The BTC Horse Racing Thread

Adam

The way we're going to tackle that is by capturing the price rank every time we write a runner price entry.

That will mean we can later query the fave, 2nd fave etc at any point in time!

John Folan

@jonathan-jones said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Got another question about the Horse racing strategy builder. The criteria 'Favourite', how is that defined? I am assuming its based on betfair row position but when? Is it dynamic (so based on betfair row position at that time) or based on what the row position ends up at BSP?

Reason i am asking is i have set up a filter that excludes the favourite and 2nd favourite and looks to enter at 59mins before the official start for horses within a particular odds range. So, i need to know if its going to be looking at the favourites at its entry time or its looking into the future for the favourite at BSP because obviously that can change in the last hour. At the moment its looking very profitable for an outright bet which makes me wonder if the software is doing some magic future looking.

It’s BSP favourite so no use unless you are backing just before the off when the favourite is usually known. I’ve asked Adam about favourite at time of entry. If that can’t be don’t then maybe at certain points(1 hour, 30 minutes, 10 minutes etc). Pretty sure a blanket one for every time possible will break the server as the calculations would be immense.

Nick Allan

@ryan so in the software you can select horses that run a max of say 25% decrease in price inplay?

? Offline

Got another question about the Horse racing strategy builder. The criteria 'Favourite', how is that defined? I am assuming its based on betfair row position but when? Is it dynamic (so based on betfair row position at that time) or based on what the row position ends up at BSP?

Reason i am asking is i have set up a filter that excludes the favourite and 2nd favourite and looks to enter at 59mins before the official start for horses within a particular odds range. So, i need to know if its going to be looking at the favourites at its entry time or its looking into the future for the favourite at BSP because obviously that can change in the last hour. At the moment its looking very profitable for an outright bet which makes me wonder if the software is doing some magic future looking.

John Folan

@ryan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@john-folan Flat pace loaded in!

Aberama Gold lost by a head. Knocking on the door I think.

Ryan

@john-folan Flat pace loaded in!

John Folan

Bit quiet today

Classic Trobs: Dob, Trob or Win if odds are between 3.5-9
NONE

Flat Pace. Back to Win if between 2.0-25.0. 4-14 Runners only. Avoid Soft, Heavy and Firm Going
0_1656929154404_Flat pace.JPG

Ryan

@nick-allan I've also got a few ideas around this as well beauty of the software is that I can plug in my ideas and find out pretty quickly if its worth following up with.

John Folan

@nick-allan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@john-folan nice one john, does the software have a percentage decrease inplay running feature?

It has a lowest and highest price inrunning against bsp feature so as a simple example you can do lowest price inrunning =50% of bsp(so a dob) 70% of last x runs

Nick Allan

@john-folan nice one john, does the software have a percentage decrease inplay running feature?

John Folan

@nick-allan working on it

Nick Allan

I'm interested in purchasing the horse trading software, but in the past I've only really traded lay to back, now I know that you could create a system using the software, but having a look at the set forget strategies there doesn't appear to be one for a lay to back, is there any profitable lay to back strategies available that I could test?

John Folan

@jonathan-jones makes sense that. Less of a problem trading the top few in the price rankings as plenty of dollar there to get in and out.

Stuff like this is great as there are some sharp minds on here and between us all we will soon work out what’s worth bothering with and what isn’t.

Pre race being a prime example. Last 20 minutes there’s enough money to get in and there is no problems trading out the closer to the off you get. Yes you can use the software to target horses to trade pre race. I have one in test at the moment and it is matching the bot exactly. But again I am targeting odds below 20 where the majority of the liquidity is. Upscale able is the new watch word. Pretty irrelevant for straight lays or backs as most things get matched. But especially for inrunning you need to know it’s ok. There is a traded volume filter in the software that should help.

? Offline

@adam said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Re your exit settings, your understanding looks right. Just to double check though, you're targeting 10 points profit, which would be 10 x your stake. Is that what you're expecting, or are you expecting 10% of your stake? We had some debate over what the definition of a "point" should be in the early stages of development.

I set it up in the automation the same way i set up the DOB. In the backtester the DOBs are set up at profit = 1, In fairbot this translates to 'odds = 1', so for this its 'odds = 10'. I will check some individual trades to see if i can get a better understanding of what exactly is going on but from the responses it is looking like its the combination of of the general 'randomness' introduced by the 'trade out' compounded by the liquidity gaps on the horses this strategy is targetting.

So, still. I think we all need to look at the strategies we create then take a view based on all the above as to how well real life will conform to the backtest (Probably more accurate saying it that way round than 'backtest conform to real life').

John Folan

@martin said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@john-folan do you have an odds limit on slow horses? I know you scrapped zero on the higher odds being hard to green up on.

Not at the moment. These seem to work ok for some reason. I’m looking at them this week to see if they can’t be refined with different entry points.

Martin

@john-folan do you have an odds limit on slow horses? I know you scrapped zero on the higher odds being hard to green up on.

John Folan

Todays
Classic Trobs: Dob, Trob or Win if odds are between 3.5-9

Slow Horses. Dob any over 6.0 as close to the off as possible
NONE TODAY

Flat Pace. Back to Win if between 2.0-25.0. 4-14 Runners only. Avoid Soft, Heavy and Firm Going
0_1656830164175_Flat pace.JPG

Adam

@jonathan-jones said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@adam
I know you have betfair tick data but that doesnt mean if you want to exit at a price or time that you will exit at a price or time.

Longer priced horses have massive gaps in liquidity so when you add in the inplay delay your chances of getting matched are quite low.

Those things are absolutely true. We're showing you which prices were genuinely reached in the past, but of course throwing your own bets in the mix can have their own influence. And we can't account for whether you manage to execute your own strategy perfectly.

I would just like to point out though that that means something slightly different to "you can't trust that what the backtest shows actually happened"

Unless you can accurately model the effects of the inplay delay along with how much was matched at that price as a proportion of how much was waiting to get matched (not sure you even have that data) and add some magic to account for how much your stake would of influenced that and whewre in the queue your money was i dont think there is that much you can do

Nothing is impossible. When I automated my own scalping strategy, I built in queue position and fill rate estimations, to the extent that it was able to time the simultaneous matching of a back and lay bet with decent accuracy. I'm planning on adding the same enhancements to the horse racing software.

Re your exit settings, your understanding looks right. Just to double check though, you're targeting 10 points profit, which would be 10 x your stake. Is that what you're expecting, or are you expecting 10% of your stake? We had some debate over what the definition of a "point" should be in the early stages of development.

Keith Driscoll

@jonathan-jones No trading software can mimic real life exactly. Especially when you are talking about a few ticks here and there, and low liquidity. If I did those rules manually, and you did them manually at the same time as me, I guarantee we'd both have different results.

Due to the way the software works, it will give you an out, which you may not get in real life, especially at the odds you are working with. This is why I've never used big odds in-running. Plenty of systems that look profitable, are not.

The more liquidity, the more accurate this software is, but that also applies when trading for real.

Watch the high odds horses in-running on a ladder interface, and you'll see little liquidity. No software would accurately replicate what would happen in real life with so little money around.

John Folan

Break evens on slow horses. I’m going to look at max odds and entry points the next few days. I reckon these can be maximised a fair bit.

Flat pace doing what it’s supposed to. At some point we will hit a 25 winner. They will fly then