How many here bet in running?

[one click king]

How have you been finding it?

Is liquidity or bots ruining the game?

[Bid]

I only bet in-running, but then I only bet on football, tennis and cricket. I haven't noticed any liquidity problems at all.

[doris_day]

In-running horse racing is as good as ever....Some evening racing has lower liquidity than last year but other than that its fine.....

[Spike]

It's almost all I do. Easiest pickings on betfair if you ask me.

[one click king]

Sorry, should have been clear about this, I'm talking about horse racing.

I am surprised so many here are saying it's easy, because I am fairly sure it isn't. A year ago I was finding it more difficult, two years ago it was easy and I should have been betting in larger chunks.

I am still turning over a decent profit but my over-ride back odds is now down to 1.2. Someone I know was making a lot of money but he is finding it more difficult, and we would consider ourselves professional (if there is a term for it) in-running players.

I was betting with Turf TV thinking their would be a bit of free money a while ago, but winners were 1.01 about 100 yards from the line whereas you would expect a little bit of money washing around. I do much prefer Jump racing to bet on but Flat on terrestrial every day would be very nice.

Don't give any trade secrets away, but what are you finding 'easy'. I only bet in the place market and use my skills to anticipate things now rather than back something at about 1.04 before jumping the last ! Are you backing or laying?

[doris_day]

I certainly don't think its easy, particularly if you're betting watching pictures. There is certainly a fall off of liquidity for ATR/SIS races and I think Betfair will probably need to address this at some stage. However, the extra volatility may help some others as a side effect.
TurfTV courses seem to be holding up well and although not easy, there are still good profits to be made, particularly laying.......but each to his own, eh ?

[Spike]

IR horses looks just fine from here, there's massive value all over the place and I find I do slightly better in lower liquidity. I'm generally involved in the win market anywhere between about 10 and 1.3 and stay well clear of the last minute melle. I've looked at the place market a little but there just doesn't seem to be all that much money there. Even so I'm planning to look at it propperly and give it a whirl some time.

[one click king]

I never play in the win market in running as everything happens way too fast. I sit in the place market and make comfortable amounts of money when the opportunities arise. I have tried laying but it is very difficult to catch anything, I finding backing at 1.2 over-ride is the easiest way to make my money.

I've just watched Mountain Pride there hit 1.04 to place and have my over-ride lay at 4.0. I never caught a thing.

[doris_day]

Perhaps you're not quick enough

[one click king]

Hi Spike

What do you mean by this -

IR horses looks just fine from here, there's massive value all over the place and I find I do slightly better in lower liquidity.

That would go against all I think is a positive about betting in-running. The lower the liquidity, the quicker the odds get down to 1.14ish across the board. Why do you find lower liquidity slightly better?

[Spike]

In lower liquidity the market is less efficient- which means better value if you're there to take it as people are forced to take poor prices.

[xraymitch]

Hi folks,

Sorry if I am slightly of topic here but I would like to hear your thoughts.

I use triggers to make bets in running which until recently have been mainly successful. In the last 2 or 3 months I am seeing crazy zig zags in the price movements which cause my triggers to fire and thus lose.

I am thinking that now I have to build in extra tests before I allow a trigger to be fired. Any ideas welcome.

Cheers,

Ray

[Spike]

Is this just the difference between the flat season and the national hunt- or have you accounnted for that?

Betting patterns are quite different for the two codes- I find I have to treat them quite differently. I deffinately seem to get away with more on the national hunt- the flat is much less forgiving and is characterised by very fast price swings. In the NH you can respond to whatever arises because you have time to correct it- but on the flat I think you have to be much more aticipatory to get the best out of it.

It's quite easy to add safe-gaurds to your triggers, using back and lay prices as well as ltp to work out what the "current" price is might be a start.

[doris_day]

xray, I think the high volatility you're describing happens in races with poor liquidity. ATR races have poorer liquidity than TurfTV ones simply because of the ATR time delay and the relative belief that there are Raw feed merchants around that will steal your money. As I said previously, this must be hurting Betfair, so its in their interest to get a fix for it. Sadly I think it will be difficult because as the bookies own the rights they are hardly going to let Betfair get a look in. In fact it would be in their own interest to do just the opposite.

Back to the subject though, I think by the sounds of it you'll need to modify your triggers if they don't work well with high volatility but without knowing how they operate it would be difficult to know how to do that. On the other hand you could redesign them to take advantage of the volatility

Think out of the box !!

[Spike]

Doris- do you have a list of which courses are turf tv/sis/etc and if so would you mind sharing it? I Don't watch the races so I've never really thought about it but I'd be interested to run an analysis of how my results compare across the different providers. I keep quite a bit of data and I'd be interested to see what the correlations are.