slip.