The BTC Horse Racing Thread

Dan MacKinnon

@Jonathan-Jones really interesting. Just out of curiosity, how did you manage to track all 3 together?

? Offline

Got some numbers.
Its based on the 3 strategies i run (2 lay, 1 back). If i started with £99 total bank (just to make it easy) at the start of jan.

With all 3 strats sharing that total bank and a stake size of 1% i would today have a balance of £7161. The biggest DD though would of been 49.59% of that total bank which would of at the time it happend been a monetary drop of £316 (but that max DD lasted for only 5 days, 6th day cleared it).

If i took that £99 and split it evenly so each strat is managing its own bank of £33 with the same 1% stake size then today i would have a balance of £421.74. The biggest DD was 16.64% which represented a monetary drop of £35.

Just as an extra if i was just wanting to play with penuts and started a shared bank with £33 (so i really dont give a crap if i lose it, just a round of beers really) then by same rules i would have £2386. Obviously same %DD of 49.59% and a monetary drop of £105.

So not sure what that says really. Obviously splitting the bank is miles safer but at what point does being safe trump making some progress? If you have a fair bit of money then fair enough but if starting small then sharing the tiny bank you dont care about losing thats the same size as one of the splits is 5 times the profits for a third of the investment.

Joseph Henderson

@Jonathan-Jones

If you pull together any numbers to compare the two approaches I'd definitely be keen to take a look!

? Offline

@Joseph-Henderson

Was thinking that way so its seems safer but the difference in account growth between the methods is just massive. might run some numbers to get a proper comparison.

Caroline Middlebrook

Hey guys, I am trying to use BFBM to automate a strategy that is based on BSP. It's fine for a strategy where I don't have any limits on the price, but I have a lay strategy where I want to implement a maximum odds.

The betfair interface allows you to do this by clicking 'Set SP odds limit' which then gives you a field to input the minimum odds for back bets or maximum odds for lay bets, but I cannot get this to work in BFFM!

I have gone through this thread in their forum but it is still not working:

https://www.bfbotmanager.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?t=3243

Any ideas?

Joseph Henderson

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

@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.

When you remove the stop loss it doesn’t seem to have performed that well in the last 6 months, which would be a concern.

Joseph Henderson

@Jonathan-Jones I split the overall bank between the various strategies I am using to reduce risk of significant drawdown. Presumably if you set it to the shared bank/overall bank then you could have a pretty big reduction to the overall bank on a bad run, particularly if multiple strategies hit a rough patch?

? Offline

Question for those of you who use BFBM in regards to the split banks (or anyone who uses any similar functionality really).

Do you use it with multiple strategies so each strategy just manages a fraction of the overal bank or do you just use the whole bank shared so all the strategies share the profits/losses?

I am guessing the first is the safer option but it looks like there is an absolutely massive difference in the rate of account growth (shared bank being a lot more profitable).

Martin

@Dan-MacKinnon yeah assume it would work fine on prerace as moves are smaller

Dan MacKinnon

@Martin I tried a similar strategy a while back when the horse racing software was first released. It used a pre-off SL and even when I moved the trigger further apart, as Jonathan said, it always seemed to match on "winning" trades and didn't when I wanted it to! I gave up with SL and think it's more of an insurance unless you're manually trading

? Offline

@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

? Offline

@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

? Offline

@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.

? Offline

@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!!

? Offline

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.