Understanding when you have 'an edge'

I have a edge come full time and my bank is up

The simple way, just my opinion of course, is that you are backing at prices that are greater than they should be and laying at prices that are shorter than they should be consistently over a long period of time. Remember edges, especially mathematical ones, can erode and disappear over time.

i believe i have an edge

Edge is cool

SPEAR SPEAR SPEAR

Thanks buzzer.  That's seems like a very real interpretation and I wonder if there are others on Betfair who would have a similar or different perception.

I don't think I have an 'edge' as I don't have a standard methodical system whereby I KNOW I will register consistent profits.

Cheers and Good Luck

To have an 'edge' you need a factor that is
ignored, under valued, over valued, over reaction,
under reaction to events such as 'team news', the
'need to win', 'nothing to play for', 'only need a draw',
'recent form' etc, etc., sometimes prices move sharply
for no reason, band wagon effect. If you can be objective
it helps. you Being able to recognise a 'no bet' situation is also something to learn as well. GL.

I agree with buzzer. If, after factoring in commission, you can lay at below the chances of the result occurring, or back at above it, then you have an edge. Each situation is a judgment call.

SPEAR SPEAR SPEAR

Each situation is a judgment call.

In other words, a guess ?

I think prices here are usually too accurate to be able to back or lay at value pre-off, but in-play throws up some value. DFC is doing very well so far, even though he mainly lays at top prices (a couple of ticks above what could be achieved) but even he says he doesn't think he has an adge. I always think that anyone laying high prices will perhaps have one shocking week per year which could wipe out all gains - there's no security in laying like that IMO.

Being able to recognise a 'no bet' situation is also something to learn as well.

i agree completely. maybe one of the hardest things to learn

Each situation is a judgment call.

In other words, a guess ?

LOL!

I prefer to think of it as a judgment call based on some combination of instinct, experience and understanding; but you can call it a "guess" if you like. We always hear that some people are very good at guessing in comparison to others.

I prefer to think of it as a judgment call based on some combination of instinct, experience and understanding;

Posh words for guessing mainly, although you left out
'gut feelings' or does that come under the 'instinct' umbrella ?

Absolute nonsense - judgement calls, instinct and experience dont, on their own, come into it.

An edge is a consistent, systematic application to a criterium that has stood the test of tens of thousands of events over many years - ekeing a predetermined return

Anyone who has just a genuine 1% edge should be made

birch2 Joined: 01 Jun 02
Replies: 179 26 May 10 18:55   
Absolute nonsense - judgement calls, instinct and experience dont, on their own, come into it.

birch, do you think they (judgement calls, instinct and experience) therefore come into it in conjuction with other factors ?

supernap

yes - in setting the criteria for the system you are proposing to use, many factors come into it, some of which you pointed to earlier

What I was trying to point out is you cannot have an 'edge' when applying just one or 2 of these factors to a 'sample' of events

An 'edge' can only be claimed over the test of time/'x' events - not on 1 day or 1 week or even 1 year

lots for debate - thanks for replies.

My impression is that an edge is something you can RELY on to make you a regular profit.

Anyone think different?

yes - in setting the criteria for the system you are proposing to use

Birch, I am not proposing any system using any criteria at all. If you are referring to my post at 19:31 yesterday, I was suggesting possible situations where 'wrong prices' can occur, and possibly acted on, providing one can stay completely objective, if that makes sense. If one then mixes 'instinct' etc, in as well, things would get complicated. GL.

Supersnap, as you know wrong prices don't remain wrong for very long, they can't, and all the things you mentioned above are factored into the price anyway, actually creating the price.

Birch2 is spot on, this is something I've been working on for nearly a year now, and although I know the edge is there it's the losing runs that are so hard to handle mentally and the most difficult aspect of this whole game. I'm slowly turning myself into a human bot lol, those that run a method might know what I mean. Just last Sunday I had 10 losses in a row, which meant nothing at all to the method but still hurt mentally and built pressure as I'm but a mere human :)

U2 have got an Edge.

Trev, you say 'wrong' prices don't remain 'wrong'        for very long. I'm not referring to them, but when
the exchanges move prices for the reasons I mention.
Prices don't always move 'wrong' to 'right', but many
times the other way. When a 2.30 chance moves to 2.60
it doesn't mean the original price was being corrected,
only changed. It also doesn't mean the new price is
correct, and that sometimes is the time to bet, at the
'new' price, against the flow. I see football prices every week moving to very backable prices for no particular
reason, and if I'm happy that the team haven't gone down
with food poisoning on the morning of the match, I will
take the 2.60 blind, trusting that the 2.30 posted by
many books the day before was the right price. It's not
books that change prices, but backers money, many times
for the wrong reasons.

good point

Great to see Ken back
on the typewriter

agree with birch fwiw.

if it isn't a system with clear rules that's in profit after commission over a statistically significant number of instances, "edge" doesn't come into it by my definition.

Supernap - in major markets, do you really believe that opening prices are more "correct" than later prices?

supernap has this thread tied.

dont think you can explain it any better than that.

i know of one edge i have.
but a few years ago this was visibly so over bet it was unreal.
i think people couldnt make a profit this way so
now i can get back on knowing long term i will do ok.

Interesting point about the movement in edge over time on a market. Hadn't thought about that before, but different approaches will of course come in and out of vogue.

Supernap on the money as per. Not sure why people are questioning the logic.

Supernap does talk sense, however I was under the impression that an edge is scientific and not subjective.

Supernap in your last post you seem to make reference to subjective thoughts (have i read that wrong?)

Is an edge not purely based on numbers, numbers and more numbers?

cheers and good luck.

An edge means your results produce a return greater than the expected return

how you come about that, be it subjective thinkings, inside knowledge, getting bets on early etc doesn't matter.

and % error = (difference in values/true value) x 100%

err wtf, that last post was misplaced

ok rocket cheers.  I'm sure that there are many on betfair who ridicule the subjective aspect of decision making and insist that decisions on what positions to take should be based purely on numercial data researched over a very long period of time.

I wouldn't say that.

I'd guess (total guess) that the majority of edges are mathematical as they're more likely to be reproducable but have no doubt people gain an edge through what I said.

thanks rocket .... and I guess that is the reassurances that I am looking for....any edge i may stumble upon does not necessarily have to be 100% mathematicial.

Apparently a well informed opinion can count for something!  Here's hoping.

Good luck all.

Agreed Rocket. More subjective the better imo. Less chance of others getting into the bed as yourself, so to speak!

same bed^^

Well it should only comfort you if you have access to inside info or you seed/trap.

If not, you need a mathematical edge .

and just before we start confusing ourselves, trap bets and seeding do still require the math to be right.

DaveEdwards Joined: 06 Sep 07
Replies: 4454 27 May 10 23:22   
Agreed Rocket. More subjective the better imo. Less chance of others getting into the bed as yourself, so to speak!


Always a danger [;)]



(i see what you're getting at )

An edge when level stakes betting is reaching 101 percent profit or more before losing your stake. If you can do this consistently over time then you have a long term edge.

the best edge you can get on this place is the massive overreaction to almost any event in running or pre game i suppose. especially where there is a two way market but it happens on 3 ways too.

for example, and yes i know some of you will argue the relevance of this..

pre game the other week the north queensland cowboys were approx 2.78 away at the warriors i think and there was a question mark about J thurston and whether he would play. when it was said he will play the odds dropped immediately to 2.43 and then levelled out again at 2.55 just down to one player..

and just look what happens when a goal is scored, a late basket is scored, a try is scored, and you will see that you can make yourself guaranteed money if your quick.

as for defintie edges on sports and finding them.. good luck if you get one that can sustain profits over a long period of time.. ive always found that eventually they get clipped..

and as i said elsewhere..

for a site where prob 95% are long term losers..

there are a LOT of ppl on these forums who reckon they have an edge or long term winning edges.. you do have to wonder

The question people have to ask themselves is "Am I good or just lucky?". You might have a long winning streak and then go bust because your strategy is ultimately flawed but was successful for a while mainly due to good fortune.

You MAY go bust if strategy floored BUT main reason you will go bust is your staking is floored. Stakes should always be reflected to conceived price to price obtained.

FLAWED spelling aint costly!!

As Avocado touched on above - your problem is sample size.

The usual criteria for online poker players to establish if they're winning overall or not is a sample size of 100,000 hands. If you're backing a very low edge then you need this kind of sample size to give a solid confidence interval that your strategy is, in fact, a winning one.

To further belabour the point - there's a Craps simulator you can run on your PC with it's own program language where you can set a strategy and run it over any number of rolls of the dice (Wincraps).

I have developed strategies that on single sample runs were profitable over 10,000 or even 20,000 rolls. After a million rolls, however, they all lost because ultimately you can't overcome the house edge.

So just because your 'tested' and backfitted system would have made 10% over the last 4 years of racing doesn't mean that it's profitable - even if you are looking at maybe 500 - 1500 bets. Sample size is way too small to determine if it's ultimately profitable.

thought about this more, and if I was going to sum it up, it's as follows:

only what you do can have an edge, not you.

Surely if an individual is making profit over a long period of time then they have an edge/advantage/opportunity which they capitilse on - whatever you want to call it.

Be it mathematical / opinions / fast pics / research or combination of some or all - the acid test is PROFIT.

The contributors to laying the CS market thread make a profit (DFC does and has consistently) therefore surely that's the proof?  Even though their will be many who dismiss or turn their noses up since it 'might not be scientific enough'

cheers and good luck.

what dfc's done to this point has an edge. he doesn't.

sorry to go all zen, but it's a key distinction to understand.

Absolutley Viva.

It's the method not the man!  (Although DFC could well feel hard done by, by that statement!)

"Interesting" comment.......but after all the appraisal of a match,it is  I, AND NOBODY ELSE, that has to make a decision on which CS to LAY.

This is NOT a "mathematical" decision....but lateral thinking decision......where subjectivity does come into it.

Whether it is an "edge" or not.......I've no idea on the CS football lays.....though over a 58 day period my ROT was just over 2 % on STAKES risked of about £650,000 ( from memory). Does that indicate an edge might exist???? I've no idea!

Away for tea...................Gl with bets

I don't think anyone on the CS thread has been going long enough to be sure of profits over any given year, or the next year and the next year. It would be interesting to see someone selecting CS lays with a 'stick a pin in' method, they could have a good run but would lose to commission eventually.

to clarify dfc, wasn't a go at you. you're clearly doing something right.

my point is that for anyone in that situation there's a temptation to think "my results show I have an edge; my results are a product of my judgment; therefore my judgment has an edge; therefore whatever judgments I make have that same edge".

the danger is that when results start going against that person, it gets put down to a bad run for longer than it ought to, and questioning what they're doing gets delayed.

again, none of that is at you. I wish I was making your money - and commission points!

No offence taken.....as with football betting I don't really believe that the "edge" really exists........whereas with horse racing I "know" that various edges exist, but even with those edges, some subjectivity exists.....and also lateral thinking again.

As most of the "edges" with horse racing have recurred time after time sufficiently enough to convince me that they are RELEVANT factors that can enable selection of "right" horses....and not "wrong" horses to win...or lay at good odds ( normally as generally not favourites), then having an "edge" does exist with horse racing.

Still not got tea....so better crack on ....

Cheers the noooo and GL with bets