[i]
TempletonPeck wrote: Otherwise, hedging = buying insurance = decreasing your edge. I have a hard enough time finding any edge in this game, and am loathe to give away even a fraction of it by hedging. Gambling within your bankroll means you can stand the swings. If you can't stand them psychologically, then you may be in the wrong line of work/hobby[/i]
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When I am truly in the proper mindset, the zone if you will, it is often at Fairmount Park on a Saturday afternoon with many friends and excellent gamblers around me. One thing that really works for me is once I have arrived to a potentially large horizontal score, as soon as the penultimate race has ended I start talking it out to all of my friends expressing what I have, the possible worst case scenarios, the potential upsetters, the potential decision of hedge to break even versus hedge to make a small profit albeit small versus let it ride b/c of confidence in that decision. I do not have an absolute rule here. I've found that the best option is make the best decision at that particular time based on all the information and opinions I respect available to me at that particular moment. I'm a curious person by nature so at that point I like to gather as much info as possible until about 6 to 7 minutes to post, then pull my thoughts together on my own, make a decision, speak it outloud to my friends one last time to see if there is any strong last minute thoughts that might sway me and then make the very best decision for me and live with it. I've found that has worked out best more times than not for me since I adopted that approach.

Early on when I started playing the p4, I would wait until after the final race to try to "surprise" my friends with my big score. Too many times I found out I didn't make the right decision on the last leg and adopted the approach above.

It has been a few months since this has happened as I've been traveling all over the country chasing the fantastic excitement of live racing. But this works best for me when I am dead serious about my play.