The BTC Horse Racing Thread
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Really looking hard for a BSP strategy we can all do. Making inroads with horses on the flat with a pace rating of “8”. Wonder why they seem to be best?
Read the first post on both threads.
Horse Trading Resources
https://forum.betfairtradingcommunity.com/topic/1111/john-s-horse-trading-resourcesBfBotmanager
https://forum.betfairtradingcommunity.com/topic/2915/bfbotmanager-automation-discussion -
Day off work so got some screen time
Back to lay selections im going to be doing although Newcastle is not one of my favourite tracks
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@Joseph-Henderson said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
@John-Folan good work. Are you using the pre-set filter, or an adapted version?
I've adapted it because I like to fiddle but the pre-set one I originally created is good to go anyway
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@Adam Thank you for that, that was easier than I thought to work it out.
That would be great if it could be added to the software. In BFBM to place it you just select what percentage you want the current stake reduced by. I can't get the entry Lay bet to be exactly what the Exit bet as a DOB would be using a bot, I would have to do it manually to achieve that, so would be handy if it matched that. I hope that makes sense.
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@John-Folan good work. Are you using the preset filter, or an adapted version?
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I wish everyday was like today on the short odds lays. 5/6 for me
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@Sean There's currently no way to do that in the software. I'll look into adding it.
In the meantime, you might be able to figure it out with a bit of fiddling if you set it up as below. You've probably already got the first 4 steps covered in your existing DOB strategy:
- Set the entry side to "Back"
- Use an entry price range of 1.01-1000 and set the entry time to whatever you want
- Set the exit target to "Profit" and set the value to 1 (like a DOB)
- Set the exit time to race end
- Include the P/L, exit price and horse position in your individual trades columns (under "Customise Results")
- Download the individual trades to a spreadsheet
At this point, you should have all the bets in a sheet, but the profit will be wrong because it's behaving like a back to lay, so...
- Amend the P/L column in your spreadsheet so it behaves like straight lays instead. Off the top of my head:
- You'll need to completely remove any trades that don't have an exit price (these are the ones that never hit 50% of the entry price)
- The P/L for all trades where the horse won will obviously be a loss of (odds - 1) * stake
- You can subtract the back stake from the profit on any trades where the exit price was hit but the horse didn't win, to get the true profit for a straight lay
As I say, a bit fiddly but it should give you the info you need.
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Thought I'd have a look at the 5f Backs as don't currently run any Horse Back strategies.
Came up with this, going into testing as from today.
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Does anyone know how in the Horse Racing Software I can select an odds range for a horse to be in at Xmins before the race starts, and whatever that price is halve it, and that's the price I would place my entry Lay bet at?
I have a DOB strategy that's very average but I've noticed of the horses that do DOB, hardly any of them go on to win the race. Based on the selections I've had since I started testing it 6 months ago I would be in a fair amount of profit if I had just entered the closing Lay bet and let that run, so was hoping to be able to back-test it further and see how it did in the first half of 2023. -
@Dan-MacKinnon said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
@Martin Yeah I'm always interested in forward testing ideas
here you go: 5fbacks.json
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@Martin Yeah I'm always interested in forward testing ideas
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@Dan-MacKinnon oh well if you want a copy let me know
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@Martin No it wasn't. Not sure who did come up with that.
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@Andrew-Gray thank you - will collect data and examine those SP's in detail.
I haven't got back text data simply because I'm downloading stats from the BTC Horse Racing Stats and other places to plug into my model, so its not one I've done on a filter to back test .. I'm still playing with versions for that, meanwhile this came along in my head and so I've dived into it - and so far so good. Will report back here when I have done another week or two of testing.
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@Mark-Maguire You pretty much just want to find out the average odds of each selection on the place market then compare it to your strike rate on the place market. If you are getting 80% SR then you need av odds to be just above 1.25 to break even, accounting for a bit of commision. You can obviously do the same for the win SR and average odds, and for the 2nd rated horse at 70% place = 1.42ish odds needed to break even, and so on.
You might even find that say the 6th rated horse or something like that actually provides more value, as the odds might be better. Worth looking at everything not just the top 2?
I have all win and place Betfair SP data going back to around 2008, if you wanted to send me your back tested selections in CSV format I can probably knock up a back test pretty quickly for you if you want.
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@Dan-MacKinnon that’s brilliant thanks
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@Mark-Maguire From my research, you get a bit limited on options going below 3.0 other than straight bets. But if you wanted to mess about place market this might be useful https://www.aceodds.com/bet-calculator/each-way.html
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@John-Folan thats the kind of thing I wanted to ask.. I'll admit to being a complete ignoramus when it comes to how to approach trading the horses.
I've been interested for a while, think it will work well long term to sit alongside football.
I've basically done a load of studying and, rightly or wrongly, decided to create a model which ranks the horses for every race I've made it easy enough in terms of time setting up a power query which then feeds into a pivot table and finally a probability model looking at about twenty different comparisons between runners and those split into positive and negative factors... ending in a ranked order .. I've been measuring paper trading/min stakes the results and am pretty happy so far on the basis that:
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After the initial data download I can get the ranking done in 5 mins or so for each race.
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Its finding winners and places with decent regularity - focussing on 1st and 2nd ranked in my model .. 1st ranked wins or is placed 80% (stress this is very early days) and 2nd ranked 70%.
So now as I continue to monitor and refine this its about how I look at trading it - I'm measuring odds and will try and get some stats of movements as the amount of data improves but in my ignorance its about understanding how to find the best way to trade - which is why suggestions like backing the place or dobbing will take me in a direction that I can learn .. and improve .
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