Thanks Askari - and you're quite right, I have nothing to sell to anyone. I've been posting on this forum for the best part of a decade so anyone who thinks it's a marketing strategy has to admit that it's a very long term one.

I mainly post out of boredom when I'm running simulations (which can take ages) but one of my other reasons for posting is that I think it's only fair to let people understand what they're up against before someone like me takes their money. The average punter or even the above average punter has absolutely no chance of ever being a winner. I'd prefer to bet against people who understand that, enjoy their gambling and see their losses as the cost of having fun than against fantasists or simpletons.

Anyone who believes that there are no winners needs only to ask why Premium Charge exists and why extended PC exists for winners over £250k. There are winners, big winners and huge winners, but if you're not already a winner then you'll almost certainly never be one and you'll probably never meet one. I've been telling people that and explaining why for I don't know how long.

you have bots making trades during the race, thats not really gambling to be fair is it, sports trading,

Thank you roadrunner, that sums it up nicely.

There are many on here who couldn't make a living out of it if God were giving them tips.

aye robot no doubt his making money, wouldnt describe what he is doing as gambling, he made a point about taking money from punters, using his sophisticated
bots hes programming, crucial difference those punters are gambling, hes not. would be interesting to know exactly how much a bot player like you is making on
average each year, compared to the real professional gamblers.

Roadrunner; there are winners of all types at all levels, and within each type there's a pyramid. Most people who have a go at writing a bot lose money and even most automated winners only make trivial amounts. There are surprisingly few big automated winners.

Undoubtedly there are some traditional players making more than I do although likely not as consistently.

I'm in the 'good for a one man band' category - very secure financially but not flying around in helicopters. Honestly I think that's a sweet spot for me and I'm not really interested in going much further with it. I don't envy the big operators with staff, they have to spend all their time on gambling, I prefer to do other things. I have something akin to an vary well paid weekend job and it suits me very well.

RR - I think your assumptions are very common, but they're not correct. Of course it's possible to bot a planned trade with entry and exit points but it's not an optimal way to play and it's not what I do.

I treat every bet as an independent outright bet on the outcome - that's what the maths dictates you have to do to maximise winnings, anything else is throwing away value. As far as risk goes you might be surprised. I have a lot of bets on almost all markets, even so I very rarely end up with a green book and I have plenty of losses. In a sense my risk is low because my bets are well calculated and my liability is controlled such that I can't accidentally bust out my float but I'm certainly not immune to losses, I have losing days and from time to time even losing weeks - in fact I'm down this week.

As for Peter Webb - please remember that he is a software vendor and take all that he says with a HUGE pinch of salt.

So if i think a horses price is value at its current price, i back it... price comes in and i decide to 'cash-out' which is effectively a trade... or maybe i close out the trade with all the green on the horse i fancy and levels (no profit/loss) on the others... or maybe i leave a big green on my horse and a small green on the others.

I'm sure the big betting syndicates are now involved in in-play for football, since liquidity for that is now almost as high as pre-match... during the match they'll be taking bets on both sides depending where the value is at any particular time...

Betting/trading isn't black or white any more, it's just various shades of grey. At the end of the day what counts is making money.

aye robot
I agree that any bet you place is gambling but as pointed out above there is a difference in methodology between place and go bets and betting with the intention of not letting it run (for want of better word trading).

From what I can gather you only bet on horse racing which is over quite quickly, maybe 15 minutes if you include the 10 minutes before the off when most betting is done. If you consider cricket which can last from three hours to five days then there is a considerable difference. Throw in weather conditions which can frequently determine the outcome then trading seems a more sensible approach. Even on this cricket forum there are many different ideas about methods of betting on cricket, many different opinions about how the game is going and many different ideas about what the odds should be. People trade in and out as they see fit. It's not a deceit it's sensible.

aye robot
I have no gripes with anyone. Peter Webb does what he does. If people want to believe him or not then that's their choice. I have read a lot of bad comments about him but as I've never been involved with him can't offer my opinion.

I thought I'd made my point clear in my previous post regarding gambling; as soon as you post a bet you're gambling. Be it by bot or otherwise. The difference, as I see it, is are you intending to have further bets on the outcome you started with? If so that's trading.

It sounds like you're having a go at people espousing trading rather than the principle of trading.

I wouldn't argue with that.

It was your 'denial' of trading I was arguing with.

aye robot 13 Jul 19 20:25 Joined: 17 Jan 08 | Topic/replies: 686 | Blogger: aye robot's blog
I honestly don't know how a regular punter could estimate value, I can't think of any simple and very accessible way. I'd struggle to do it myself with a pencil and paper - I would always reach for a computer.

I know three professional punters on the southern circuit (horse racing) who have made it pay for three decades (there may well be more, but they're the ones I know for sure who have survived). They've all had shockingly bad runs at times over those years, but they've worked their way through those bad runs. And they've all done it by estimating value with pencil and paper. Manual form study, taking it all into account to guess a price for each horse in a race with a 100% book, and backing the ones which are available at bigger prices - not necessarily every horse, as there needs to be an acknowledgement of your own limitations - but that is how they've done it. And if the meeting they attend includes a 25-runner handicap, then that's one of the races they'll cover, however daunting it appears. In fact, that's precisely the race where it's worth putting in the effort, because few other punters will.

What's their secret? In the first place, hardly any interest in past stats, such as form figures or percentage of winning favs. It's the individual horse and conditions on the day which count. But more than that, it's something I can only describe as a feeling in your water. That indefinable voice in your head that articulates decades of experience. "This is the day for that horse"/"You just know the trainer won't be having a go here"/"The horse looks just that bit too fit in the paddock", etc. The thing which distinguishes human intelligence from artificial intelligence.

Let me give an example of the first time I became really aware of this phenomenon. 1st September 1993. I'd been full-time for nearly a couple of years. I was at Fontwell, and the first race was a 3yo claiming hurdle, with an odds-on fav making its debut over timber under Adrian Maguire.

https://www.racingpost.com/results/20/fontwell/1993-09-01/53707

I had £2,000 to £60 the winner (SP 25s), which I'd made 16/1 on my tissue; £1,000 to £200 the second (SP 7/2), which was 2/1 jt fav on my prices - a Karl Burke horse which had been third over hurdles last time out; and £2,000 to £120 and £1,000 to £80 a faller called Grogfryn (Christ knows why).

Now, this winner, Lady Gail, was trained by John Spearing, a man who had winners throughout his career, but outside of the few really good horses, such as Run And Skip, a nightmare to predict when and where. Lady Gail had been touched off in a mile maiden as a 2yo, but as a 3yo had been beaten 42 lengths and 20 lengths on the Flat, and 37 lengths and 60 lengths over hurdles.  Pulled like stink and slowed into half the flights as well.

So, why was that race at Fontwell her day? Just something about the make-up of the race, the question mark over the odds-on favourite, the time of year said THIS is is the race  where a John Spearing horse which had one bit of very decent form might show it again. I defy anyone to quantify the chance by reference to stats. I remember trying to afterwards, and there really was no concrete pattern there to grasp. But there was that feeling in your water. Perhaps she simply looked just right in the paddock.

Whatever it was, I remember remarking to Eddie Fremantle afterwards (who'd also backed the filly, and had recently given up his job on the Life to go full-time):"You know, this is the day I know we've made it."

I agree with ayerobot that someone who places money on an uncertain outcome and is paid out (or not) dependent on the outcome is gambling.

It won't work to rely on merely technical advantages. If they're available to you, they're open to someone else.

Suppose your whole technical infrastructure goes down the millisecond you've placed a bet. You want it to be a positive-expectation bet. Also, you want the damage to your bank to be surmountable whatever happens.

I'm a bit less convinced by screaming's post. He's talking about something in 1993 and it's 2019. I'm convinced that he and Eddie Fremantle were able to sniff out the value, but not convinced that this was an intangible that could be not captured by any formula. Could an AI not make sense of the inputs 'John Spearing runner + bits and pieces of form', 'time of year', 'weak fav.', 'class 5 or lower hcap'?

My punting, which is pretty low-level, is based on my interest for the horses and tries to make selections on the basis of features that are hard to get into algorithms e.g. stumbled lto, ran against draw or pace bias lto, plausibly targeted at race. It's got a lot harder in the last 10 years. I would think that the reason for this is that, previously, I only had competition from the opinion players and tissue-makers. Now there's competition from algorithm-designers and machine-learning players.

An interesting read

A bettor with a successful strategy is not going to post on here the secret of that strategy. Not even me in this post.
As human beings we all have different skill sets which we use to create our individual strategy. For example, my brain cannot fathom a ladder interface and all the flashing changing data it projects. I could not do IR on the horses. I cannot trade tennis or limited over cricket.

My skill set is numbers and data, which I use to bet in just two particular soccer markets, because to me it is simply mathematics, and lots and lots of time consuming research has found me an edge.
I prefer non UK matches, because I have no knowledge of the teams which can psychologically taint my thought process – it is just numbers.
I do not trade in play. I place the bets, spend a couple of hours doing something else, and then check the full time score.

Last weekend for example, I crunched the numbers on 24 selected matches (non of them in UK), and only found 3 possible bets. My “tissue prices” were 1.02, 1.03 and 1.05.
The Betfair prices pre kick off were 1.26, 1.36 and 1.27
In my eyes the “value” in these three matches was massive, so they became bets.
Not all selections win. I look at it from a bookies perspective – what percentage profit on capital employed, over time, am I happy with.

On the basis that the OP is genuine, concentrate on your skill sets and building your knowledge of how the markets work in your chosen sport and think outside the box.

Rigsby,
you beat me to it.
No, nobody who is actually betting for a living is going to announce to the world, and his dog, the secret of  their success.
And by the way, the first two lines of your post says it all.

I would add to this just four words:

BET LIKE A BOT.

No need to elaborate.
You all know what I'm saying and that really is the bottom line.

Well done starship.
If you can pick winners as well as that then you've cracked it.

But it's your ability to spot a winner that's carrying you forward, the value is secondary once you know how to find the winners.

My contention is that very few know what they're looking at before they start, let alone judging if the bet is good value or not.
They're simply backing prices, which is a long way from what you appear to be doing.

You need to back horses that are underestimated by the market, where there is effectively nothing to go on ie horses making their debuts ideally not from a top stable. Think about this, if you had a good one from a small stable, would you a) want anyone to know how good it was and destroy the price and b) would you truely know where you stood in the pecking order against a hotpot from a top stable? People like to see form of some form or another before they place a bet. Do the exact opposite, back any horse making their debut to BSP - it would of produced a 2500 point profit over the last 5 years (commision 5%). Think about that £2500 to £1 stakes, over 5 years. Go back as far as records go if you want and check. Then ask yourself how much do I want to win and how can I do this without cannabilsing BSP? I do this with other caveats, the main one being minimum odds of 10/1. I drip feed in at different time intervals before the off as well as back at BSP. The only thing is you're going to have to put up with A LOT of losers, up to 200 in a row, maybe more. Could you stomach that, have you got the bank for it? You're looking at a strike rate less than 5%. I post this because Crippen says it's about finding a good percentage of winners first, then value comes second. That's bolloxs.

Lol, now one goes in for Roger Teal at Salisbury and he backed up exactly what I said! Kensai Warrior BSP 18. Bit tight when the SP was 16/1

Very nice, McCoy.

Yes that's correct raspberry. Don't come on here very often now,(I post on and read the Proform forum as more like minded souls and the forum is more strictly moderated) as you get derided when you talk about system betting, but the thread intrigued me and although I haven't read every post felt compelled to write after what Crippen wrote. I am no way ready to go full time and nor do I want to but I've been doing ok. I run about 50 systems using the Proform software that connects to BF Bot manager and places the bets automatically. I run my systems through TSM (The Staking Machine) to determine drawdowns, longest winning/losing runs, the probability of going bust with a system/stakes to determine the minimum odds I am willing to accept on a system and the percentage of my bank I should back on each system ranging from 0.25% to very rarely 2%. Price, has been said, is everything. But interestingly I do place bets within fairly short ranges ie 2/1-3/1 as well as minimum prices to BSP etc. I would never go back to studying form or backing with bookmakers - even if I had the option to. Good luck.

football bets to about 103 %.....i dont know anyone who makes it pay
greyhounds early prices bet to 130%+ and bet365 makes massive mistakes.
betfair on greyhounds bet to about 105% and value there is when i make a dog...3/1..7/2 and they trade on betfair at 6/1+
the thing is i more comfortable taking 5/2+ dogs i make 6/4.
there are people who make money out of bots , i would not know where to start,
but one thing i do know if that bet365 early prices were available to people who had  unrestricted accounts,
there would more millionaires than ever,
and bet365 would go skint