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A personal decision of course but I'm interested in opinions of those who work on thin margins with laying who have a longer term perspective than me.
I've tested an approach over about 1000 lays in racing with small stakes. I went up 40 units fairly quickly then plunged up and down in three steep peaks and 3 deep valleys to end up 4 months later with being up 40 units. One 4 day bad run midway throught the test took away 40 units in about 8 bets with a ridiculous string of losses.
With average odds of 5 the ROI is 40 / 1000 = 4% if you look at the stakes but 40 / 5000 = 0.8% if you consider it based on liability. On one hand I might have something as 40 units is okay but the volatility would make it a real rollercoaster ride if you geared up to larger stakes - not sure if waiting months to recover from a 4 day losing streak is for me.
My question is - is 0.8 % ROI worth it given the described volatility? Is this what expereinced layers just live with or is it too skinny to be a genuine edge at this point?
Opinions welcome.
I've tested an approach over about 1000 lays in racing with small stakes. I went up 40 units fairly quickly then plunged up and down in three steep peaks and 3 deep valleys to end up 4 months later with being up 40 units. One 4 day bad run midway throught the test took away 40 units in about 8 bets with a ridiculous string of losses.
With average odds of 5 the ROI is 40 / 1000 = 4% if you look at the stakes but 40 / 5000 = 0.8% if you consider it based on liability. On one hand I might have something as 40 units is okay but the volatility would make it a real rollercoaster ride if you geared up to larger stakes - not sure if waiting months to recover from a 4 day losing streak is for me.
My question is - is 0.8 % ROI worth it given the described volatility? Is this what expereinced layers just live with or is it too skinny to be a genuine edge at this point?
Opinions welcome.
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0.8% maybe not worth bothering with, unless you have high stakes, as 0.8% of a total liabilty of 200k over a year is only going to pay you £1600 so probably not worth the efforrt you'd have to put in . 0.8% of £2,000,000 Liabilty though is £16,000 a year which i could live off fairly comfortably.
A positive way to look at it is you have possibly developed a method where you are at least unlikely to lose much. So if it could be improved you could maybe get the returns up to nearer 2% which would make a huge difference.
If you could analyze those 1000 bets you might come up with some filters to improve the method .
I tried this last year with my own strategy and agree the weeks of building up then seeing all the profits from that time disappear in a couple of hours is infuriating. I only did 660 or so races over 3 months: Started early March with £100 , reached £300 by late April (about 340 races) but then , fell back down to £240-£260 , recovered slowly to £300+ , fell back down again (about 4 times) , very exasperating.
In the end i was pretty sick of doing it, and just used the £279 that was left to bet on The World Cup, got up to £600 with that but then had to withdraw everything for living expenses and have hardly bothered since.
I think my return on liabilties was over 3% but all the profit was in the first half , so i began to doubt the merit of it . Though even what seemed a disatrous 6 weeks at the end i was only losing to commission so it would be worth trying again at some point.
The depressing thing is you probabaly need to do 2,000 or so bets to be sure it is working.
A positive way to look at it is you have possibly developed a method where you are at least unlikely to lose much. So if it could be improved you could maybe get the returns up to nearer 2% which would make a huge difference.
If you could analyze those 1000 bets you might come up with some filters to improve the method .
I tried this last year with my own strategy and agree the weeks of building up then seeing all the profits from that time disappear in a couple of hours is infuriating. I only did 660 or so races over 3 months: Started early March with £100 , reached £300 by late April (about 340 races) but then , fell back down to £240-£260 , recovered slowly to £300+ , fell back down again (about 4 times) , very exasperating.
In the end i was pretty sick of doing it, and just used the £279 that was left to bet on The World Cup, got up to £600 with that but then had to withdraw everything for living expenses and have hardly bothered since.
I think my return on liabilties was over 3% but all the profit was in the first half , so i began to doubt the merit of it . Though even what seemed a disatrous 6 weeks at the end i was only losing to commission so it would be worth trying again at some point.
The depressing thing is you probabaly need to do 2,000 or so bets to be sure it is working.
probably easier ways to make money on betfair than squeezing cash out of a 0,8% margin, my friend!
With a margin that thin, all it takes is a couple of corrupt jockeys or a few days bad luck to kill you. If you plug your edge into kelly (modified for reality or not) you will find you'd need a vast bank to get anything like a reasonable return in real terms.
My own venture had £5,903.92 total liabilty and £179.40 profit so 3.38%
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtEfsI5oIBTGdEhuWUlkdjcwVkFRMUhiQnpHVkFUa2c&hl=en&pli=1#gid=0
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AtEfsI5oIBTGdEhuWUlkdjcwVkFRMUhiQnpHVkFUa2c&hl=en&pli=1#gid=0
The approach only took 10 minutes a day - so not much time wasted and some filters are still worth looking into more. The dream was a 10 minutes a day system 365 days a year to tick away in the background in addition to other more time consuming betting approaches I use. As always, it aint so easy as that!
To someone paying PC, a strategy with a 0.8% margin would be a lot more valuable, particularly if it produced a lot of bets.
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