The BTC Horse Racing Thread

Greg Mitchell

Ok experts, can you help me out so I can check my calculations are correct please?

The Scenario is this:

I back a horse pre-off at odds of 4.0.
I want to trade out in running at a better price by 20% with a stop loss at a worse price by 40%

For a £1 initial bet stake, what is my P & L (excluding commission) in the following scenarios:

It trades out at the better price
It trades out at the stop loss price

Adam

@Tony-Hastie I guess for this it would be good to know the fastest times as well so you don't get caught short trying to exit too late, so these are those:

min_times.csv

I haven't restricted these to the last year so those are literally the fastest times in our entire DB for the same breakdown.

Tony Hastie

@Adam This is awesome! Thanks a bunch...

The race % completed seems fairly accurate on BA for flats but jumps are much less so! Admittedly a very small sample size of the last 2 weeks but a 93% trade out time has traded me out anywhere from 5 to 59 seconds for the 2m jumps. Other distances not much better...

Adam

@Tony-Hastie Attached is a CSV with the times for each course, distance and going combo.

Some notes:

This is calculated from the last year's worth of races (there's a tendency towards faster races as time goes on)
It uses the median time rather than average to remove outliers
I've rounded to the nearest second which should be fine for this
It uses the actual going rather than the pre-race predicted going
The distances are also rounded to the nearest furlong or there would have been even more results!

Not sure about BFBM but you should be able to load these into BA as stored values so you can use them as automation triggers.

median_times.csv

Tony Hastie

I could share some data on min, average and max times for different conditions from our data if it would help.

That would be awesome if you could do that thanks @Adam

Adam

There are issues with Betfair's streaming API currently so advise everyone to be careful if you're running bots on Aussie horses, dogs etc right now.

As usual their service status page is the last to know and is currently reporting everything is fine

EDIT: Seems to now be resolved as of about 08:58 UK time.

Adam

@Tony-Hastie said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

I tested mine all yesterday on random selections(and didnt have a loss! Who needs racing software) Found that set at 70% race distance I would green up 20 sec from finish of a 5f. That time increased the longer the distance on the flats. With jumps Id set it to 95% and it would still be a minutue or more from race end! BFBM more accurate than that?

I could subscribe to a site called Total Performance Data and could use the automation to get very accurate trade out times...but its another sub on top of the 4 Im already paying

I'm surprised BA wasn't more accurate than that, there's not that much variation in times once you account for the basic things that affect the speeds. You could research this pretty well in our software, although it would be easier if you could group by multiple factors which is on the roadmap.

I could share some data on min, average and max times for different conditions from our data if it would help.

% completion of the race would be a good trigger for us to add to the betting rules actually, I have added this to the roadmap too.

Greg Mitchell

@Tony-Hastie I'm not really sure if BFBM is more accurate than that, I don't really check, it's working at 15 seconds, so just let it crack on. I will tray and keep an eye on it this week if possible to let you know. But glad you found something that seems to work.

And yes, subscriptions, subscriptions, subscriptions. I have managed to get mine down to only 2 now, but was looking at that Total Performance Data, might give it a trial myself.

John Folan

@Tony-Hastie said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@Greg-Mitchell Talking in metres, I like

I tested mine all yesterday on random selections(and didnt have a loss! Who needs racing software) Found that set at 70% race distance I would green up 20 sec from finish of a 5f. That time increased the longer the distance on the flats. With jumps Id set it to 95% and it would still be a minutue or more from race end! BFBM more accurate than that?

I could subscribe to a site called Total Performance Data and could use the automation to get very accurate trade out times...but its another sub on top of the 4 Im already paying

This isn’t a bad shout this. I don’t ever think you will get it 100^ accurate on race completion but it will be workable

Tony Hastie

@Greg-Mitchell Talking in metres, I like

I tested mine all yesterday on random selections(and didnt have a loss! Who needs racing software) Found that set at 70% race distance I would green up 20 sec from finish of a 5f. That time increased the longer the distance on the flats. With jumps Id set it to 95% and it would still be a minutue or more from race end! BFBM more accurate than that?

I could subscribe to a site called Total Performance Data and could use the automation to get very accurate trade out times...but its another sub on top of the 4 Im already paying

Greg Mitchell

@Tony-Hastie I like to try and keep things simple, so I use it for all race types and have race speed set at a default of 6 secs per 100m, so it should trade out 250m from the finish line approx.

Tony Hastie

@Greg-Mitchell Ive discovered a Race completed % (using race meter settings) and I think I may have created an automation with the help of AI! Its currently set to exiting after 75% of race is complete while I play around. So, a question if I may.....The 15 sec before race end number, is that for all races? Or do you treat flat and jumps differently?

Greg Mitchell

@Tony-Hastie plus the integration with the BTC horse racing software takes a lot of donkey work out of it. When you change and if you want any help, give us a shout.

Tony Hastie

@Greg-Mitchell Yeah, I think it is overly complicated tbh. Peters made an art form of telling you how to do something...without actually telling you how to do it! Maybe it just goes over my head. I think my sub is up in march, BFBM sounds more like me, although I am very resistant to change

Greg Mitchell

@Tony-Hastie I started off with Bet Angel yes, but in my opinion they are two completely different approaches.

Bet Angel is more suited to what I would term "Real" trading, in that if you have the time and inclination to sit in front of it all day, watching markets and taking advantage of price swings, then there is nothing better. But if you want to "Set & Forget" where you need to be using automation and tracking a strategies performance, I found it hard work, a) to get your selections into it, b) to get the automation to replicate exactly what you wanted and c) get any meaningful data out of it to analyse.

BFBM to me is ideal for the "Set & Forget" approach, the automation logic makes a lot more sense to me personally, the importing and exporting of data is much easier plus it keeps a track of each bots performance and P & L. Plus I don't have to watch endless videos of Peter trying to explain things that I don't understand.

Tony Hastie

@Greg-Mitchell I recall you did have Bet Angel a while back didnt you? How do you compare the 2?

I tried doing what you are doing by grouping race distances together and making about 8 different automations that would trade out around 2f from race end. It all got a bit complicated in the end...with different classes running different speeds and ground conditions constantly changing. That was quite a while ago, been a few BA updates since then, might go and have another look...

Knocked the dutching US and Auzzie races on the head today. The US races especially seem to always run 10-15 minutes late. I just happened to come across a race that where the automation had fired...and the 3 favs were no longer the 3 favs. Can once again give the laptop a rest overnight

Greg Mitchell

@Tony-Hastie, settings are a bit different in Bet Angel, but when do you get the bot to place the 8 ticks bit?

I have mine set up to place the initial Lay bet 10 seconds before the official start time, as soon as its matched it places the 8 ticks bet, although I have it set at 20% better price rather than ticks and this bet is set to "Keep", so it is still there once the race is Off.

In BFBM, you can set it to trade out at a set live race time, so I don't have my stop loss set at ticks either, I have it set to trade out 15 seconds before the anticipated end of the race regardless of the odds and if the 20% bet hasn't been matched.

Tony Hastie

@Greg-Mitchell Yeah, bet angel damn it!

If you could explain how it works it would be much appreciated...

At the moment my bot is set to take 8 ticks, with a 16 tick stoploss placed at 24 ticks if that makes sense!(avoids the blow outs apparently) Then trade out regardless at 30 seconds. The bot works fine, I just cant seem to make it profitable...

Greg Mitchell

@Tony-Hastie Yes I have it fully automated on BFBM. Do you want my bot or are you using Bet Angel?

I've given up on the Dutching but working on a Lay 3rd Fav one, which seems to be doing ok in its early stages.

Tony Hastie

@Greg-Mitchell Yep, finally got the discipline sorted! No closer to sorting out the automation though. How you going with that?

You still running the dutching strat on all races? Hows that gone? Ive just started doing it as wife is away and Im bored

Ive also got another up my sleeve...which I accidently found when I was trying to do something else!(A bit like Ryans HT/FT vid I watched today!) The graph is nice so im testing that now. If it goes well I will divulge...