The BTC Horse Racing Thread

? Offline

@john-folan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@sam-ratcliffe said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Hello all. I was wondering if anyone has ever looked at laying a specific jockey?

Rachel Blackmore…. Oh wait, that’s not what you mean

Made me chuckle!!!
Never a truer word said in jest!

? Offline

@david-milligan

The big lays are causing serious damage this month.

Thing is i am wondering if there isnt something more long term going on. LBF for example has had steadily reducing returns for a while. If you look at the red graph (with the trades/strike rate) you will see its average strike rate has been subtly declining for several months. Pace lays is similar though the change is much more subtly (apart from this month so could be vairance). Both are seeing their worst performance ever. Over almost 2 years of data, steadily declining performance with the worst performance ever now. Think they might be done (at least in their current form).

Fundementally they seem like good strategies so i am wondering what has changed. Any of the more experienced members want to offer some ideas because those graphs show more than just variance and its a lot more than just 'winter'. I experimented with re-optimizing the courses giving a bias to more recent data (so september onwards or last March onwards). Both do sort the problem but had a bigger negative effect on 2021 data than i hoped. Is that too much curve fit or is a bias to recent data a valid idea? Wondering because i think out of all the variables one that could change over time is course layout.

Paul Foster

@david-milligan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@chris-osborne I assume that the strategies will run similar to the past - I don't think that I'm overstaking (2% - could be too aggressive) and would like to see if the strategy recovers from the big losers. Having said that, laying to liability should smooth out some of the variance but ultimately the compounding will be slower. I can handle variance but don't want to be greedy if laying to liability is a no-brainer! Any overwhelming reasons you can see to lay to liability?

My understanding is that laying 2% stake at odds of 15 is a liability of 28% of your bank.

Laying at 10% liability would mean a low profit on high odds (c 0.7% at odds of 15) but would be a higher stake at lower odds (c 2% at odds of 6). Even 10% may be too high for some strategies. I used this example as the lower odds still hits the 2% you're currently trading at.

I've changed nearly all of the lay strategies I'm following to liability. I just tweaked the % of bank to lay in the software until I was at a comfortable level based on return v risk. Some are at 5% and one I'm playing with is at 15%. I tend to increase the % to the point that it blows the bank and wind it right back to a comforable level.

John Folan

@sam-ratcliffe said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Hello all. I was wondering if anyone has ever looked at laying a specific jockey?

Rachel Blackmore…. Oh wait, that’s not what you mean

David Milligan

@chris-osborne I assume that the strategies will run similar to the past - I don't think that I'm overstaking (2% - could be too aggressive) and would like to see if the strategy recovers from the big losers. Having said that, laying to liability should smooth out some of the variance but ultimately the compounding will be slower. I can handle variance but don't want to be greedy if laying to liability is a no-brainer! Any overwhelming reasons you can see to lay to liability?

? Offline

@david-milligan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Got stung a bit today by continuing to lay to stake for the higher odds strategies. Going to continue to lay to stake until my road test is complete but will definitely be considering laying to liability once I'm up and running properly!

why wait?

Andy Donnelly

Thanks all so far. It’s a condition where I was ruling out horses that finished 1st or 2nd in their previous race. Obviously I was already ruling out the first place horses as it’s a beaten favs strategy but was also trying to rule out horses who had near misses in the previous race.

Dan MacKinnon

@andy-donnelly what is the condition?

David Milligan

Got stung a bit today by continuing to lay to stake for the higher odds strategies. Going to continue to lay to stake until my road test is complete but will definitely be considering laying to liability once I'm up and running properly!

? Offline

@andy-donnelly
I would say widening should be better but with recent experiments in optimisation timeframes forward testing is king whatever.

Andy Donnelly

After a bit of advice.

I’ve been following my own customisation of the lay the beaten fav strategy for the last 6 months, which has been profitable. However I’ve just noticed that one of the conditions I was applying was actually causing the strategy to earn less than it should. So removing that seems the logical decision.

Question should I remove this condition straight away?

Or should I run both variants side by side and not switch to the version with the condition removed until testing for a period of time?

My gut feel is that as it’s widening a criteria rather than narrowing, that the back test results is probably sufficient to move in this case, but interested in anyone’s thoughts before I change.

? Offline

Hello all. I was wondering if anyone has ever looked at laying a specific jockey?

Nick Allan

@adam thanks for the clarification adam

Adam

@nick-allan "Official" is the planned start time, "Actual" is the exact time the race actually started. Often races are delayed, especially the Irish ones with ridiculous numbers of runners.

? Offline

@nick-allan I think actual time is the time it actually started. so on average anything up to 4 or 5 mins after the scheduled time. You EVER seen a race go off on the scheduled time?

Nick Allan

@adam So Official is anytime 10 mins before the scheduled time of the race and Actual is the actual scheduled time of the race as in 14:00 at Kempton? I know its a bit of as nightmare as races don’t seem to go off on time particularly sprints.

John Folan

@adam said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

I can change the preset strategy to use official start time if desired.

The reason there's the choice between the two is that lots of people trade right up until the race is about to go off and taking advantage of opportunities that come up during that frequent delay between the planned start time and the actual start time.

Lots of my own bots take some sort of action at x mins before the planned start as a failsafe, but continue looking for opportunities after that time.

So again, it's not that it's "impossible" to trade that way in real life. It just depends how you personally work.

Shouldn't be a problem. It's just a case of remembering to change it. Probably best if all the presets are set to official start time as the results will be different.

Adam

I can change the preset strategy to use official start time if desired.

The reason there's the choice between the two is that lots of people trade right up until the race is about to go off and taking advantage of opportunities that come up during that frequent delay between the planned start time and the actual start time.

Lots of my own bots take some sort of action at x mins before the planned start as a failsafe, but continue looking for opportunities after that time.

So again, it's not that it's "impossible" to trade that way in real life. It just depends how you personally work.

David Milligan

@jonathan-jones for what it's worth I had a small profit on the day yesterday with all preset strategies running unchanged.

John Folan

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

Rubbish day yesterday.
Big differences in backtest to realilty. Backtest says 1.79 profit, reality was 14.6 point loss. One obvious and explianable miss of the back the fav. 2 horses swapped place after the official start but before the off resulting in me backing the loser but the backtester backing the winner. Sod all i can do about that one and i have had a fair few of those work the other way round.

Pace Lays was the other. A bet taken on the limits in reality but missed in the backtest resulting in a massive 10 point difference. Put in a support request on that one because obviously it should of traded (wondering if its down to traded volume @ that price), just no idea why its missing from the backtest data (though last week i had a similar issue on the same strategy and an hour later it was showing on the backtest).

On back the fave why don’t you do what @Keith-Driscoll suggests? Back the bsp fave 5 or 10 seconds after the off? Odds will be slightly different but you will be guaranteed to be on the right horse 100% of the time?