Btw Frog, have you ever watched [say] an in-running match on the c/s market?

You will need to watch using something like Gruss or Geeks Toy etc, and just watch the 0-0 price for example, with a 1 second refresh, preferably on a poor liquid market.

You will realise immediately how Bot operators make money. When the 0-0 price is [say] 6.0, the MMB will be offering 5.2 and 6.8, poor value both sides for the takers, and a license to print for the Bot man.

Positive Vibe
Far too deep for me I'm afraid to say.

No Frog, other Bots don't appear to undercut the main liquidity providing MMB, I don't know why.

Obviously in high liquid matches the Bot doesn't operate, because every tick is packed with money, and in those matches the price falls slower as layers hold the price up, which presents an opportunity to lay 0-0's pre k/o and get a good run for your money if you're redding-up at a pre determined point.

Hey Vibe, just saying that I'm not into psychobabble that's all.
I set the bar pretty high in my life and managed to get over it.
Now I'm resting on my laurels playing, as you were,  in the sandbit on the other sige of it.
So please don't lecture me on either my aspirations, fulfilled or unfulfilled, or my goal limitations.
Save all that for the dreamers on here.

Creative thinking with the sky being the limit.?
Would be ironic eh ?

Nope.
I'm saying it is unrealistic with 1K starting capital, with guaranteed success.

Is this a pure mathematical formula, or do  " traders" adjust for other factors they have acutely observed in the course of the 1st half?
One of the " successful " traders on here said recently they don't even follow the match, don't care how the teams are performing, not interested in what has happened on the pitch at all ( presumably even meaning not caring if one team is down a man for example ).
I'm not a trader, so just curiosity questions really.

Hm, well yes, can understand your cynicism.

It can be done, obviously, but guaranteed... I guess there are some that could reasonably claim to have such a significant and stable edge(s) in the markets that they could guarantee 100k in a year...and very impressive minds they must be.... but I'd imagine there are very few indeed.

Personally with a starting bank of 1k I'd feel comfortable returning 10k by the end of the year, but still couldn't fully guarantee it..... and I think I've got a decent edge

95% tennis 5% other.

The size of your bank is part of the mechanics of your strategy rather than something that can or should affect how much money you make.  It needs to be big enough to cover your exposure and losing streaks and this depends on your strategy.

Your profit comes from the number of markets you play and the size of your edge.

I haven't read the whole of this thread, so forgive me if I'm missing something or going over old ground, but my own experience is as follows;

It IS possible to make a good return with a relatively small bank. I don't keep a betting bank separate from my other money, but I rarely have more than about 10k in my account, I never deposit and I average about 15k a month. Furthermore, it IS possible to do well starting with a small amount of money. I deliberately started out my betting career (as opposed to arbing) with just £100 because I didn't want to throw away good money on what might be a silly dream. In my first year I made about 50k having hit a low point of £20 about 2 months in (before I understood how to stake properly). I've just withdrawn my account down to 3K whist I wait to see how the X matching works out, if it wipes me out (which I don't think it will) then I'll only have lost 3K. If it doesn't then I don't expect that only having 3k to operate with will restrict me one little bit. I will not be depositing regardless of what happens.

BUT- This doesn't mean it's easy or that anyone can do it. Without wishing to be rude, I don't think all that many people have the right skill set to do what I do. Although I don't have any training in maths beyond GCSE I do have a high level of education and I'm well equipped to think through the various challenges that gambling throws up. I'm also approaching it from a different angle from most other players in that I everything I do is about how humans gamble- not how sport works. I have no interest in sport except the sports I take part in (which no-one bets on anyway). I also have no interest in gambling for entertainment. I enjoy working on my bots and watching them succeed (those that do succeed) but I don't get an emotional "fix" from wagering money. Liking sport and liking gambling don't usually help you win, if anything the opposite is more often true. I make almost all of my money from horse racing, but I've never been to a horse race in my life and I can barely tell one horse from another.

Catfloppo is absolutely right when he says that the size of your bank need only be sufficient to cover losing runs and that "Your profit comes from the number of markets you play and the size of your edge." It is also entirely realistic that he may place 20,000 bets a day. I'm usually closer to about 5,000, but I can easily understand why and how you would match 20,000. There is a simple reason for this that all bot players know - more small bets are always better than fewer big ones. Once you've got your basic strategy set out botting is all about gushing in bets, you're a machine gunner- not a sniper.

Of course I can't prove any of the numbers that I'm reporting here any more than anyone else can, so you can decide whether to believe me or not. I will say on behalf of Catfloppo (who I have never met) that he certainly sounds very plausible to me, most of what he posts chimes exactly with my own experience so I'd say he's probably the real deal.

FAFH, you seem quite attached to the idea that no-one can win here and that you can somehow prove it. If this is because you can't do so yourself then you're making a real failure of logic. I dare say that if you were to have a go at the marathon and then make an estimate of what time is possible based only on your own performance your guess would probably be some way wide of the Olympic standard.

So to sum up:
Is it possible? Yes
Is is easy? No
Do you need a big bank? No
Will you make it? Sorry, but probably not.

"--and don't by nature last that long. "

Lori
Thanks for nothing as per usual.
Gee I wish I had noticed all these correlations before. Give us a break.

Good attitude Aye Robot.
Quit while you're ahead. Never fails.

Bayes
And all these expenses should of course be capitalised and be included in the risk capital needed to do what you and a very few others are doing.
You're sort of arguing against yourself here.
That is , my point is that, if it is at all possible, it is not cheap ( remember time also is money) and it is not easy.

FINE AS FROG HAIR Joined: 12 Mar 07
Replies: 1551 24 Nov 10 11:24   


Lori
Thanks for nothing as per usual.
Gee I wish I had noticed all these correlations before. Give us a break. 

If, as you seem to be implying, you actually had done the numbers before, then how about _you_ tell _us_ the amount a trader changes during the course of a game based on the events on the field rather than asking people something you've already calculated.

Just posting the correl figure is fine if you don't want to put it into words.

I don't think it proves the point you're making at all.

The edge in blackjack lasted 50 years and can still be found today!

Not at 40,000 % pa ROC.
I know you don't like that measurement, but capital has value primarily in a comparative sense to what else you can do with it.
So ROC is probably the best comparative measure around, as it has always has been.

Increasing a suitably small bank in gambling by 400 times is a trivial matter and always has been, the difficult part is increasing a large bank by 2 times.

Imagine an ace spotter at blackjack. I forget the exact numbers now, but I'd get on an ace about 40% of the time and I'd have a 50% edge when I hit it.

I could probably have 10 bets a day. 4 of which would be at 50% and 6 of which would be quite hard to quantify, probably about -10% (because of the increased chance of the bank having an ace when I missed). Surely you can see that I can get to the house limit ridiculously quickly and also fly under the radar at those odds.. at which point the whole game gets much tougher.

or the old Grand Slam fruit machine. If you knew your setups you could probably pot it from about £50. You'd certainly have not needed more than £3000 in capital.

You could get several £1k jackpots a night if you were willing to travel, or if you were incredibly stupid (a la Mark Lepine (I think was his name) who decided to do exactly this and make something like £40k in a month and put the one in the vic £8k behind in the process.

Of course, when a wealthy arab gentleman puts 8k into a machine and wins almost precisely bugger all due to not being able to spot what has transpired, your edge inevitably lasts until the machine is rechipped the next week.)

However your wealth beyond around 3k was utterly unscaleable, you were physically restricted by how many machines you could visit in one night.