Testing

[excelhasey]

How does everyone test their systems out ??

Live on Betfair with your own cash or is there some other way of running "test" races to see how well the system worked ??

I am trying with cash but to keep testing costs down I have to place small amounts on larger odds and frequently get done by the £2 rule on 1,000-1 shots which messes up my win / loss figures

Why do Betfair insist on a minimum £2 bet ??

[milfor]

Because a lot of people who lack such a fantastic software like BA would
suddenly be able to test their strategies with 0.05 stakes and bring a lot of
pressure to the Betfair infrastructure but nearly no commission.

[excelhasey]

So how do you test you strategies ??

The 16:55 is In Play at Newmarket, as we speak, with over £700,000 matched so £350,000 will be won £350,000 will be lost, no matter how big or small the individual bets are Betfair make (based on 5%) £17,500 commission on this race alone !!!

[milfor]

If Betfair wouldn't be greedy they wouldn't have invented the Premium
Charge either. Maybe they are already thinking about raising the minimum
stake from 2 to 3. Who knows?

I 'paper trade' new strategies: I program an Excel sheet that logs which
odds I would get and which profit/loss that would mean. If the result is
convincing I try the strategy with stake 2 simply because lower stakes triple
the delay.

[osknows]

So how do you test you strategies ??

The 16:55 is In Play at Newmarket, as we speak, with over £700,000 matched so £350,000 will be won £350,000 will be lost, no matter how big or small the individual bets are Betfair make (based on 5%) £17,500 commission on this race alone !!!

As milford points out it's probably a reasonable cutoff for Betfair system resources. If a percentage staking method is used then theoretically it's impossible to go bust until a stake of £0.01 is reached. If figures are to believed that approx only 5% of Betfair users consistently make profits then approx 95% of Betfair users could be using their resources for very little profit.

Another thing is it would be even cheaper to seed crazy prices. If you've noticed that in-play markets there are often some big fluctuations in available prices just before the event result is known....these are often seed prices which are designed to trigger bots if the price is matched. For big bankrolls this is still cheap but without the £2 limit everyone could do it

[excelhasey]

Only 5% make a profit eh !! - Then I think my adventure is coming to an end I am obviously too stupid to nail this I had many ideas I thought might work they don't is that cos its a crap idea or my inability to trigger it correctly I dont know but having been 100% convinced it can be done and spent every night getting poor sleep thinking or writing things down to the point of depression settling in today for my own sanity I might need to back off gutted

[osknows]

We've all been there and despaired but your doing the right thing. I'm sure the majority of Betfair users bet on a hunch without a strategy so don't be put off by the claimed 5% I certainly lost a bit when I started, learnt from my mistakes and returned stronger. The first thing is to test your strategy on paper against data that has not been used to create the strategy. Use data such as here http://promo.betfair.com/betfairsp/prices/ to examine the effect of strategy with real prices. Some strategies will require better data than the link above as they are fixed point prices without revealing the movement.

[alrodopial]

If you've noticed that in-play markets there are often some big fluctuations in available prices just before the event result is known....these are often seed prices which are designed to trigger bots if the price is matched.

An example with figures please?
I don't understand it.

[excelhasey]

Os your an inspiration fella thanks - If I crack this it will be with the great support that I have received from the site / forum but at the moment I cannot think of anything else other than BA its crazy my triggers are huge compared to day one yet good day good day car crash new plan good day good day car crash aaaaaarrrrrhhhhh my head spins its crazy but weirdly addictive but ignoring the missus soon as I come in from work and with night racing to lose aint going down well adding to the pressure my head is gonna explode

[milfor]

What you suffer is called "steam" in Backgammon and "tilt" in Poker. You
had too many frustrating experiences and want to compensate them
hastily. That makes it even worse.

Take a break and don't think about betting for a week. Don't put yourself
under pressure that you have to find a working strategy in the next days
to compensate your losses.

You have not overseen the easy way to win a lot of money.
There is none.

If there ever was, it was detected long ago and exploited until it
vanished. Thousands of people have been analysing the sports/markets
for many years. You can't expect to win money from them after a few
weeks. I was analysing for over a year to find the strategy I have now
and I had to change the code over a hundred times to make the wins
bigger and the losses smaller. My VBA code has grown and grown and
has 26.000 characters at the moment.

Of course I tried a lot of simpler strategies as well. But they all won on
one day and lost on the other. I think that the working strategies all
require a lot of analysis and hard work.

[dgs2001]

excelhasey

Take a break and don't think about betting. Don't put yourself
under pressure that you have to find a working strategy in the next days
to compensate your losses.

These are wise words, indeed words that most of us have at some time had to listen too.
I hope you can follow them.

Duncan