What Time?

Having just highlighted a name problem in my previous post I've now found a new problem with matching horse races...

What time is the race?



The same race can apparently be run at different times...

Back to editing code again...

Which Horse?

It's hard enough picking winners before the race, but sometimes it's not easy even after the results are published...



I guess a few errors are to be expected, but it doesn't make the scraping any easier when linking data from multiple sources...



The form seems to be mostly consistent, and it doesn't really matter if RP have a different name for the horse now I've figured out the problem (has happened twice in 30000 horses so far) and have allowed for it in my horse id matching code.

I'm mostly using Timeform data and only collecting dob and breeding info from Racing Post, which all seems to be correct if you ignore the name and can make the correct match.

Loading...

Seem to have solved the C# browser control 'Memory Access Violation' error that pops up every few thousand pages...

It's great fun debugging when you get errors in someone else's (Microsoft's) code and it only happens once or twice a day...

I've sorted out refreshing invalid pages and 404 errors and all that stuff that happens from time to time. So I'm now able to download my database without having to keep checking/restarting it when the web sites mess up or go off line for maintenance (like RP does quite often).



It maybe won't take quite as long as it says in the picture, but on current progress it will take about 20 hours for each year of race data, so I'll probably only get the last 5 years for now.

BetUnFair

Not been doing much trading the last few days.

I've been re writing my horse database and enjoying the hills of Girona on the bike.

There's a lot of talk at the moment about Betfair PC3 and people moving to Betdaq. I think it will be a good thing if people do move over and I'm experimenting more with Betdaq myself.



Betfair used to be a good company with a good idea, and when they stuck to this idea I liked them, but now they have become arrogant and too greedy and in my opinion have underestimated their customers and made a very big mistake. They are starting to look like just another large American, full of bullshit, company with no legitimate values or integrity (though they will no doubt think they do have these things) very similar to the company I worked for a few years ago that drove me away from working in IT.

So my own opinion is that I hope this stupid decision bites them in the Arse.

Even if it causes me some extra work swapping exchanges or costs me a few quid in the short term.

I have so far kept my commission just above 20% and so I haven't even paid any PC2 yet, but that's not the point, this is just a completely dumb decision by Betfair and they have lost any loyalty that I might have had.

They have also strengthened my resolve to switch from trading to betting and to find value bets which can be made anywhere, rather than trades that need liquidity to trade out.

I will happily switch exchanges tomorrow if I am able to make the same profits.

Certainly by the time I get anywhere near £250k I'm sure things will have changed a lot.

Interesting Times.

Gears

Watching Tour de France has inspired me to head for the mountains on the road bike, and there's a few good climbs near Girona... but unfortunately my bike only has a double ring so is not ideal for cat 1 and 2 climbs...



Next bike will definitely have a triple.

I made it, but it hurt like



This is the climb I did today.

Ryder does it in 29:09... not sure where his start is, mine from 13.5km away at the start of the road was a very pedestrian 50 mins (although I did get held up by some sheep for 30 secs).

Even grinding a heavy gear it was still 15 mins faster than I did on the mountain bike last week.

Coming back down only takes 10 mins!!!

Bot Tastic

Not sure what has happened, but my old bot that used to make decent money, but then spent the last 6 months just ticking over churning bets and breaking even (but keeping commission % high) and sometimes making a few quid (10-20) a month, has made more than it's made all year in the last 2 weeks... and if it makes the same in the next 2 weeks it will be a good month, even compared to when it was bringing in good money.



On top of that I finished downloading data and analysing my dob selections for the past 12 months historic data (based on what I've been doing the last few weeks) and it seems I've made £200 on a losing system... lol

Sometimes you just get lucky...

Anyway, it seems (with a few filters) I might now have a decent laying selection system :)

Won't be doing much trading (not manual anyway) for the next few days as I am taking a holiday... no point being in Spain and working all day...

A bit of mountain biking, a bit of sculling, a bit of beer (well a lot of beer) and then maybe towards the end of next week I'll get back to work and start on my next project.

Next project is looking at non UK/IRE horses/dogs and Australia markets.

I will also be re writing my scraping code and horse race database at some point to make it faster and more efficient, now that I've figured out how I should have done it in the first place...

Hind sight is a wonderful thing... if only you didn't need to wait for it.

Free Bet

Had a free bet today courtesy of Betdaq prices being screwed...

Not seen it before, and I wasn't prepared to risk lumping on a huge arb in case they voided the market or something...



Backed 6.3 ish on BF and layed 2.3 on BedDaq

The first three runners on Betdaq were all trading around 2.0

Something went wrong with something... and surprisingly not many layers were taking advantage, but the races are quite tight for time today so maybe a lot of people skipped that race or something.

Guaranteed profit of £9 if it won, 50p if it lost...

Guess which it did... lol

-78p

43 races... Total P&L -78p

Not quite as good as yesterday.

Biggest winner today was only 14/1

Would have been nice if Ooi Long had come in at 300/1.

I'm not sure if I should change my blog title to Cran The Gambler as I didn't trade much today, apart from a couple of races it was just straight back bets to win.

Good Day

Had a good day today

Bot made a few quid (£30.95)

Backing dob selections on Betdaq (50p stakes) made a few quid (£61.61)

Trading my dobs on BF (£2 stakes later races) made a few quid (£19.82)



Daily profit £112.38

First time I've made over £100 in a day in a while...

Purple Profits

Decided to back my dob selections on the Purple Place to see how it goes...

Have been checking odds against BF to make sure I'm not taking lower prices, and have had a nice start with Lady of Burgandy coming in at 86.0 in the first few races of the day.



So I've already doubled my £20 starting bank even if I get no more winners today

The only downside is that even though I checked prices when making the bet... the Betfair SP was 350.0!

Maybe I shouldn't have been so keen to get my bets on early this morning...



Betdaq don't have a SP option, so no idea what price I'd have got nearer the off.

200 Races

Have compiled the results from last week, and from 200 races (a very small sample) the best strategy so far seems to be to back to win rather than dob...

The dobbing % is the % reduction on the scale starting price (0%) to 1.0 (100%) which means that 100% is a straight bet, as 1.01 is the lowest odds you can hedge at.



So from 200 races at 1 point per trade, blindly backing every dob selection gives a 300+ point return, and hedging at anything > 50% below SP gives a profit.

Maybe I should start a tipping service... lol (not going to happen)

Seriously though 200 races is nowhere near enough to draw any conclusion, but if I was trading with £2 stakes rather than paper trading I'd have had a very good week...

If backing to win does continue to be the best strategy then backing on Betdaq with 2.5% commission is going to be the thing to do.

The results above are after deducting 5% BF commission.

Powerful Wind

Had a £4 green on Powerful Wind... To take my daily profit up to £20...

So I thought...

Unfortunately it ended up as a £37 loss because it won and the back bet had a reduction factor applied but the lay bet didn't...

So my balance is now negative... and it turned my best daily profit (since I started the £10 bank a few weeks back) into the biggest daily loss...

Today's thought of the day, today

Be careful backing before the Off as it's not easy to spot a withdrawal if it happens just before the race starts and since the runner doesn't get added to the non runners the software has no way to apply the reduction factor into the hedge calculation...

I did wonder why the price shot down so quick at the off, I'll know not to hedge next time that happens...

It could have been worse, and £10 isn't a massive daily loss...

It does mean I can't trade for 2 days now as I have a daily £10 deposit limit set on the In running account.

So Weekend off and it starts now!!!

Maths

Slight error on the P&L calculation yesterday made the winners stats slightly more impressive than they should have been...

Having fixed the formulas, currently (on limited data) the best % drop to aim for with my recent dobbing selections is between 85%-90%

so for example if the BSP was 10 you'd hedge at 1.5.

Will see how that looks after a few weeks/months of data when it's more meaningful.

To DOB or not to DOB?

It's VERY early days yet, but I've been setting up the analysis of the stats on my dobbing selections to find the optimum hedge price based on % of BSP.

I am currently make a profit after 5% BF commission (based purely on my rating score with no filters applied, i.e. blindly backing my highest scoring dobbing selection at BSP in every race) at 8%-14%,19%-21% but the interesting thing is that I make a much bigger profit (15 times bigger) by not hedging at all and just letting the bets run...

Probably just randomness as I only have a few hundred races logged, and I need to develop some filters, but something to keep an eye on as I build up my data over the next 10000 races.

I guess it's reasonable to assume that horses with a good chance of shortening odds also have a good chance of winning... otherwise why would they end up in a position where their odds shorten...

Beer And Gambling

Thoughts of the day today:

1) Starting on the beers at 11am is not good for an afternoon of trading on the horses...

2) Going for 100 ticks will have a lower hit rate than going for 10 ticks...

Tobbing and Qobbing

I've noticed that quite often the selections I pick for dobbing go much lower than half the starting odds...

So I've decided to try some 'Triple or Bust' and 'Quadruple or Bust' to see how I get on. The risks are higher, but so are the rewards...

I guess the next thing on my to-do list is to identify criteria for choosing between Dob/Tob/Qob.

Also the odds quite often drift at the start before coming in... Assuming my selection process is correct that means I am getting much better value at the higher price and should be lumping more money on... or it could also mean the horse is running like a donkey...

Thought of the day

I still tend to scratch as the price drifts, but often it's just before the price shoots back in again... but obviously if I don't scratch the price continues to drift and takes my whole stake...

Anyway, that's enough thinking for one day... A few more races and then it's beer o'clock

Here's the final total for today...

Not too bad for £3 stakes and 8 races...



My selection process seems to be working better, when I stick to it... If I stay focused and don't 'play about' betting on markets that I shouldn't (like I did yesterday).

Still haven't really figured out if it's best to place a bet at (or just before) the off and risk it drifting, or after the off and risk having to chase the price down the ladder to get a bet on... I'm looking at the Pattern Form data to see if it can help with this by backing front runners pre off and hold up runners 25%-50% into the race.

Race Timer

Finished tidying up the in running race timer.



If anyone wants to give it a try I've put it on the interweb at http://www.nielda.co.uk/bf/data/

It only works for UK/IRE horse races and needs the Geeks Toy running to pick up the race distance and start.

So if you are not using Geeks Toy or not trading In Running don't bother to download it :) There's no buttons to click and it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot on it's own.

Had a good afternoon, but then the evening races were a bit rubbish, so I made a small loss on the total for the day by messing about in races that I should have not bothered with... as you do...

It was cheaper than going to the bar for more beers, so swings and roundabouts...

And I'm now going to the bar for more beers

España

Am now in Spain, sat on the balcony in the sun drinking my first beer of the day...

Managed to get here in 8.5 hours without picking up any speeding tickets, and the beer is in the fridge, and the computers are all set up and ready to go... once I've had some sleep...

Probably here for about 6 weeks and then I'll be back to Switzerland to look for a job.

Job?

Yeah, a job... BF have basically put the final nail in the coffin with their latest premium charge announcement. To be fair I was already planning on getting a job anyway, as it's much easier making a few hundred a month from gambling with no pressure than trying to pull in enough to pay the bills.

For anyone who is interested the Race timer is almost ready to release, thanks to the people who asked about it the other day I've got round to improving a few things and it starts automatically when the race starts now, just need to figure out how to auto set the race distance and then it's done. Hope to get that done tomorrow.

Obviously I'll be mountain biking and swimming and sun bathing first...

[Edit] The race timer is done, so I'll test it out tomorrow afternoon and then assuming I don't find any problems I'll make it available as a .msi installation.

It does require The Geeks Toy because it picks up the race distance from the Toy's market overview window and auto starts when it goes in play. The other option would be to use the BF API but that would involve user names and passwords and data requests.

Only does UK/IRE races, but they are the only ones that go in play I think.

Dobbing Video

Don't get too excited, but I've made a video of the last race today, mainly to test Camtasia on my new PC.



you might need to right click and download it to computer before playing

Started with a bank of £3.93, and made £7.58 over a few races this afternoon to finish up with a bank of 11.51 ready for some big stake betting tomorrow.

That £250k of profit to put me in the new Premium Charge zone is getting closer every day...

The last race was one of the easier trades of the day and I was fairly confident that the price 'should' come in, although (typically as I'd just increased the stakes to £3) it did take a while and I was already quite a few ticks in the red before the race even started.

It's a thin line between scratching too early and missing the profit, or letting it run a bit too long and losing the whole stake...

This is a good example of not scratching too early. I'm getting better at picking the right horses (mainly because I've automated it) so I'm more confident about hanging on for the green.

I probably shouldn't watch the races once I've put the closing trade in, but unfortunately I still sometimes like to jump in early and take a smaller green than I should or settle for a small red just before the price shoots down past where my lay bet was waiting... as I did several times today. The key is selecting the right horse and the right number of ticks in advance, as it's almost impossible to scratch once it goes wrong anyway, and I lose as much in greens as I save in reds by intervening.

I've added some music to the video, because it's bloody boring otherwise, and I reckon there can't be more than about 6 mouse clicks in the whole thing...

I placed the back bet quite early (about 10 mins before the race) just because there was nothing else happening. Sometimes I start the trade before the off, other times I wait until the race has started. Not very scientific, but that's what happens...

I'll do a longer video of more races next week when I'm in Spain (and I'll speed it up so it doesn't last too long).