Hitting the Jackpot!…On Paper

Hello,

currently I am not writing as much about my trading in general, because this month is really quit so far. Just placed bets on my lay selections, traded a few tennis matches and had some bets on soccer.

I am working on a few things at the moment: Next step is to get a Baseball Bot running. Pre season is already running, so the goal is to have the bot available in April when season starts.

Today HorstBecker, the horses backing bot hit a nice winner in the Wincanton 17:30 race. Reinriver won the race with a BSP of 99.30!

This puts the month into the profit zone, but only on paper. Weather in UK seems to improve from day to day, so I am pretty sure HorstBecker will produce more winning days.

LaylaCheval, the horse laying bot is not yet in the profit zone. Currently we are looking at a loss of -16.65 points in March.

Cheers, Loocie

Bot Performance

Hello,

a long time since the last update about my betting bots. I used the last few weeks for developing on the bots and on the central tracking platform. This is a web based system showing the stats and bets of all the bots.

The bad news for the horse betting bots is that I had to turn them back into simulation mode. Right after we started them running with bet placing something changed to horse racing. Not only our bots but also other punters and traders struggled with their performance. JP, Brian and if I remember correct Talkbet also struggled with their performance on the horses.

However, I am still convinced that both bots, the laying and the backing bot, can produce decent profits. Currently they are running in simulation mode and there are signs that the bad might be over. We have still two weeks to go in January, so I will give an update about the performance at the end of the month.

I finished my work on the betting bot framework, so now I am able to adapt a sport quite easily to this framework.

Currently I am working on bots for other sports, too. The aim is to let them run in simulation mode as soon as possible for collecting real time data.

To give you an idea how the bots look like, here is a screen shot of the soccer bot I am currently working on:

(Click on image to enlarge)

I had to hide some areas of the screen shot, because they give to much details away about what the bot is doing.

This week I finished the work on a bot for NBA matches. It was quite difficult, because most of the matches take place during the night and I had to log all the data and evaluate them the next day. However the bot is working reliable and since January, 10th it placed 10 bets winning 4 of them and losing 6 of them. The bot is currently 1 point in profit. Nothing to be euphoric about, but seems to be a good sign.

What will be the next steps:

1. Finishing work on the soccer bot.
2. Starting work on a pre race horse trading bot.
3. Creating a bot for baseball.

The soccer bot will be finished in two or three weeks. The baseball bot has to be ready at the beginning of April when the regular MLB season will start, so no need to rush.

The most interesting work will be the pre race horse racing bot. In the past I worked on a Pre Race Horse Racing Analyzer. During the last week I got an idea about a more professional way to analyze the data. Will give an update later when I started the work on that kind of software.

I also had some personal sports trading. Will give an update later this week.

That’s it for now!

Cheers, Loocie

Value in Baseball (2)

Hello,

Today I will give an update of the Baseball betting. Earlier I mentioned, that it might be possible to identify value bets on sports like baseball, where you have many games during a season with lots of statistical data available. I only punted on the given selections on paper (actually Excel) to see, if it could be profitable or not. Here is an update of the selections:

Number of total matches: 661
Number of selections: 114
Number of back selections: 78
Number of lay selections: 36

Number of bets won: 68
Number of bets lost: 46
Strike Rate: 60%

Number of back bets won: 48
Number of back bets lost: 30
Strike Rate back bets: 60%

Number of lay bets won: 20
Number of lay bets lost: 16
Strike Rate lay bets: 56%

Fixed Unit Staking
Total Profit/Loss: +15.44 points
Total Profit/Loss back bets: +7.97 points
Total Profit/Loss lay bets: +7.47 points

Weighted Staking
Total Profit/Loss: +30.88 points
Total Profit/Loss back bets: +14.73 points
Total Profit/Loss lay bets: +16.15  points

Average winning back odds (back bets): 1.79
Average winning lay odds (lay bets): 1.85

 
It looks really promising so far. Next step is to create an application to match the bets automatically. I have already started to develop this application, but it will take some time. It is a lot of work.

Cheers, Loocie

Laying Horses

Hello,

June is nearly over and I had another profitable month.

 
It is a little annoying that I could not produce a nice profit in the horses, but following Nose Ahead and HCE Bet did not work for me. I was not able to match all their bets, so mostly I missed some nice winners. It is not their fault, it is mine.

Here is an overview of my own lay selections on the horses:

I started the month with a 100EUR bank and now the bank stands at 114.40EUR. A nice profit 14.40% with only risking 4% of the bank on each single selection.

There is much liquidity on the market, so I will publish my selections pre race here on the blog. If you are interested you can join the selections and place bets too. I will publish my selections every day at noon.

The blog entry will look like this:

Today’s selection(s):

2009-06-30    19:00    Thirsk    MAIDEN STAKES    CALL TO ARMS

NB. Only lay the given selection(s), if the odds are less or equal 5.0. If the price is greater than 5.0 it is not a bet. I recommend to take the early odds and a maximum liability of 5% of your bank roll on each given selection.

Cheers, Loocie

There will be days without a selection and it is also possible to have days within 2 or 3 selections. I recommend to take the odds as early as you can, because mostly they will drift to the start of the race and sometimes they drift to greater than 5.0 and I would not lay these selections at greater than 5.0.

Please note: Laying horses to lose, as with all forms of gambling involves risk, and although using this selections has proven profitable in the past, past results can only be used as a guide. Only ever use money you can afford to lose.

The Pre Race Horse Racing Analyzer is well in progress. I have already identified a possible trading strategy, but I need to collect more data to determine the best way to take a stop loss or to take a profit. If I have identified these situations I will start to implement the bet placing. The next weeks will be really exciting.

Stats so far:
Total profit this month: +EUR31.92

Cheers, Loocie

Value in Baseball

Hello,

today I will give an overview of the baseball betting so far. Baseball is a sport with lots of data and statistics, so it is possible to create a system based on this statistics. There are also many games during a season, so on the long term value betting will pay off during a season.

The idea of the baseball system came from the trader I interviewed on February this year. The goal is to find value in baseball matches. So we created an excel sheet were we enter the actual Betfair odds and the sheet will tell us the matches to bet on.

Have a look at the data so far:

Number of total matches: 417
Number of selections: 71
Number of back selections: 46
Number of lay selections: 25

Number of bets won: 44
Number of bets lost: 27
Strike Rate: 62%

Number of back bets won: 29
Number of back bets lost: 17
Strike Rate back bets: 63%

Number of lay bets won: 15
Number of lay bets lost: 10
Strike Rate lay bets: 60%

Fixed Unit Staking
Total Profit/Loss: +13.65 points
Total Profit/Loss back bets: +5.76 points
Total Profit/Loss lay bets: +7.89 points

Weighted Staking
Total Profit/Loss: +23.95 points
Total Profit/Loss back bets: +10.02 points
Total Profit/Loss lay bets: +13.93  points

Average winning back odds (back bets): 1.78
Average winning lay odds (lay bets): 1.84

The weighted stake is calculated by the estimated value per bet, that means the more value the bet has, the higher the stake size will be.

I know we have not yet enough data entries, but the system has performed well so far. The profit grows steady without a big volatility.

At the moment we just enter the odds and data manually into the excel sheet which costs 30 minutes per day. If the system is still in profit over a longer period I will create an application which will do all the work for us, inclusive placing bets on Betfair on the suggested matches.

I will keep you up-to-date.

Cheers, Loocie

Computer-Aided Betting

Hello,

again a long time since the last blog entry. These days are really busy and I am working on various things at the same time.

The baseball system is well underway, but I stopped betting on it, because I am not yet sure how to make the biggest profit out of it. There are a few variables which let the system perform differently and I will wait to have 100 data entries to see a trend.

The horse laying system is well underway, too. I had my longest winning streak with 8 correct selections in a row. I started betting on my selections at the end of may and with a bank of 100EUR I made 14.86EUR so far (with only 4% (EUR4) liability on every single selection), which is a great result. Here is an overview of the selections I bet on so far:
 
Formula 1 produced the biggest profit of the month so far: It is a shame they do not race every week. It is so easy to make money on this for me.

I have many ideas I want to try out, so my over all profit this month is not that big. I spend some small money on testing various things.

At the moment I am working on two things:

The first one is an excel sheet which will create some in play value odds for tennis matches based on historical data of the players.

The other one is a Betfair API software, which will track the odds movement on the horses to find pattern and possibilities to make profit.

I could not believe that I did not think about computer-aided betting or trading so far, but there is a lot of potential on this.

I will keep you updated.

Total profit this month so far: EUR17.71

Cheers, Loocie

Return To Normal Life

Hello,

first of all sorry for the lack of updates during the last month and thanks to Philip Oliver for his thoughts on betting on Roland Garros.

The last few weeks have been very busy at work. I also had to do lots of things to get a new car. I am happy to say that all this stuff is done and I can return to normal life.

During the last few weeks I also traded some sport events, but this was not a good idea. I was not 100% concentrated and produced the following result:

  
I started the trading month with a loss of -EUR50.47 in the match Bammer v Li, so the struggle of the last month continued. To be honest I can not afford to lose such an amount in a single match. My actual trading bank is ca. EUR383, so the loss of -EUR50.47 is 13% of my bank. You do not need to be an expert, but losing 13% of your trading bank in a single trade is not acceptable. During the last few weeks I had to take a stop loss or at least to scratch the trades in so many occasions. Here is an example of a trade of the last month:

During the match Domachowska v Kirilenko I could identify good opportunities, but after 3 successful trades (entering and then scratching) I took my stop loss too late and produced a loss
of -EUR3.39. It is not a big amount (just 0.88% of my trading bank), but it is still a loss. If you have ten of these trades, you lose -EUR33.90 which is ca. 10% of the trading bank. I had lots of such trades, so if I had a successful trade, mostly I cut my winnings, because I just want to have a single trade where my assumption of the match developing was right. Any successful trader would now start laughing, because this a common mistake of a novice trader.

Two weeks ago I started reading a book of Van K. Tharp about trading. The more I read the more I realised that I do not have a really good trading strategy for tennis. Also my setup is not that professional that it should be. As a software developer I should not be that difficult to create a setup for me, which helps me to trade without emotions.

In this book I could also find information about how to measure your trading strategy. I never measured my “strategy” in the past so it is quite funny that I set a goal for myself to reach a net profit if EUR1000 at the end of the trading year.

Maybe it sounds crazy, but in tennis I need to start again from scratch. I want to have a tennis trading strategy (or maybe a set of strategies) which is measurable and which can be applied without subjective decisions.

Mostly when trading on tennis I am watching for big odds movements. I am also thinking about looking for smaller odds movement, f.e. to look for a movement of 25 ticks in my favour with a maximum risk of 10 ticks against me. This may lead to having more trades, which is also in my favour, because it is a little annoying for me to watch matches without getting involved.

I also started to put money on my laying selections on the horses. The results are promising, so I will give it a try. I am also following the tips of Horse Racing Tips and Nose Ahead. I am tracking all the bets via Excel so I will give a complete overview during the next few days.

 
The MLB Baseball season has already started and a mate came across with a nice idea to bet on those matches. So give it a try too. Yesterdays result where really good, 4 out of 4 winners. I use Betfair and Betdaq to get my selections at certain odds matched.

It is quite funny: I started with the idea to trade on sports and now I am beginning to turn to betting. I am still convinced I can make money on trading on tennis, but I need to get an approach which suits my personality. Haven’t found it so far.

There will be also some changes to the blog too. I do not want to post the profit/loss figure on a daily bases. It does not help any readers and it does not help me. Often I try to force a trade to turn a red figure into a green figure to avoid posting a loss on the blog. Losing is a part of the game. If you have a measurable strategy (trading or betting, does not matter) then on long term the profit will come. So I will just post my profit/loss on a monthly bases.

Total loss this month: –EUR24.50

Cheers, Loocie