System Performance

With the thaw down south well under way and with only 1 meeting on at Southwell today I thought i would post up a couple of links to some spreadsheets uploaded to 4 share last night.

The first of these details the performance of the thread started on Punters Lounge at the arse end of November 2008 in which I wanted to test the viability and back - tested nature of some systems created from a horse racing database. See here for details. The profits the systems were showing in the last four seasons were simply staggering and with around 20,000 separate pieces of data to rely on then surely there was some truth in the back testing? Even showing just 1/2 the amount of profit or even a third would be enough to create a handsome living, effectively credit crunch resisant to boot. Only time would tell.

The start of the trial was immediately a downward spiral. The starting bank was set as 400 points and at on 30th December '08 nearly 80 points were lost!! Had I really been so wrong with my figures?

Download the spreadsheet here

I'd expected long losing runs with it being a set of long shot systems but looking back at previous data the biggest monthly loss was 65 points so I was prepared to take the loss and move on. Thankfully there was a decent sized winner that day and the month finished at -40 points.

What followed was a series of on/off days and the big freeze at the beginning of January that killed off all turf racing for a week. The systems were going nowhere fast. Then something magical happened on the 13th January a triple figure winner!! It was 66/1 at the bookies but 200/1 on betfair!! WoW!! Over the past month and a half hemorrhaging points had become a hobby for the systems but all of a sudden there was 157 points profit staring me in the face. At this point I was seriously shocked at having such a big winner and for a £2 punter this was like winning the horse racing lotto. O.k. maybe not but it sure felt good to be in profit and having a losing set of systems turned into a winning set I felt vindicated.

Then things went on the slide again punctuated by a few small-ish wins here and there and then on 29th January (last week) another 100 plus winner rode over the horizon and really boosted profits!!! January went by and 241 points profit with an ROI of 105% had totally turned things around.

With the February freeze claiming all the meetings again things have ground to a halt once more but I for one am seriously looking forward to the ups and downs to come.

Despite the thread on Punters Lounge being turf only I had also developed some AW systems which I decided not to trial on punters lounge due to the odds capture being way different I felt it would be confusing to follow the thread. However here is the detailed spreadsheet showing the performance of all the systems in the January 2009 period. It makes for quite interesting reading. Well it does for me at least but I hope someone who struggles with horse racing gambling might find it useful as the end result was a profit of 274 points for January.

Since I first started my quest I have tweaked the parameters of some systems and created new ones for the flat season to come. One tweak that I have undertaken lately is to change the odds capture on the National Hunt Flat system that so nicely provided a 126/1 winner last week. For a £2 punter it would be easy to place all bets at Betfair Sp and have done with it but I want to keep things real and if at any time in the future I manage to build a bankroll and be in the position to be placing much larger bets e.g. £50 a point then on the higher end of the odds-scale betfair sp is going to become redundant as the liquidity for such a bet isn't going to be there. So the experiment has moved on and the bets are placed before the off in an attempt to beat betfair sp. In fact the 126/1 winner last week traded at 170 before the off. I have had mixed success with with this strategy but I have almost always been able to get prices close to BFSP if I have been under and I have been able to massively beat BFSP when I have been over. Hence playing live with larger amounts is going to swing in roundabouts but the end results will be on a par with using BFSP. Now I seem to have meandered past the point so bear with me while I get back on track.

The National Hunt Flat system was showing large amounts of qualifiers in each race which was proving to be a nightmare in a live situation trying to get the best odds on 8 horses in a 16 runner race was difficult and using larger stakes would be a complete nightmare so I decided to look at the odds ranges and change the qualifiers odds range from 7/1 to 100/1 (bookie sp) to 18/1 to 100/1 (bookie sp). Therefore, now its much easier to concentrate on just the top half of the odds table on the betfair screen. I thought it would hurt profits in the long term and quite honestly it will but I can honestly say after running it through the database its a very small sacrifice in the overall scheme of things and its much easier to manage getting even my miserly £2's on.

I've a few qualifiers for southwell today so I'll post a P&L later on or maybe in the morning. There have been no winners for the system so far today but as the longest losing run can hit 100 I guess I'm not in the least bit phased.

Till next time.

Hurdles: SP 7/1 to 100/1 Chases: SP 7/1 to 66/1
National Hunt Flat Races: SP 18/1 to 100/1
AW (Not southwell): SP 7/1 to 33/1 AW Southwell: SP 18/1 to 100/1
Flat Turf: SP 18/1 to 100/1

Results to Betfair SP