i/r horses

[Nutter Punter]

For i/r ? LOL

Someone has to

It is slow but doable over there. I took 700 out of the Irish at the weekend.

[doris_day]

That's great if you've been able to find an angle. My stuff needs good liquidity but perhaps I'll go and take a look.
Hope it keeps working for you.

[mithcd]

That's fairly decent. Slow and steady I know beats everything.

[Owen123]

For i/r ? LOL

Someone has to

It is slow but doable over there. I took 700 out of the Irish at the weekend.

Morning All,
I have frequented this forum over the years but i have been very active in Betfair since 2007, mainly automated strategies and been very successful.
I too have have noticed a dramatic change in running
I was interested in the above comment; was this achieved on auto or manually trading?
Thanks

[Tradyann]

Hi,

Same observation on soccer and tennis (inplay).
Very difficult to be matched since few months.

[mak]

yes, this new "trend" is was on all July... August started even worst..

Spike any news news?
Have you notice anything, since I don't have any earlier data to compare

[Spike]

My July wasn't brilliant, but it wasn't terrible either.

It's tricky to compare years because I'm always changing the way I work (new bots, more servers etc) but one simple metric is how many markets I've had a bet in.

Taking June and July together - in 2012 I had bets in 1630 UK horse racing markets, this year the total was 1571, so that's basically the same.

My average profit per transaction over the same period was only half what I achieved last year, so that's not so good. This has to be kept in perspective though, in April and May of this year I roughly doubled last year's average. Hopefully my bots are a bit better this year than they were last year, but they can't possibly be twice as good so you have to recognise that their returns are subject to a high degree of volatility.

Looking at my results I was a little surprised to see that I matched significantly more of my bets this June/July than in the comparable period last year. 75% of my stakes were matched this year as compared to just 71% last year. However this trend has been true of the year as a whole, the figures for the first six months of each year being 75% this year versus 72.6% for last year. It made me wonder whether I'm being a little generous with my prices.

Despite relatively weak results this summer both the first and second quarters of this year were excellent for me overall. Whilst recent months have been poor only time will tell whether this is due to some underlying cause or is just the normal variability you should expect in gambling.



Just for the sake of argument though, let's assume that there really is something wrong - what could it be?

One possibility could be a change in liquidity or playing patterns. I haven't looked at the liquidity figures for the last few months yet, however I don't see this as a realistic cause because if liquidity were to decline you would expect it to do so gradually, It doesn't seem likely that thousands of people all stopped playing at once on the 20th of May (or whenever).

Another potential cause of a change would be a systems change by Betfair, for example a change in the matching Algorithm. This could well cause a sudden change (in fact that's exactly what you would expect), If there has been a change then BF aren't saying anything about it, so let's assume not.

Since neither of those causes seem plausible and I can't think of another I'm currently leaning towards the view that this is just one of those poor periods that come along every once in a while and then disappear again.

Frustrating though they are these do tend to be the periods in which I come up with my bet innovations, so if there is a cloud here there may well be a silver lining too.

[doris_day]

The one thing I've observed by eye, not hard and fast data, is the huge in play volatility. Prices move wildly which seems to me a combination of lower liquidity and possibly one or two bigger players. These one or two players could be on track players or Betfair themselves without a delay. They've always said they dont play themselves so it could be 'friends'. I know for a fact that Betdaq allow (or allowed in the past) 'friends' the advantage of what they called 'lightweight prices', or in play betting with no time delay.
This is ofcourse a questionable practice but it has gone on and I see no reason to assume its stopped. Could explain a lot.

[mak]

Thanks for the feedback Spike. I am on vacation right now and still my bots
doesn't perform like 3-4 months earlier. I will probably have to rethink and rewrite my bots from September onwards.

[mak]

Here we are again

After rewriting of my bots on September things were difficult but ok

However starting from mid January '14
in play horse markets are "strange"
Really can't explain it, but nothing seems to working.

It is my worst month ever and really don't have a clue what has change so dramatically.

Anyone else observations - feedback?

[KESIMKESIM]

Mak,

yes, I have noticed the horse racing markets pre-play changed again, first week in January. My bots mostly stopped working, although if I play manually and use my experience then I can still make a profit, although it seems such a long painful process that I can hardly be bothered.

I can see what is happening in the market, but haven't yet worked out how to automate a strategy to cope with it. The market seems clever enough to know EXACTLY what my position is and be able to manage the market accordingly so that I can't win!

[doris_day]

I don't bet in-play at the moment but I do watch the markets and I noticed huge volatility today. OK, its a Monday with poor racing but this was much greater volatility than I've seen before. Looks to me like even poorer liquidity. I'll take a closer look over the next few days.

Betfair won't be satisfied till they've destroyed all their exchange markets. Then they'll ask for feedback to explain 'what went wrong ?'.

[wizardofmann]

I noticed a few days ago that early mornings some runners (lower odds) showed 1.01 (and no liquidity) on the lay side. Today, 12.45pm race at Ayr an unusual thing happened. Nearing the end of the race the odds seemed to jump say from 50/1 straight to 1.01 and showed no liquidity! As it happens it had virtually no effect on my system, as I never lay at those high odds. From there on, every race moved in exactly in the exact same manner. I posted 'LAY 1.01' in the help section, to see if it was just me but got no replies reporting the change to in-running.

This situation seems to have changed the 'usual' in-running 'turn-of-events,' making the decision to lay a little more hasty to say the least! Any thoughts

[mak]

KESIMKESIM
I know what you mean, i(seems like the market knows your position) however i find it very difficult to believe it. (someone can map all players positions and drive the market in the other way)

Although I don't have an explanation I think that something has change in cross match algorithm, or in the way they match our bets.

I can almost see it happening because I have enable the option - highlight liquidity from cross matching - sometimes is almost dead and when it seems to work (flashing in BA grid) then it is very very lower compared to previews months. At least it looks to me so

It can't be a new bot or a new trend because it happened to sadden and at once...

[Owen123]

Hi
Just wondered if anyone had noticed a resurgence in running?
Had a decent couple of months..
Regards
Owen