The BTC Horse Racing Thread

Adam

As much as I'd love to just keep everyone's qualifiers constantly in sync, there are about 2000 active strategies in the database at the moment and it just takes time to run them all in the background to grab the latest qualifiers.

We might be able to parallelise them a bit more, or maybe find a more selective / intelligent way of doing it, where for example every time there's a non-runner we instantly recalculate all the strategies that include ranking rules, and ignore the others.

Eventually though, we'll end up with 2000 strategies that use rankings that all need to be refreshed at the same time.

I'm not sure what the permanent, scalable solution is tbh.

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@Greg-Mitchell

mixed bag. Without the ranking one of the backs is a little less profitable. The borderline profitable months become losing months, the lay and the other back are not useable without the ranking.

I am also thinking that its something in my selections. The initial post though was just a check that we didnt have missing data again to rule that out. I have run through quite a few scenarios of what could go wrong. So now i have some additional logging and validation. I will track it down at some point, not sure how much it will cost me to get there though.

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@Daniel-Mills

The ones that cause me the issues use Forecast price rank and Pace rank. Both are black box to this software (or the pace rating and forecast prices the ranks are based off are). The BFBM URL only has bare minimum and there is no way to get that info into BFBM to filter on as far as i know.

Greg Mitchell

@Jonathan-Jones

If all the bets have a tipster name against them, then they must be getting this from somewhere and if its not BTC, must be something you (or your software) is doing.

May be an obvious suggestion, but have you backtested those strategies that have a ranking to see what affect the ranking actually has? You may be able to do away with the ranking bit altogether and then no need to worry. But yes I would definitely look to importing the non-ranking specific ones directly from BTC to BFBM, it makes life so much easier. I only run 4 Horse racing strategies and all are direct uploads, run BFBM on a VPS and simply don't have to touch it.

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

@Greg-Mitchell

Just checked my tips and have an example from a few moments ago why i have to do it this way. The initial selection for my forecast price lays on one of the races is a non-runner in the last ten mins. My little application has removed it, re-ordered the selections and the tips service now has imported the new selection in BFBM. Dont know what time that race is but its a better than fair bet i would miss that selection if i was using the BFBM url the software provides and would only know about it when i do the backtests in the morning.

I wouldn't like to assume here, but what's stopping you from adding those conditions that have a separate script/application for from filtering out in the BFBM strategy? I have a few extra conditions set in my market and selection conditions on my version of lbf and touch wood seem to do fine with the automatic links the software creates. it's run over 1000 times and I haven't had to touch it. I'm sure you'll figure it out, and interested to find out myself, but it does seem from the outside there might be a simpler workflow for you.

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@Greg-Mitchell

Its for working towards full automation. I am often away at weekends and have limited or no internet access. I would love to just be able to use the provided mechanism but it updates too slow and as i said loses me money every week (several instances a week in fact). Imagine checking the software in the morning and it tells you your back strategy won 20 points yesterday while you are looking at yet another negative day. The reason being the software has a selection you dont, a rank 2 horse became rank 1 because of a non runner then went on to win. That happens all the damn time and is something i am pretty much fed up with. A ball ache on lays but at least that only costs a point at a time, totally trashes back strategies though.

I have checked the history and all the bets have a tipster name against them. Even though the output of the url couldnt possibly have those as selections (but, that is the area i am focusing on for the source of the bug at the moment). Unfortunately i clear the tips every evening so dont have any from last week but i have turned that off today so can triple check tomorrow.

I will track this down eventually. It will almost certainly be something i have done wrong but i will find it eventually.

Just checked my tips and have an example from a few moments ago why i have to do it this way. The initial selection for my forecast price lays on one of the races is a non-runner in the last ten mins. My little application has removed it, re-ordered the selections and the tips service now has imported the new selection in BFBM. Dont know what time that race is but its a better than fair bet i would miss that selection if i was using the BFBM url the software provides and would only know about it when i do the backtests in the morning.

#Edit#
I guess i could split it and import the ones without a ranking direct from the url provided and just mess the others. That might be a possibilty i will look at. Currently i run four strategies live (Two have rankings, Two dont) plus one on very minimal stake test (no ranking). Then i have three additional ones all currently disabled as they use the favourite critera and i wont run any of them until the update, one of those (the best by a billion miles) also uses rankings)

David Milligan

@Jonathan-Jones that all sounds very complicated, I import directly through URL to BFBM and have ~0 issues

Greg Mitchell

@Jonathan-Jones Wow, that sounds like a complicated way of working, but whatever floats your boat.

So, forgetting your strategies that use Rank criteria and going back to your original query which was about the Lay Beaten Fav strategy, which has no rank criteria. Why not simply use the "load tips from URL" function in BFBM?

Having looked at your BFBM bot, there is no reason that I can see as to why it is putting spurious bets on. It should only be putting bets on selection that have "LBF" as the tipster. If that is not the case as you say, then there is obviously something going wrong between you downloading the qualifiers and them being imported into BFBM.

Do you have the "Tipster" column visible on your BFBM Bets tab, if so, does it show "LBF" next to the "wrong" bets?

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@Greg-Mitchell
Nope.
I dont use the software selections directly because they create additional problems. I have 3 strategies that use the rank criteria. The software updating times (being a couple of hours at times) is not helpful when non runners mess up the ranking orders. Costs me money every single week. So, every morning i download (automatically) the qualifiers of the strategies i am interested in from modified filters. I have software that imports them and then applies the rank filters. The software then checks betfair every ten mins and re-orders if it needs to because of non runners. I compare the initial creation with the official BFBM url to make sure its all correct as a starting point.

So, i know the selections that are being passed to BFBM are correct (automatically validated and because of the issues i have been having are manually validated). I have rechecked the strategies in BFBM to make sure they are using the correct provider id (did find this as a problem on a new one i am testing as i copied it but all the live ones are correct).

So now i have changed them all to a fixed stake (easier to match stuff to check) and removed the selection filter specifying the odds so its only using the imported min max odds. Will see how it goes today but the ones i have noticed the obvious problems on are as simple as it gets.

Greg Mitchell

@Jonathan-Jones Are you sure you don't have a duplicate strategy on BTC with the same "LBF" external ID?

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@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

Martin

@Jonathan-Jones may be worth reaching out to BFMB and seeing what they say

John Folan

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

@Adam

Something very not right. Sounds similar to the issues i had before with just lay though as BFBM was totally making up prices i thought that was down to sim mode. This is real mode and its taking bets not even in the selections by the looks of things (and totally ignoring others that are). I am improving my logging to see whats going on but on checking those horses were not in the selections for that strategy.

Will see what happens tomorrow.

This is weird. I get a 99% match between bfbm and the software results. Can you put up the bot and the software file please? I’ll look tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest.

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@Adam

Something very not right. Sounds similar to the issues i had before with just lay though as BFBM was totally making up prices i thought that was down to sim mode. This is real mode and its taking bets not even in the selections by the looks of things (and totally ignoring others that are). I am improving my logging to see whats going on but on checking those horses were not in the selections for that strategy.

Will see what happens tomorrow.

Martin

@John-Folan for sure! That's the intention, football is so easy now it's mainly set and forget, can't wait to have horses set up the same.

John Folan

@Martin said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@John-Folan I can do the footy stuff manually I'm after it for horses, seems like BFBM is the best from what the survey results suggest

It is indeed. However you will succumb to the footy stuff, especially when Adam integrates the footy software!

Adam

@Greg-Mitchell About 10:30am

Martin

@John-Folan I can do the footy stuff manually I'm after it for horses, seems like BFBM is the best from what the survey results suggest

Martin

@Greg-Mitchell said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@Martin Test, Test, Test..

that's great advice thanks!

John Folan

@Martin said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Going to dive more into Automation over the coming weeks, anyone got any advice to help me?

Read the manual and watch the youtube videos. Are you going for BFBM? I think as you mostly trade football it's your best option.