Bening  its  Christmas,  peace on earth, and all that jazz
How do you find an edge  ? .......well look into your  garden   you will see  an  Hedge or two .. trouble is they need cutting at least 3 times a year .. Happy New Year

Relentless makes a very good point about the use of statistics.  If you're data is the same data as everyone else's data, and your model produces similar results as everyone else's models, then where is the edge?  You end up playing the game using everyone else's rules.  I'd rather make myh own rules up and play my own game.  Zig whilst the others are zagging.

The Betfairy  zips seen em all  over the last 40 years .. heres the top boys (gamblers )  aint no order   .. John Banks .. John Gough .. John Mort Green ,, Alex Bird ,  Phil Bull . The  Ace  .

R/Rat, fair enough.

Not saying my recent upturn is entirely due to instinct but I'm definitely letting it play a bigger part now than in the past. I manage a business now, having had a relatively successful small business in the past and a terrible one; learned more from the bad one but I still experience occasions when something feels 'just wrong' and I'm not afraid to act on that feeling. Still make mistakes but hopefully not as many as before and therein lies my edge.

I see gambling as a business; had good times and bad but it's the decisions made in the future that count and again, I trust my 10,000 hours, along with normal event analysis, will provide me with enough instinct to be profitable. Again, still make mistakes but less so than in the past.

So to return to the original question I would say once you have done your time and maxed out on all available data, let your instinct come into play; that might be enough of a differentiator to give you an edge.

This is a mental game. The biggest edge anyone can gain is getting themselves in order.

I personally swear by my 'Betfair bell'

It's an old 'pub time' brass bell i bought from e -bay

When that sexy red Suspend sign shows her face , i ring my trusty bell ... it sure sets the pulses racing and the juices flowing .

Then the goals appear from no where .

Not sure what the neighbors make of it though

The Betfairy - you must be very pleased. You mentioned about zigging when everyone else is zagging and if you disagree with everyone else then you have your edge.

Unless of course everyone else has been deliberately lying and giving the wrong advice in an attempt to create or protect their own edge. But then maybe you did the same so that then cancels it all out and you are still ok. Ooh i'm confused now I think I may need to lie down.

compound - you are a very bright individual .

At ths start of this thread I put forward the idea of adopting an opposite approach to gambling, what I was suggesting by this is that you could back against the percieved wisdom of the Forum in order to make a profit.

Example 1,
Twenty years ago I read a piece by a profesioanal gambler, in this article he stated this: when a tennis player wins the first two sets in a five set match and then goes on to lose the next two sets, the match score is now 2:2, in three out of four occassions the winner of the match is the person who had won the first two sets.

Now by the time of the start of the fifth set all the betting momentum would have been with the player who had won the third and fourth set, but it would have been a faulse call to go with that momentum of money as the true favourite would have been other player whose odds almost certainly would have been increasing by the start of the fifth set.  I accept this may be out of date and I have no idea whether the data still supports this idea you'd have to do the research yourself to find that out, I mentioned it to show that going against the perceived wisdom has the potential to be highly profitable.

Example 2,
The percieved wisdom is that the Grand National is a lottery, but is that true? Three of the last seven winners and five of the last fourteen have been either favourite or joint favourite.  This years winner Dont Push it, was 10/1, joint favourite with the bookies, but layers on here were so certain of the lottery nature of the race they made it an eighteen-two-one starting price. The results seem to indicate in the last fifteen years since the race has been made softer that the Grand national is one of the most profitable races in the calendar for favourite backers.

Example 3,
Earlier this year I came up with idea of backing what I believed to be a good bet in golf by backing a player after each round in the hope his price would have diminished by the time he started his next round so I could green up for a small profit. One of the problems I found doing this, my stake would be about £20 on three or four players per round,on markets with limited liquidity I was forced to take poor odds in order to close my position in order not risk losing all my money.

It strikes me if you have the idea of gaining a profit through trading surely your first rule must be  not to leave your positions open. The layers who were laying the rubbish odds to me must have known that at that moment people were trying to cloe out their position on that golfer. You may think I am just an idiot but I was making a small profit overall on my bets maybe £10 TO £15 a week but you can see why I was unwilling to risk leaving my positions open and losing £20 a time rather than trading out at poor odds and making a smaller loss.

I am sure that many of these slick programming devices (bots) must have a sacrad rule not to leave positions open. I could just visualize somebodies bot making dozens of bets and just getting sniffy about the odds offerred on mediocre liquidity markets and just deciding not to trade the position out, the person coming home to check his bot could easily find himself wiped out by results going against him.

The need for traders with or without bots adearening to rule of trading out even if the odds on offer are poor must offer a very good opportunity for a person to take advantage particularly in markets with mediocre liaquidity.  My idea is directed specifically to the start of play or the start of the second half of play really any time the market your playing is about to go live and the traders are at risk of losing their money in open play. Really this idea is to do with the flow of money at the beginning of play going live in moderate liquidity markets. The flow of money going one way may open an opportunity for somebody going the other way.

Good thread this, with a good measure of insight and wisdom.

I think the point about data gathering and collation - that it is available to all and thus of limited help when seeking an edge - is well-made. However, it can also depend on what is done with that data once it's all been carefully analysed and pored over.

Taking that data and using it, not for standard backs, lays, dutches and the like, but as a form of weaponry to be wielded in-play can perhaps be an edge for some people. Going into a football match knowing te average goal times of both teams, having information at hand about a team's second-half performance, how well they fare when going behind, which periods most goals are scored, what the likelihood is of the referee showing a card - all these kind of things can be used to some advantage within the volatile waves of betting in-play where people are more prone to making incorrect snap decisions. Over/Under reactions can be taken advantage of more readily when data about "this type of game" is right at your fingertips. Reacting to a game as everyone else does will probably lead to a negative P/L in the long run.

It is therefore the use of the data that is important, and not merely the manner in which it is manipulated into a statistic.

MAVERICK05 - You still have not said what sport is the one you know best ......so I suggest you indicate it, then you may get replies specifically aimed at such sport.

Unlikely anyone will disclose too much .....but you never know what might happen after someone has had a few jarsssssssssss.

GL with quest.

Ebasson61

Relentless made a great point here ( 1st in nearly 10 years that  I've seen this being made ) ,  which basically was to look for "patterns" in the data ... from what I can gather advocating that you need to slice into the data
eg to look at average times goals scored , performances after conceding of even in a lead etc- which of course I believe there could be a lot of merit in this ....however I don't need to do this for some of my systems bets
I follow a pattern which in turns either allows me to back or lay ....the beauty of this game is there are more than 1 way to win on here ....it's all about what works for you

Some pretty decent posts here.  In full agreement with what five leaves left and Lori have written.

I'll make my little suggestion then.  Definitely study relevant data from previous contests.  Then think in terms precedents, rather than overall averages.  This may be helpful. 

In law, let us imagine 75% of alleged rapists are found not guilty.  Apologies for the awful subject matter but it is a decent way to illustrate my point.  So then let us say in the instant case, the level of evidence is about average for a case of this type being brought before a court.  We might say a guilty verdict is a 3/1 chance.  But the crime was alleged to have been committed against a nun in a convent.  Let's say 80% of people accused of raping a nun are found guilty.  We might now say our 3/1 shot is a 1/4 chance of a guilty verdict.  But imagine now this case can be readily compared to a number of cases where the nun had a history of claiming sexual assault against men she had sex with, and in 100% of those cases the accused was acquitted. How is your 1/4 shot looking now?

Anyway, don't take this as any sort of explanation as to how the criminal law works, but thinking in terms of precedents may help you find an edge if you know your subject well enough.

Jesus fccking Christ Deadly Earnest you need help man!

Lori Joined: 20 Apr 04
Replies: 27455 29 Dec 10 10:47

This.

Lori, I'm still trying to work out your post.

I think it all comes down to whether or not you believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis which states that if all relevant information is publically available then prices will trade at a fair value, in which case it's impossible to beat the market average.  I believe this is what Relentless was alluding to.

Personally, I don’t believe in EMH.  I know from personal experience that my own investment and betting decisions can be influenced by factors outside of the markets.  Why would anyone want to sell a product at less than “fair” value?  There could be a myriad of reasons.  Equally with betting; a punter may close a position at very poor odds simply because he has to go to the loo, which in turn may affect market sentiments!  Until you can model the bowel habits of punters I remain unconvinced.

LOL.  I never know if I will be 2 minutes or two hours.

"Deadly Earnest" post deciphered?

Let’s say generally under the criteria of study your strike rate average is 25%
Your selected runner on the day is 3/1.

The horse loves the track and has also won at the distance. It has won on the going and has a decent draw. The 3/1 looks too good a price for the race and you rate it an odds on chance.

Odds on favourites and Low priced winners are common at the track in the type of race.

Later analysis reveals the going has changed from soft side of good to heavy (which doesn’t suit your horse). Also the draw is high and low numbers are preferred, especially on soft to heavy going.

The horse is now looking more like 10/1 chance

Ron, that means the Edge found, never was an edge, the ccorrection having set in.

What you mean like the one I found that showed a 14% profit for the first 1500 bets but only broke even for the next 1500?

Yes, on the right track there Pinza.  My point is probably quite obvious to some, but worth considering for a person trying to figure out what weighting to give to each of several factors in order to gain an edge over the market. 

In racing terms - and forgive me for using Australian racing parlance - a horse may be running on heavy going at Randwick.  It has run there 5 times before for 5 easy wins in the heavy.  But it is a little horse, and therefore is affected more by weight increases than a bigger horse.  In the instant race it has been given 59kg's.  5 times it has run before with weights above 56kg's and every time it has performed well below expectations, including in the heavy on another track.

The horse is even money favourite, on the strength of its 5 heavy wins from 5 races at this track.  Are these races that it won the most relevant precedents to follow for the instant race, or are the 5 failures with high weights setting the precedent for the horse's performance here?


Where you can identify the correct precedent and the market is misled by other previous performances that were in some important way distinguishable from the instant event, then you have an edge.  In this case, if I am any judge, the horse will perform below expectations.  So you might be looking to lay it.  In my experience, this occurs a lot more often than people might think, where the market is simply on the wrong track because it is giving significant weighting to data that is basically irrelevant for the instant event.  I don't bet on the races these days by the way, this type of thinking can be used in other sports as readily as it can be used for horse racing.