Automated Racing Betting
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I'm glad to see that there's a bit of interest in the blog. I thought I'd start out by talking about some of the catastrophic mistakes I have made in the past which have brought me to the style of betting that I do today.
Not Understanding Value
I first came across the concept of value, or expected value actually from my matched betting days when I first began to dabble in casino offers.
So the first time I started to venture into betting, I began by following tipsters. I figured that since I didn't have any knowledge of sports and had no desire to learn that side of it, that it would be wise to pay somebody else for their knowledge.
But when I started, I thought that if a tip was given out, it meant that the tipster thought it was going to win. I had no idea what value was, or ROI or ROC or any of that stuff.
I distinctly remember the first tipster I followed - a horse racing guy (now long gone) who had a fantastic record over his first 6 months. Now whilst I realised that not every horse would win, I presumed that most of them would.
The problem with this tipster and many others is that I could not get the odds that were tipped. And this was even whilst still having a whole bunch of bookmaker accounts plus all the major exchange accounts. He'd send out his tips in the morning, I'd jump on them straight away and in many cases I still couldn't get the price.
But I remember having the thought "well if the horse wins, who cares what the price is? A horse winning at odds of 4.5 is still going to give me lovely profit, so it doesn't matter if it was tipped at 5.0".
And so I would simply bet on every horse he tipped, at the best price I could get, which was almost always way lower than it should have been.
I was losing value on almost every bet and had no idea! As it turned out, very soon after I joined the service he went on a massive losing streak, and I bottled it an left after losing several hundred quid!
I did this for a while with multiple tipsters and I had no clue what I was doing. When I did learn the concept of value it was a turning point for me. I noticed that there were some tipsters who would give out tips without a suggested price, and immediately I knew to avoid those guys.
Eventually I stopped using tipsters altogether but that's a story for another day.
When it comes to finding value with BTC, my approach is a bit different to Martin & Ryan's. I know that Martin will analyse a strategy to look at the average strike rate and from there he works out the average odds that are needed to gain an edge.
My approach was to look at value on each individual bet. So I would base my strategies on a basic stat such as percentage of games with over 2.5 goals scored. I'd convert that percentage into implied odds and compare that to the currently available odds on Betfair. If a significantly better price was available, I'd consider that to be value.
Of course this got a bit complicated when dealing with multiple stats and then looking at what period of time those stats should be based on and so on, but that's the basic concept I used with football betting.
Now that we have the racing software, I have put all my football betting on pause until we have the backtesting tools available for that. And of course, the backtesting with the racing lets us look for value without having to calculate implied probabilities etc!
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@caroline-middlebrook Sounds interesting - I look forward to seeing how you progress with it. Like you, I favour strategies with lots of selections, with a much longer term view. Whilst most (exception of 1 or 2) of my strategies are in small profit after the last few months, I'm not expecting to see anything consistent for 12 months or so- patience is definitely key for me!
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Are you choosing stake sizes using the Kelly staking system by any chance?
No, I use flat stakes for everything. To a liability for lay bets but still the same stake size regardless of the odds. I have experimented with kelly staking before but I find it difficult to analyze the true performance of a strategy without using flat staking.
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@caroline-middlebrook Great post Caroline- I share so many of the same sentiments with you and all my strategies have now become truly set and forget through automation. I look forward to seeing how you get on.
Are you choosing stake sizes using the Kelly staking system by any chance? Thatโs something Iโm actively looking into for use on Betfair and has worked absolute wonders for me when betting using Advantage Play in horse racing over the last year or so.
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I only ever research within the bounds of what can be automated. No use looking at a trading screen for hours when you can be using the time to enjoy the racing, and do more research.
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oh wow another Caroline! When I saw the notification I thought the forum software was playing up and notifying me of my own post lol!
Yeah automated betting or trading is the way to go - it's the ultimate in semi-passive income really.
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@caroline-middlebrook
I have just joined BTC this week, read your post and thought THIS IS ME...even down to the name
I like the idea of high volume..for bank building phase any way
I had considered grouping strategies together to hopefully deal with variance
Not interested in sitting in front of the TV or laptop all day trading, so set and forget and ideally automated
Also interested in extracting value long term. Think of it in terms of a long term investment
Hope 2023 is a good year for you