The BTC Horse Racing Thread

John Folan

Race Type
Handicap Y/N
Class
Classification

These are where I normally start. Especially the first one.

Greg Mitchell

@dan-mackinnon said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

I was hoping to do a deep dive into the horse racing but been busy of late. Just out of curiosity, what do others look for when going through analysis?

Do you start with different race types? Handicap vs non-handicap? Do you analyse each course or find removing courses to be backfitting?

I like high SR, so I prefer to lay at higher odds and am more than happy to take that over the occasional big loss. My approach is to have as few filters as possible and go for a year-round approach. The downside to this is you potentially get loads of trades and need to be careful when recording data vs software that I often find myself cross checking multiple versions of the same strategy.

I thought we could get a bit of a discussion on here as a lot of us seem to be the type that do deep dives into the data.

Plus it makes a change from the pre-software days when this thread was just John posting his DOBs!

I tend to always look at every possible variable after starting with an idea, starting with the ones that I think should have the most obvious affect.

So for example, if I was looking at a Lay the Stall Draw strategy (which I'm in the middle of doing), Course would be the first variable to look at, then Race Distance, then No. of Runners, then possibly Going. As logically these should have the most significant affect. (There may also be others!!)

Once the above is fine tuned to give maximum SR and/or ROI, would check if every other variable in the software had any significant affect and include/exclude any that did.

Dan MacKinnon

I was hoping to do a deep dive into the horse racing but been busy of late. Just out of curiosity, what do others look for when going through analysis?

Do you start with different race types? Handicap vs non-handicap? Do you analyse each course or find removing courses to be backfitting?

I like high SR, so I prefer to lay at higher odds and am more than happy to take that over the occasional big loss. My approach is to have as few filters as possible and go for a year-round approach. The downside to this is you potentially get loads of trades and need to be careful when recording data vs software that I often find myself cross checking multiple versions of the same strategy.

I thought we could get a bit of a discussion on here as a lot of us seem to be the type that do deep dives into the data.

Plus it makes a change from the pre-software days when this thread was just John posting his DOBs!

? Offline

@philip-brogan I assume you are talking about back and lay the same horse in any race. As Paul mentioned, the strategies have different odds ranges so there is a fair chance only one of the bets would match. Thats not certain to be the case though. I downloaded the individual results of all the strategies to analyse and in some cases both bets would match (in some i would even get 2 lays and one back etc on a single horse). If you played it like this you would likely have a small residual profit/loss on that race (provided no other horses match). This is how i play it. I have it automated. If there is a back and lay on any given horse then my automation monitors for bets on both, if both match then i take the small profit/loss. If you are running a portfolio then this is the only way to play it consistently with your backtest.

John Folan

@tony-hastie said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Does the horse racing software have the ability to back test places rather than wins? Nothing is glaringly obvious in that dept, asking in hope that Ive missed something...

Not yet. It will do.

Not ideal tho but in the meantime you can download the individual results and include whether it placed or not a the place bsp. Can work out a p and l manually from that.

Tony Hastie

Does the horse racing software have the ability to back test places rather than wins? Nothing is glaringly obvious in that dept, asking in hope that Ive missed something...

Martin

@joseph-henderson probably not tested that one for years, others may know better

Joseph Henderson

What’s the reason for the ‘laying the rubbish tipster’ strategy running from mid-May to mid-August? Did it perform badly in back testing on jump racing?

Philip Brogan

Thanks guys

Paul Foster

@philip-brogan depends on the strategy. For example if you have lay the short odds fave and back the fave then the differing odds criteria would mean that it would be very unlikely for both bets to be placed.

Will happen sometimes, but is quite rare. I just let the bot place all the bets and it will sometimes place opposing bets for different but I'm not too fussed as I treat the bank for seach stratagy as seperate, not a combined bank.

Matthew Sheehan

@philip-brogan I'm still a novice but I personally go with the best risk/reward option of the 2. So eg. Master Richard in the 19:20 at Newcastle on 5th May qualified for pace-lay strategy on the presets and back-the-pace-horse. I was thinking what to do, saw it was at 14.5 odds - thought I would back it rather than lay it at those odds.

Philip Brogan

You can't back and lay in the same race as you would go inplay. How do you handle it if one strategy tells you to back and another strategy tells you to lay in the same race? What strategy do you assign to a race?

Angus Macleod

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

@angus-macleod said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@John-Folan

Yeah mate, like you've made reference to before, fight the urge to react when things aren't going exactly as planned.

It’s like you have a devil and an angel on each shoulder. “CHANGE IT”. “NO LEAVE IT”

So true!

John Folan

@angus-macleod said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@John-Folan

Yeah mate, like you've made reference to before, fight the urge to react when things aren't going exactly as planned.

It’s like you have a devil and an angel on each shoulder. “CHANGE IT”. “NO LEAVE IT”

Angus Macleod

@John-Folan

Yeah mate, like you've made reference to before, fight the urge to react when things aren't going exactly as planned.

John Folan

@angus-macleod said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

I do love picking winners...especially when I've been laying them!

Bit of a turnaround since then I hope!

John Folan

Flat pace backs seem to be warming up nicely

John Folan

Interesting looking at various strategies. 2021 was a mess for a lot of racing because of Covid restrictions. Starting to think I might write that year off as not reliable stats wise. Some strategies that were good that year have slowly gone downhill. Some I have discarded because that year was bad. I need to do a little thinking about this.

Arran Shackell

@martin

Seems to have reset for May anyway. Might have to start keeping a record before it resets at the start of each month.

The tipsters on this table are now only 6 pts down.

https://www.racingpost.com/tipping/naps-table/

https://www.sportinglife.com/racing/naps-table

Martin

@arran-shackell it didn't used to reset that often, is that definite? As yeah it does hamper. You could of course keep a record of it before month end on a sheet to tally it all up