Dept. of Ever-Changing Cycles Write to us at: (address is not clickable)

No system works forever, as Robert Bacon noted in his immortal Secrets of Professional Turf Betting. One of our idees fixes is to keep this timeless principle always in mind in testing and employing systems. One of the best accounts we've read of the principle recently arrived in our inbox from speculator Andrew Moe of Encinitas, Calif., as a contribution to the Chief Rabbi's wine vat. We are pleased to reprint it in full:

03/25/2004
Ever-Changing Cycles in Traffic
By Andrew Moe, a speculator from Encinitas, Calif.

For the past five years, I have battled Southern California freeway traffic on the same stretch of Interstate 5 heading north out of San Diego. My  daily commute takes 20 minutes with no traffic but can reach 60 minutes on a Friday afternoon when the horses are running off a 4 PM first post at Del  Mar. Ideally, I'm in the clubhouse by then, clutching my  tickets as the horses thunder down the stretch. But just outside, the 5 North is a  parking lot, backed up for at least 5 miles - sometimes double that.

Most days, I'm looking at 40 minutes door to door if I stick to the  freeway. The scientist in me demands constant scrutiny of the fastest way to drive the 5. Initially, I clocked the time from exit to exit in each  lane. After a few weeks, several patterns became clear and I was able to knock about 10 minutes off of a 40 minute drive. In heavy  traffic, several aggressive - yet legal - maneuvers could shave as much as 15 minutes.

For nearly two years, the same patterns worked beautifully.  At an average of 10 minutes per day, I figured that I saved about 50 minutes a week. Each day, I took small delight in gliding past rows of stopped cars, exploiting the fastest lanes each step of the way.

Over time, I began to notice more and more people using the quicker lanes. As a result, they began to lose their effectiveness. Brandishing  my stopwatch, I was appalled to find that I was averaging 35 minutes instead of my normal 30. Feeling cheated out of 5 minutes/day, I reclocked the lanes exit to exit. New patterns had emerged. Some were easy to predict, others were surprisingly subtle.

Viewed day to day, the changes were impossible to detect.  But when sampled  at long intervals, they were clearly evident. A modification of my system  was necessary and once implemented, I was back down to 30 minutes. Clearly the law of Ever-Changing Cycles is at work, its slow hand wreaking havoc on fixed systems over time.

To keep my time at 30 minutes, it is necessary to be constantly vigilant in monitoring the various lanes for flow changes. Also, it's necessary to be able to identify longer term changes vs. daily changes. A stalled car in lane 3 will disrupt today's traffic, but will have no impact on future dates.

Interestingly, I can go door to door without ever taking the freeway in about 45 minutes. The first part of the drive plods though a gritty industrial area, then the last 20 minutes are spent winding through the gut wrenchingly twisted, scenic and yet amazingly empty roads of Rancho Santa Fe. Traffic is irrelevant, because there is none. Overall, it's a far better drive than the stop-and-start misery of our eight-lane freeway, but I can't bear to give up those extra minutes each day. Still, I find myself buzzing through the Ranch at least twice a month -- more when the horses are running and traffic really grinds to a halt.