The BTC Horse Racing Thread

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@charles-cartwright Thanks Charles, I am a bit sceptical about a blanket approach to laying, different if you've done research on a specific horse and course. The people I 'borrowed' the settings from touted an 88% strike rate, that's still a little fragile and I am sceptical. However, I'm using tiny stakes and regaining my feet in the sport (I started out trading horses and panicked at the speed of the markets and level research required) and then switched to football.

This lapse of sport has allowed me to get in some learning and start exploring how stats can help certain trades. I've found that I am actually loving the horses, probably more than trading football. Back to Lay is my preferred option and I honestly cannot wait to get let loose on the big guns now.

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@keith-dow said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Greyhound bot had a good night/day and up 1pt. Horse bot, not so much and at a loss of 1.25pts! Current overall Greyhound at 89% S/R and 1.25pts profit, Horse bot at 85% S/R and 0.8 pts loss. Changed the settings to fixed liability as opposed to fixed stake to see what impact that has on the return.

Keith:

As well as looking at your strike rate you need to monitor the prices that the lays are going in at because the two need to be in sync (obvious really). So if the true S/R after several hundred trades is around 85% you need to have an average price of around 6.5 just to break even. Naturally, the higher the S/R the higher the average price you can tolerate and succeed.

I worked with straight laying horses for several years and have to say I could never find a way of making it work for any sustained length of time before hitting a bad run that would wipe out most of the accumulated profit. Before everything went on hiatus a couple of us were working on an idea that Martin F. put on here looking at laying selections picked as naps by the online/newspaper racing people and that appeared promising (chance that they would be overvalued simply because they had been flagged up by someone who is on a bad run of picking winners). In the UK market there is enough liquidity in the place market to make the trades there and that greatly diminishes your risk and makes it potentially less prone to huge variance swings.

Anyway...good luck with whatever you try right now and hope you stay with us here on the HR thread when real racing returns (hopefully) soon!

C

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Greyhound bot had a good night/day and up 1pt. Horse bot, not so much and at a loss of 1.25pts! Current overall Greyhound at 89% S/R and 1.25pts profit, Horse bot at 85% S/R and 0.8 pts loss. Changed the settings to fixed liability as opposed to fixed stake to see what impact that has on the return.

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@charles-cartwright no problem Charles but it’s a bit hit and miss just now. I’m really using it to get used to automation and refining strategies on the data that come from them.

I ‘borrowed’ the idea from an email selling a bot based on laying. They use a very specific staking plan for maximum return but mentioned that you should still see results with level stakes. They also (bizarrely) showed all their settings.

So my set up is currently laying the 3rd favourite if it’s lay odds are between 5.5 and 7.5, there are more than 9 runners and the 3rd fav is priced at least 15 ticks higher than the fav.

It’s placed just shy of 90 bets in 7 days (Aus only and no harness) and is sitting at just under 88% strike rate and 0.25pts profit.

I’m thinking of changing from level stakes to level liability to see if that impacts on the return after I hit 100 bets.

I’m doing something similar with the Aussie dogs but with slightly higher lay odds and different race conditions. Getting the same strike rate.

Like I said, I haven’t a lot of data to back this up and it may well go pear shaped as it’s based on laying but it’s keeping my mind active and allowing me to get my head around Bet Angel’s Guardian.

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@keith-dow said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

5/7 tonight. Managed 0.5pts profit today. Couple of mistakes caught up with me tonight but it's a learning game. Bot set for Aus.

Keith:

Would be interested in learning what you are running on the Aus racing if you are willing to share

Richard Latimer

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Break even at the worst now. After 6 races I'm ahead again.

And break even is exactly where it ends for the evening.

Richard Latimer

Break even at the worst now. After 6 races I'm ahead again.

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5/7 tonight. Managed 0.5pts profit today. Couple of mistakes caught up with me tonight but it's a learning game. Bot set for Aus.

Richard Latimer

@james-everard said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@richard-latimer Like the way people are trying to think out of the box for angles to trade.

It's all we have haha!

james everard

@richard-latimer Like the way people are trying to think out of the box for angles to trade.

Richard Latimer

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@james-everard Yeah I saw. I also know that one of the time form 3 in the first race was a non runner. No data to leave these out at present but it may be something.

Either way I'm currently laying them all @ 2.02 inplay providing race distance between 6f - 1m and as long as none of the 3 have a BSP lower than 2.5. Maybe that will be upped to 3.0 in due course.

None matched at all in the last

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Bollocks, I really should listen to myself sometimes. Gambled on a B2L but should've went the opposite. Oh well 2/3 for far. Lesson learned.

Richard Latimer

@james-everard Yeah I saw. I also know that one of the time form 3 in the first race was a non runner. No data to leave these out at present but it may be something.

Either way I'm currently laying them all @ 2.02 inplay providing race distance between 6f - 1m and as long as none of the 3 have a BSP lower than 2.5. Maybe that will be upped to 3.0 in due course.

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@keith-dow said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@james-everard Yeah, I don't have the confidence for the outsiders yet. Not enough knowledge. I like to follow the money! The next race is a tricky one as the horse I like is drawn wide and had mediocre pace stats and races midfield. I may give this one a miss but keeping an eye on the market just now.

May consider a L2B or perhaps nick a tick or two in running

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@james-everard Yeah, I don't have the confidence for the outsiders yet. Not enough knowledge. I like to follow the money! The next race is a tricky one as the horse I like is drawn wide and had mediocre pace stats and races midfield. I may give this one a miss but keeping an eye on the market just now.

james everard

@keith-dow Two high odds horses from the timeform at the 20.15pm mate

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2/2 for me so far. The 3 I had my eye on in the first came 1,2,3 and in the second I was watching 2 and they came 2&3. Only back one at time though and trying to scalp 10% of the stake just now.

james everard

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@charles-cartwright said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@martin-futter said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

@richard-latimer keep us updated on that!

I will for sure. Think it will need a similar sort of race criteria but perhaps not so restricted. Same, distance for sure. Maybe don't need quite as many runners and timeform favourite can be shorter than 4.0 I think. As long as I get a good price laying tf favourite (thinking 2.50 BSP lowest if I want to lay at 2.02 which was how I experimented yesterday).

Obv if I match none of them then it's no loss so no big deal.

I remember the experiment of laying tf favourite went ok so maybe laying all 3 at lower in running prices will fare just as well if not better.

Struggling to understand the logic with this one Richard. You set your in play lays to fire on only 3 horses in the field so realistically the only way you win (at your close to even money play) is that 1 or more of them hits that mark but none of them are the ultimate winner of the race because that has to be horse that you didn't include in your selections.

The whole premise of LTF is that the races are unpredictable and that odds fluctuate tremendously in play so that any of the runners can end up at a low price but only one will win. The best conversion rate often comes when a relative outsider wins the race but several of the more fancied runners give a strong showing.

If you are going to try to cherry pick these then maybe (and I am hesitant with this because I have never tried it and have no way of testing it with retrospective data) look for races with several front or prominent running horses that have high DOB conversion rates. Can't really do any of that until proper racing comes back because of the really small number of races right now and the lack of decent exchange markets.

Hit the nail on the head at the end. Can't do any of that yet. I know people had success laying timeform horses so why not lay all 3 at much lower odds??! It worked last night. Maybe not tonight but we'll see. Looking for fresh one to drift a bit for 19:15 to qualify.

Hi Richard, the 19.45pm race none of the time form tips won, but the race before odds of 2.71 bsp odds won. Maybe we should look at laying any of the timeform horses that are odds range say 3.5 -5.0 ?

Richard Latimer

@richard-latimer said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:

Don't know what bsp was in first but seemed over 2.5. Nevermind. Onwards.

Worked in the last

Richard Latimer

Don't know what bsp was in first but seemed over 2.5. Nevermind. Onwards.