TheSnapper

Current Bank: $393,01
Start Bank $198,00

Mr. Kelly: $22,03

A rough day yesterday. I took a crushing loss of -$63,54. Mr. Kelly was not betting yesterday, I lost my pen drive with his data, so I had to rewrite my spreadsheet. I also have to rebuild my graph of the race to Florida.
Feb. has been a hard slog, with no profit to show, really. So, today I took out the stats and ran through them again and found some cheery news:
358 runners, +65,23 pts in profit to date.
although my betting is (just) $195,01 in profit, that's not too bad of performance., considering how bad Feb. has been so far. In a slump, its always good to look for the positives.

Well, if its winter, it means spring is on its way!

Mr Kelly's ranges are being reduced to account for a 5% edge, rather than 10%. That should reduce his volatility and get him going in the right direction as we head into March! He'll be back in action today.

Current bank: $456,55
Start Bank" $198,00

Mr. Kelly's Bank:$22,03
Start bank: $20,00


Mr. Kelly hit $57 yesterday, then hit a bad run of 4/6 losers and returned to $22,03. Too bad. Almost tripled his bank again.

Current bank: $430,38
Mr. Kelly's Bank: $27,98

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The Kelly Criterion is mathematically the fastest way to grow your bank over time. The chart below I have scanned and added shows how this works over time. Profits are compounded in the Kelly System to produce greater returns than simple level staking, or even fixed percentage staking. Note the chances of total ruin in the Kelly System are avoided, but will occur in "bet all (all-in, all the time)" or "martingale (doubling up after a loss)" staking systems. Note this chart is for coins flips with a sort of trick coin which gives you 55 wins per 100 flips. Mr. Kelly calls you to wager 10% of your bank on each flip... although you will have a few false starts and  a few losing streaks, at the end of the day you will do very well indeed compared to a conservative punter who is betting a fixed stake, and the other betters (the martingaler and the "all-in" guy) who would have blown up long before.




I have also added a graph showing Kelly Staking as a kind of a pinball machine. It assumes you have found a great bet where Kelly calls you to bet 40% of your bank each time (a coin flip when you get paid 6 times your stake for each heads, nothing for tails). As you can see after 4 bets you will have between $12,96 and $8100! (Notice that you will not have $0,00). After many such bets, you will do far better than level stakes.

The interesting question is: How much would you pay to play such a machine? How much should a casino charge you to play it? How to decide?

Hmmnmm...


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Current bank: $437,64

Not much profit for my bank this weekend. I lost about $14 overall, although Mr. Kelly advanced to $31,00 from his starting bank of $20,00

It was a wild swing for Mr. Kelly. He almost tripled his bank ($58,45), then crashed down again to under $20,00. I have added a chart to show you the volatility in his bank, which you can't quite see on the big chart, which only shows the daily results.

What Mr.Kelly is waiting for is a big winning streak. His bank will then explode in a logarithmic frenzy. Just when that will be is unpredictable, although I can expect to see it after 250+ bets. He is currently only at 82 bets.

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Current Bank: $451,25

I've been running through the stats to tweek the performance of my model, as I have been running rather flat in February. I'll be changing over to a liability based stake of 2,5% and adjusting the lay ranges of my system. The system parameters will be unchanged . I am currently trying to achieve a 10% edge and lay 20% of the bank per day,a ccording to backing stakes. I'm going to change this to laying 37% liability of the bank per day and maintaining a 10% edge. It's a small techncial change, but it has serious importance statistically.

Anyway, Mr. Kelly will be happy to hear of the changes. He would have already doubled his bank once with the changes. I will also try and use the same bets for myself and Mr Kelly in the race to Florida, only the stakes will differ. Currently, we often have different runners in the same event.

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Current bank: $446,34

Well, my bank dropped -$14,53 yesterday, while the ever-aggressive Mr. Kelly advanced a (relatively) massive $9,63. I have added the model line to my chart so you can see if I am on or off-track for the model predicted course over time to buy my dream home in Florida. 42 days and right on track to finish on Dec.6, 2011.

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Current bank:$460,87
Start Bank: $198,00

Made a profit of $30,69 on 9 bets. I am currently 3 days ahead of my model, which has me at $432 after 40 betting days (296 more to go!). Unfortunately, Mr. Kelly took a loss of -$5,56 after losing 3 lays out of 10. A busy day for him. He is down, but he will never, ever be out...even if he is reduced to betting pennies he will continue!


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I think that for anyone betting on horseracing, it is important to know what the statistics are. I mean, a question like "Is it better to lay or back?" or "Should I lay favourites or outsiders?" and so on can only really be answered by checking the statistics.

Adrian Massey has compiled a massive database of horseracing stats, using every conceivable variable. I have extracted the only really important news for all you gamblers.

Here are the stats for all runners broken down by SP (starting price), the bookies (note, not BETFAIR SP) price just before the race start.



Here' s the news for layers: The good news is that you can practically lay any horse over 2.00 and make a profit over the long haul. The higher the odds, the better... and if you stick to runners 4.0 and higher (circled in red) you can expect 10%+ profit on your lay bets. The bad newsis that those bets need to be at the bookies odds, not Betfair odds, and you will need to pay (up to) 5% commission to Betfair.

Here's the news for backers: The bad news is that you are doomed betting at any bookies prices. The more you bet, the more you will lose over time .... sticking to backing low-priced favourites will only really help you lose slower... worse, you will need to pay 5% commission to Betfair as well. There is simply no edge at those prices. The good news is that if you are betting on runners priced between 20-100% higher on Betfair than the bookies prices, then you should be able to turn a profit over the long-term.

One other curious stat I have circled are the SP Each-Way (place) stats. Layers will see that laying runners in the place market is a pretty good business at bookies odds on runners from 4.0 to 15.0. Then, from 15.0 onwards, it becomes less so (although still good for laying).

So, the key is prices and the expected value over time. If you want to make money on the horses, you have to understand the stats.

Current Bank:$430,18
Start Bank: $198,00

My bank took a loss of -$17,54 and Mr. Kelly ended up losing -$7,95 and now has a bank of $21,58.
Mr. Kelly hit a record high of $33,56 before falling back to $21,58.







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Current Bank: $447,90
Start Bank: $198,00

The Race To Florida started yesterday. Mr. Kelly did well - a profit of $9,53 on a stake of $11,63. He won 3/4 lay bets. Mr. Kelly's bank increased by a massive 47% on his first day in the competition. A great start for the great man from Texas!

My bank also kept grinding away. A profit of $9,55 to raise the total to $447,90



The (pseudo-)Kelly Stakes for Mr Kelly range from 20% to 39% across the price ranges 2,00-4,00
Based on a $20 start bank and a 10% edge, these are Mr.Kelly's liability stakes:

Bank    2.0-2.2    2.2-2.5    2.5-2.8    2.8-3.0    3.0-3.5    3.5-4.0
$20,00    $4,00    $4,40    $4,80    $5,40    $6,20    $6,80


They are not exactly correct Kelly Stakes because I am just using the lower stake value in each price band for convenience sake, so they will often be slightly lower than the true Kelly stakes... but close enough, I say!