Finding that 'edge'

hi mate i was similar tried playing every market in football to gain an edge but nothing seemed consitent enough until i started pre off trading on football. have a look at my thread on here might gain some ideas

Yeah ok will do thanks

specalise

Your sample size is prob. too small for you to assess your methods properly.

Step back a bit, choose your best six selection methods and paper-trade them until you have got more results. All the while, write down what you think your edge is and what you would expect the return to be on your bets. Then compare this to what you actually wd have got. The more advanced version of this advice is to learn some statistics, to find out the expected standard deviation of each result (or batch of results) from its expected return and to determine a confidence interval for whether the method is profitable.

The edge you need is MUCH smaller than you think. Some of the people making six figs. a year on here have a margin per bet of less than half a percent over the market.

Sadly there is no substitute for the kind of analysis more associated with accountancy than with the excitement of gambling.

Thanks for the email, what bets/trades do yOu often do? Stakes etc? I think I am struggling because I can't keep to one thing, then what I have been doing seems to start to fail, how much money do you make Per day/week, any advice is welcome

Some sensible advice already mainly specialise in one or two areas first. Also I would bet a half kelly stake of my last dollar that your 'doesn't work' time scales are based on human perception and not rigorous statistical testing

Specialize. For instance, live tv football, consider backing against the market moves without having an
opinion on what will happen. Have respect for the professional opinion on the betting. A simple example
was last Wednesday Chelsea v Benfica, 9 bookmakers on Pricewise had the home side at 4/6 yet the BF market
touched 1.80 (4/5) for no apparent reason, to me anyway. If you can be completely objective, and you need
to be, then Chelsea was the bet. It's imperative that you be completely without opinion on the outcome, be
satisfied with profits of between 5% and 10%, and you won't lose. Only around 5% win on here and they don't
do it by following the crown, be brave.

Some very good advice from askari & kenilworth .

ricky, I bet whatever I can get on in the bookies because I can usually trade and because my bank is large enough to take a few hits. The last thing you want to do is to copy the way someone with a much larger bank does, because betting methods aren't scalable (this is very much in your favour) and the prices on offer to you will be better than those given me.

Go back to paper-trading and start small. It doesn't matter is you lose pennies because you're paying for your education. The only thing you want to avoid is dribbling away money without learning anything.

Form an idea and express it as a betting rule i.e. 'I will oppose any horse aged 5 and above and rated below 85 running off a mark higher than it's ever won off when there are two or more progressive horses (say, have run successively better RPRs on 2 of their last 4 starts) in the field'. This won't win you much long-term, but you need to generate ideas, test them and assess what kind of return (positive or negative) they give you per bet.

Once you have tested your best ideas, you shd be onto a few winners and will also be on the way towards pricing up more accurately by feel.

You only need a tiny edge. Stakes don't matter if you are disciplined exploiting any edge.

askari -

Would you consider the following a decent enough LAYING STRATEGY . ( OCT - NOV - DEC )

There are not 1000s of selections to go off - but the underlying criteria of the lays is logical .

What you reckon ?



Totals

Bets    Wins    Win Strike Rate    Win %Return at Estimated Betfair Odds
All Selections    933    103    11.0%    70.4%


Results broken down by Year

Bets    Wins    Win Strike Rate    Win %Return at Estimated Betfair Odds
2004    105    16    15.2%    85.3%
2005    126    15    11.9%    77.0%
2006    136    14    10.3%    71.2%
2007    145    16    11.0%    66.3%
2008    156    14    9.0%    56.8%
2009    138    15    10.9%    75.9%
2010    127    13    10.2%    66.0%

from a horse racing perspective, this is my take on things - you have to rate a horse against all other runners, I never had any success with systems along the lines of  "only lay fav from X trainer between the Jan and June" or "always back fav of less than 3-1 who haven't run for at least 60 days".  Such approaches come from back-fitting in my opinion.


What ever you do, it's hard going in the beginning, very hard going .  One thing that helped me to isolate positive indicators was to look at 5f handicap races (choose that distance because you'll usually find a few runners who have nothing but 5f form so you don't have to consider changes of distance) pick two runners - one of which plc'd - and then go through their previous form to see why one did well and the other didn't.

Good luck

Zealot, it's wonderful, though I'm not sure you've given me all the required information.

Over 933 races you win 830 times, less comm., and lose about 656.8 units, giving you an edge of 14.43%. If we take this and assume a standard deviation on your results of two, we can be 95% confident that your results will be + or - 0.1283 your average return, or in other words you would lose on level stakes with your strategy less than 5% of the time.

Let's take a smaller dummy set of a hundred results to show how greater sample sizes mean we can be more confident that results will fall in a narrower range. We'll take something very similar to your results. Suppose one hundred races where you lay losers 86 times out of a hundred and lay winners at 13-2, 8, 11-2, 7, 6, 7-2, 4, 7-2 again, 5-2, 7-4, 8 again, 9-4, 5 and 13-2. Assuming maximum commission you have 81.7 points of wins and 70 points of losses for an 11.7% profit. You have a standard deviation of about 2.21, a variance of about 4.84 and the two feet of your 95% confidence interval sit at a profit of about 56% and a loss of about 31%. This won't always provide assurance that the results aren't down to chance.

I must say that I feel a bit of a fraud in having worked this out in Excel, as I don't have a stats background and am not a professional gambler, rather a recreational winner who has informed myself along the way. I'll be v. happy to give way (and maybe learn something) from any of the genuine bettors who want to tell people starting how to get a handle on whether their ideas are any good.

I agree with yeahyeahwhatever--the best way to start is with individual horse-level judgments and collateral form. With sprints you could find yourself caring too much about the draw.

When I say 'come up with ideas', I don't mean necessarily mean something at a high level of generality--what about 'back any horse from a yard with five horses rated above 140 that ran below form when the stable was returning a rtf of under 35% for any three-week period'. The value of many ideas is that they start you betting and you notice more things when you realise there's a bigger picture.

you have to identify a good horse, then its on your list.
better you get the more opportunitys you have to bet
horses you know. usually look for good performance.
nearly always a winning horses I look out for.
knowing the horses that make you money.

ZEALOT

I see you have the results for seven consecutive years - 2004 to 2010.

What were the results of your strategy for the corresponding period in 2011?

Are you punting or trading? If the former then you're getting some very good advice already. If the latter, then concentrating on skills (bank management, staking, market analysis, game reading, a proportionate amount of stats) should be your priority. The edge will follow - as long as you can become at least competent in all of the above.

ZEALOT

I see you have the results for seven consecutive years - 2004 to 2010.

What were the results of your strategy for the corresponding period in 2011?





I havnt got the exact number as massey went down last march  -   my bets are placed in the morning at roughly 7 bells and the bets , if unmatched , are cancelled at the off .My balance is covered and checked at the end of every month .


I played in 89 races , sometimes laying more than 1 , and my overall profit ( liability 100 per race ) was about 590 .

Not a massive amount but better than losing imo .

thanks .

Thanks ZEALOT.

Mind you, it's seems odd to me that you didn't post the results for 2011 when you asked askari1 about your laying strategy.

By the way, do you sometimes post on here as Glasgow Brian?

aye ,

Got a 3 month ban a couple a years back for calling THOMPSON a fraud

(on both counts)