My tip for the Melbourne Cup - beat the bookies by just having fun!

No, there is no horse called 7Eleven for you to put a bet on (sorry, it's a bad joke), but would you consider it if there was?

This is my favourite Melbourne Cup story, and it doesn't even involve me winning any money! But I like to point out that this is one of the reasons why I don't wager money on horse racing, even if I could somehow manage to decipher the form guide.

In 2013 I was asked by someone to place bets for them for the Melbourne Cup a.k.a the race that stops a nation (honestly, I have never placed bets on the race myself). You literally have to be living in Australia to witness this phenomenon where pretty much everyone drops what they are doing to watch the race. I think I was in primary school when I first experienced this but you kind of scratch your head and wonder why the adults stopped working.

Anyway, through a series of rather fortunate mistakes, not only did I decide to

• put a bet on the favourite (which I now realize isn't necessarily as sound a strategy as it seemed at the time) but I also
• accidentally put in the same bet twice (instead of betting on another horse).

As it would turn out, not only did the favourite (Fiorente) end up winning the race (the first time in 11 years, and the odds were only 7-1 so it wouldn't have won you money back for all the years that you lost the bet on the favourite), but because I also accidentally made the same bet twice it was definitely a pleasant surprise for that person who would have been rather annoyed if I didn't make all those mistakes.

The fact that the favourite horse (by odds) seldom wins at the Melbourne Cup gives an indication of the various factors that influence the outcome of the events. Some people believe that the odds encapsulates all the various factors that contribute to the outcome (that's your Chaos Theory group) while others think that some factors are more important than others, and then there's the element of luck/random chance that no one can predict (unlike the stockmarket, which I believe is much easier to manipulate).

But perhaps the important lesson is that luck doesn't make for a sound betting strategy because next year they tried to do the same thing (believing that they are luckier than everyone else and can beat the bookies) and sure enough lost all the money that they wagered.

So my tip is actually to just have fun on the day without having to have a wager - that's the best way to beat the bookies...