The BTC Horse Racing Thread

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@Martin
Think so. I have tried InPlay stop losses on horses and they just dont do what you want. You either set it as per the strategy and they just dont match or you set them for a miles worse price and every loss is bigger than it should be.

The SL on this strat just looks like it smooths the PL out a bit. Think the difference in total PL is only about 40 quid.

Martin

@Jonathan-Jones so really it sounds like this needs editing without the inplay stoploss as that's too difficult to execute

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@Martin

All the time. I tried this one live when it first hit the forums. in terms of looking at the backtest and live results you cant compare them. No idea how this would perform live long term. Only thing for certain is it wont be anything like the backtest. I tried an inplay SL again recently in one of my strategies. Only ran it for a couple of days because its simply not worth it. People need to remember a stop loss isnt a standing order. Its placed when the conditions for it are met so its subject to the inplay delay and because of the way prices move there are some universal truths about stop losses activated inplay.

A stop losss you might not want matched because price then reverses again and goes in your favour will ALWAYS be matched.
A stop loss you really need matched because price is storming against you will NEVER be matched.

You can with a stop loss trigger at a value but set the price miles out (worse price) then its probably going to get matched but you cant model that in the backtest software. Changing the stoploss value in the backtest doesnt model this.

This particular strategy looks pretty good without the stoploss though. Its just a bit more of a jiggly line.

John Folan

@Martin said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@John-Folan interesting what you were saying about stop losses sometimes being blown through, how far would that happen?

Depends on the race liquidity plus how quick the horse fades etc. It does happen a lot.

Martin

@John-Folan interesting what you were saying about stop losses sometimes being blown through, how far would that happen?

Martin

@Jonathan-Jones yes

https://www.timeform.com/horse-racing/result/doncaster/2023-07-22/1945/14/4

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@Karl-Pick

Thanks,

Thought that might be the case. Its on my version of pace backs and i got one of them. Accounting for the dead heat everything matches for the weekend.

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@Jonathan-Jones said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

quick question.
Was the 19:45 at Doncaster on Saturday a dead heat?
Been away all weekend, looking at my PL this morning i have about half what the odds suggest i should of got.

If it was the Gweedore race then YES, its popped up the last few times on my PACE backs, but not this week....SODS LAW!!

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quick question.
Was the 19:45 at Doncaster on Saturday a dead heat?
Been away all weekend, looking at my PL this morning i have about half what the odds suggest i should of got.

Martin

@Adam I get a feeling Smarkets would crush the other two non-Betfair sites with a decent API. Their current userface isn't great though, I like they didn't just copy Betfair but it can be a tad confusing to look at.

Toyin Butler

@Adam The only thing I can see is their swagger docs, no forum as far as I know. I will let you know if they reach out to me again.

I do remember them having a stupidly low rate limit, I did enquire on how I could get it raised but they weren't too helpful. I thought if they seriously wanted to compete then they would sort that out, probably why the API didn't take off.

Adam

@Toyin-Butler said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@Martin I use Matchbook (API) but for small amounts right now. Its liquidity obvs not as good as Betfair but it seems ok. Next month I'm increasing size there so will be interesting to see how that goes. By the way, Smarkets told me they will be offering their API again in the future but would not give me a rough estimate as to when.

Smarkets always seems to have struggled to offer a decent API solution. I was testing their first attempt back in 2011 which was based on protocol buffers. It wasn't particularly usable. They then gave me access to their "HTTP API" in 2020, but betting was rate-limited to 1 bet per second (including adjustments to existing bets) which again is useless if you're trying to trade multiple markets programatically.

Do they still have a developer forum? I'll start keeping an eye on it again if they're planning to re-release it!

Martin

@Toyin-Butler never handy if they aren't accepting bets is it!

Toyin Butler

@Martin Not sure, but they had been on my case last year asking me how the integration was going. At that time I had paused work on the project, but when I went to use their service I discovered it wasn't accepting bets. I still get all the other services like account info and prices though.

Martin

@Toyin-Butler wonder why they hold the API back?

Toyin Butler

@Martin I use Matchbook (API) but for small amounts right now. Its liquidity obvs not as good as Betfair but it seems ok. Next month I'm increasing size there so will be interesting to see how that goes. By the way, Smarkets told me they will be offering their API again in the future but would not give me a rough estimate as to when.

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@Martin said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Asked this on footy yesterday but what other exhange is good for using for Horse Racing? From what I can tell Smarkets and Matchbook may be the best options. APIwise looks like Matchbook may be the option. Betdaq doesn't seem to have much liquidity in horses or football from what I can tell.

Betdaq is good in the last 10mins before racing. prices very similar to Betfair and I can get enough on. Still use Betfair as first go to, but Betdaq is my back up.

Martin

Asked this on footy yesterday but what other exhange is good for using for Horse Racing? From what I can tell Smarkets and Matchbook may be the best options. APIwise looks like Matchbook may be the option. Betdaq doesn't seem to have much liquidity in horses or football from what I can tell.

Martin

@Greg-Mitchell doing God's work!

Greg Mitchell

@Jonathan-Jones said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@John-Folan
Its the same issue as i had on just lay. I thought that was down to sim mode as everything was fine the day after but according to Adam its taking bets on horses that are not even selections and its a totally different strategy. I use the selection import via the tipster servide and i do provide min and max odds as part of that. I had left in the original selection criteria but i have removed it today so its only using the tipster service.
lbf.gz
Lay Beaten Favourite.json

Just thought I'd let you know, have imported both the strategy and the bot for this and uploaded tips to BFBM via URL, so all automatic. Then tested it and was 100% match between BFBM and Software for the 18th and 19th July.

14 Selections in the Software, 14 Bets on BFBM