shook his wife awake and said, "We never have to worry about money again."

Friedland was thinking exactly the same thing when he started putting his system to a practical test in the summer and fall of 1974. He was betting cautiously and erratically at first, but he did cash a $600 wager on i'm in Business, the $19.20 winner of the Great American Stakes at Aqueduct, and at the end of the turf-racing season he had amassed a decent profit.

But that, Friedland knew, was only the beginning. He looked forward to 1975 as the year when he would escalate his betting and make his great killing. His friends couldn't temper his feverish excitement because they had been infected by it, too. "They all thought I was a genius,"Friedland said. "We knew we were going to win. The system was logical, and the results were right there in black and white."

Friedland made his first bet of 1975 on a colt named Naval Person, a $32,000 yearling, who rallied to win at 5-to-1 odds -- only to be disqualified. That may have been an omen. By the time of the Saratoga season, Friedland had bet he couldn't abandon his system; it was surely overdue for a winner.

The winner never came. At the end of the turf-racing season, Friedland's system was 0 for 22. Its inventor was spiritually and financially devastated.

A prudent man might have abandoned the game after such an experience, or at least abandoned the notion that it can be beaten by a simple system. But