“In Hong Kong seven or eight years ago a couple of HKU mathematicians/Computer scientists came up with a program to bet horses.”
I don’t bet horses (especially in HK), but I don’t see how that could be cheating. That would be like saying the baseball coaches of today “cheat” by running all of the baseball stats through the computer.
And 60% isn’t much better than flipping a coin.
I agree that the HK case doesn’t look like cheating. That said, 60% is insanely good odds. Flipping a coin 10,000 times with true 50% odds wins you nothing. With 60% odds, you would win 6,000 times, or 1,000 more than break even.