Horse Racing Strategy Clinic
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@Adam Cheers for having a look!
Thats a great spot about it making profit when closing at the start of the race, I'm deffo more of a risk averse person so it's very tempting to forward test that method. I'm gonna hook these up with BFBM and try get the automation working for these, with the removal of a stoploss in race it should hopefully make it quite easy!
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@Danny-Newby Looks pretty solid. So you're basically looking for nice highly-priced horses which stand a good chance of racing prominently or leading and therefore steaming at least 10 ticks.
A couple of thoughts:
- You could experiment with different exit and stop-loss ticks and track the change in the "MFE" and "MAE" figures in the results. These will help you plan the best exit and stop-loss points (see the info button next to each one for a description of what they do)
- This is definitely one to forward-test as you'll be closing a lot of trades in-running and are using a stop-loss. The in-play delay and volatility of the prices in-running can make this challenging. Interestingly, the strategy still performs pretty well even if you close your trades at the start of the race! So if you wanted to de-risk it a bit, that could be an option.
- You might consider limiting the number of qualifiers per race with the "max qualifiers" option in the betting rules, basically for the same reason I mentioned above - successfully executing several trades with stoplosses in-running might be a challenge
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Hey, been messing around with the software looking for a B2L or something similiar. Come up with this. First one I've come up with using the software and wondered if anyone more experienced would be able to cast an eye on it and tell me whether I've back fitted the hell out of it or done something daft.
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@George-Bowling Use "Single price" as the bet type, which is like placing a bet at a specific price and waiting for it to get matched if possible:
If you also change the results grouping to "Specific Race", you'll also be able to more easily see your combined p/l per race:
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@Adam Could you let me know how to create a 'lay the field' type strategy please? Not sure how to just put in lay orders as a price without any corresponding back bet. Any help appreciated.
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@Dan-MacKinnon said in Horse Racing Strategy Clinic:
What would you be hoping to see for this? What's a good guide for a % difference over break-even? Is a lower % acceptable if there are fewer losing runs?
Realistically it's always going to be quite tight as the markets are fairly efficient, but yes if the drawdown isn't too bad then I guess your margin on the strike rate is less concerning.
For perspective, the best I've managed so far is beating the breakeven SR by 13%, but even that strategy has gone pretty flat since around October, and it only produces a handful of trades every month, which I don't mind as I like these micro-strategies, but it does make it harder to see if it's preparing for a downturn!
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@Dan-MacKinnon I'm not sure of the statistical relevance, but all of my strategies are between 5% and 8% above breakeven strike rate, which seems to be working.
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@Adam said in Horse Racing Strategy Clinic:
Your edge on this strategy is pretty tight to be fair with your strike rate only a couple of % over the break-even. It also looks like losing runs are pretty common, with a drawdown of half your bank at one point.
What would you be hoping to see for this? What's a good guide for a % difference over break-even? Is a lower % acceptable if there are fewer losing runs?
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Thanks everyone. It’s really interesting to hear from you all on things to look out for. I’m new to horse racing and all my experience is based off the software so I appreciate the “real world” advice. You’ve all mentioned issues I’ve encountered, if not with this one then another strategy.
Thanks again!
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@Dan-MacKinnon said in Horse Racing Strategy Clinic:
I'll give this a go. I've had this strategy which looks promising but has divebombed recently.
I think the main thing with this one is that the compounded stakes are obviously not very realistic. It really quickly ramps up to crazy stakes that probably wouldn't get matched. Looking at this, we really need to get some liquidity settings into the software so thanks for this.
Changing to flat stakes just to eliminate that factor gives a better picture of the raw performance of the strategy.
There is a drop-off recently which is annoying, but last winter it surged if anything. It does feel like something's changed this winter. I'm going to try and do some analysis of this when I get a moment. Feels like there have been more abandoned meets this year, or at least that they started earlier than usual, which I think has had an effect.
It could just be natural variance though. I'm always reminded of this chart, which show panic selling in the stock market over time:
Your edge on this strategy is pretty tight to be fair with your strike rate only a couple of % over the break-even. It also looks like losing runs are pretty common, with a drawdown of half your bank at one point.
I'm not convinced the headgear restriction is meaningful, although in previous years, there looks to be a bit of a correlation with the horse's first couple of runs after a wind op.
Apologies for only bringing problems and no solutions!
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@Dan-MacKinnon I'm worried about your staking bud, don't rush it
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@Dan-MacKinnon I don't know what the answer is. If you run it on 2022 instead of 2023 it bombs Apr-Jun, so doesn't appear to me that it's a seasonal thing, just a bad run.
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@Greg-Mitchell I tried to add filters which have minimal impact unless it's obvious. The OR only excludes 11 trades so it's not a big difference if it's in or not.
The thing I'm struggling with is that so many just fall off a cliff Nov-Dec. I understand that is also due to compounding so bigger reversals, but I'm starting to think whether it's best to just pause trading during December-January?
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@Dan-MacKinnon I would question your Official Rating bit, Flat Horses only go up to 140 and Jumps up to 170, so its questionable if having this in makes any difference. The you would only be excluding the very best jumps horse.
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@Martin True but it's still showing Winter as a weakness. Might throw this over to the forward testing thread
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@Dan-MacKinnon when you set it to flat stakes the drop off is minimal!
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I'll give this a go. I've had this strategy which looks promising but has divebombed recently.
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