The BTC Horse Racing Thread
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@john-folan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
@joseph-henderson said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
Apologies if this is a [SNIP]
I use good size stakes now so really don’t need that much movement to make what I want off of a race. I go in a few times depending on what is going on for smaller movements. But to answer your question I’m normally out 2 or 3 ticks the wrong way as that usually indicates I’ve got it wrong. Sometimes it recovers but most of the time that Red keeps on growing
I think that is a very good point, a lot of us 'newbies' forget this aspect, when your 1% of bank roll is, for example, £100 then you dont really need too many ticks movement to make a decent anount of green a day (or obviously equally a large red in the opposite direction). But it means you can be fairly happy with a one or two tick move. I think a lot of us - me included - used to get frustrated with green values of pennies and wondering how on earth you'd ever make a living or at the very least a decent amount trading. So we take too much risk and look for larger tick movements in order to increase the green - usually though ending up with too much red LOL. Since I have started using percentages of net stake and points - so never thinking of stakes as 'money' - I've found it a lot easier all round. If I have a certain percentage green or red I'm out. So now I measure everything as points / percentages of up or down rather than thinking about cash.
So how much percentage of my stake am I prepared to loose, what percentage profit am I happy with is what I go with. Has helped me tremdously.
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A quiet day for me today with nothing meeting my criteria for a trade. To be honest I quite enjoyed watching the opening day of Aintree with no ££ on the line
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@joseph-henderson said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
Apologies if this is a silly question but I was wondering if anyone has any guidance on staking and risk management when scalping? In several videos online people refer to targeting a certain number of ticks for example, however I haven't read anything about how to manage risk and when to exit if the trade goes against you in order to remain profitable in the long run. Thanks
I use good size stakes now so really don’t need that much movement to make what I want off of a race. I go in a few times depending on what is going on for smaller movements. But to answer your question I’m normally out 2 or 3 ticks the wrong way as that usually indicates I’ve got it wrong. Sometimes it recovers but most of the time that Red keeps on growing
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 -
Apologies if this is a silly question but I was wondering if anyone has any guidance on staking and risk management when scalping? In several videos online people refer to targeting a certain number of ticks for example, however I haven't read anything about how to manage risk and when to exit if the trade goes against you in order to remain profitable in the long run. Thanks
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@john-folan thanks John
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@david-milligan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
@john-folan so does this mean if you had a max drawdown of say 10pt, you split your bank into 30pts? And stake eg 3%? Not really 100% sure how to work these out
Pretty much it mate. Nice and simple
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@john-folan so does this mean if you had a max drawdown of say 10pt, you split your bank into 30pts? And stake eg 3%? Not really 100% sure how to work these out
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@gary-tunnicliffe said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
@john-folan morning John, what do you mean by "correct" staking ? fixed liabilty all lays ?
I run a variety between flat stakes and liability(short odd lays for example are obvious flat stakes). Than others on liability. All compounding at different rates depending on the drawdown. I work on I want a three times max drawdown as a bank and work the compounding on that be it at 1%, 2% or 5% of bank.
Hope that makes senses.
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@john-folan morning John, what do you mean by "correct" staking ? fixed liabilty all lays ?
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@kevin-pepper No worries at all mate - shout if I can point you in the right direction with anything. I'm definitely stumbling through it myself, but starting to get to grips with it!
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@joshua-varley Thanks Josh. I've had a dabble with ChatGPT but need to do some proper research to see how it might help with some of my Excel stuff. At the moment I can't figure at all how you'd ask it do carry work on a s/sheet what with referencing the file, columns etc but the only way is it get stuck in. Seems you've got some real value from it
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LTBF is the way forward. Correct staking on flat stakes looks golden. Short odds lays and pace backs will start smashing it now the flat has started. Like c and d winner too.
We need speed ratings.
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@david-milligan said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
@nick-allan it's funny how things differ - I'm struggling to get anything very interesting going on the football side and I'm thinking about focusing purely on horses. The lay the beaten fave strategy is my best performing, with back fave/c&d winner/pace lays bumping along just above breakeven but have been positive a fair bit before some negative variance.
ive started back with lay the beaten fav with a fixed liability as opposed to flat stakes so lets see what happens, who knows 4 months down the line the 3 strategies could perform well and football goes up the spout. The best thing is im learning, and if i can make a few quid along the way then fab. But im not going to stick with something thats not making money for me, and i have given horses a fair wack and will continue to do so until my subs run out. But you know after a year if its working
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@nick-allan it's funny how things differ - I'm struggling to get anything very interesting going on the football side and I'm thinking about focusing purely on horses. The lay the beaten fave strategy is my best performing, with back fave/c&d winner/pace lays bumping along just above breakeven but have been positive a fair bit before some negative variance.
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@joshua-varley said in The BTC Horse Racing Thread:
Variance: A Short Story
So I've spent the last 3 or 4 months (even as far back as 7 months for some) testing a range of 8 strategies that provide what I believe is a comfortable range of risk/reward. I've adjusted all of the strategies slightly, usually to remove variables, rather than include more. It's a nice mix of back and lay, with a few of the members presets, plus a few of some of the early ones that were added in June/July last year that I've tested since. There's even a couple that I've made and tested too, thrown in the mix.
I have done a lot of work around analysing the last two years of data, using it to create the ideal stake size, based on doubling the largest recorded drawdowns and then applying it to the individual bank of each strategy. All a very easy and rewarding process with this software. ChatGPT has also been a game changer and allowed me to create some absolutely killer spreadsheets.
I wanted to wait until the end of March to go live with the new stakes just to make sure I had a full 2 years of data behind the project. The equity curve below, with all strategies combined shows a lovely profit of about 4000 points on flat stakes (all lays to a stake rather than liability), and looks even healthier when my new, adjusted stakes are applied.
Anyways, all loveliness aside, I finally went live with this new plan, two and a half weeks ago. As can be seen in the first pic, the first 14 days were stellar and it lulled me into thinking I'd cracked the code... I was 50% of the starting bank up and loving life. A few of the strategies were slightly over-performing, so I knew a correction was coming.... but wow....The last 3 days have definitely had me crashing back to earth...(Those damned Pace Lays!)
I just wanted to share for a laugh - variance and probability distribution are cruel mistresses and have planted my feet now firmly on the ground!
How is everyone getting on with their set and forget horse racing strats?
Poor if im honest, im trying 3 strategies now and im not changing them, giving it 4 months and if things dont improve im going to drop horses and focus on football
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@kevin-pepper Yeah just myself really. For example (and bear in mind I had no real knowledge of excel before), I figured it might be useful to create a table with each date listed over the two year period and it's corresponding daily P/L listed beside it (to analyse longest daily losing/winning streaks etc.) So rather than go through all that data and do it manually, I just asked chatGPT to create it based on column references etc that I provided. After a few little tweaks, it did it perfectly. There are lots of other things like that I have asked it to do and now my life is easier for it.
One of the things I liked the best was saving a tonne of time creating a monthly breakdown of all the strategies in the pic below. That's been super useful
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@joshua-varley
Hi Josh, the CHATGPT piece sounds fascinating. Did you just work out yourself what you wanted to ask it to do or did you find a source for guidance?
Thanks
Kevin -
@david-milligan not so much in terms of optimising strategies, more in the organisation of the data. My excel knowledge was super basic before undertaking this, but chatGPT has allowed me to explain what I want excel to do and it creates the formulas for me. There was over 23000 bets across all 8 strategies for the last 2 years and my spreadsheets have now be able to break all of those down (both collectively and individually) to make analysing much more friendly. Being able to plug in different stake sizes to the whole data set and then redetermine max drawdown etc has been brilliant.
Just hoping the next 2 years of data broadly mimics the last!
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@joshua-varley great post, I've been playing about with ChatGPT too trying to get it to work to my advantage with limited success. How did you use it to help with your strategies?
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@joshua-varley I think this is the time when they start changing some of the courses over? I remember John said something about April and October being awkward months
