A bit of reassurance.... please

[spreadbetting]

it's a lot easier to find something that returns 1% rather than 20%

If your trade risks £1 to make £1, you're basically saying that out of 101 trades, you won 56 and lost 55. Correct?

It's gonna take a massive sample to ascertain whether you really do have a 1% edge. Or is it me looking at this from the wrong angle?

I'm simply saying it's easier to find something that will return me £101 for every £100 I bet not necessarily 56/101 rather than something that will return me £120. If I can churn over enough 1%'s over time I'm happy enough with the crumbs everyone leaves behind.

I'm not sure why the forum seems obsessed with sample sizes, if I know something wins and think I have a good idea why it works I just bet on them I don't need to wait for 10,000 events to confirm it for me.

You're currently looking at how far the market moves just before the off to see if you can lay an overround book to get a profit. If say x-matching is turned off and the book is bouncing around 99% I know I can back all runners and guarantee a profit of 1%, I don't need a large sample to prove that to me, all I need to know is if I'm able to get in fast enough to profit from it by actually trying it.

[jimibt]

it's a lot easier to find something that returns 1% rather than 20%

If your trade risks £1 to make £1, you're basically saying that out of 101 trades, you won 56 and lost 55. Correct?

It's gonna take a massive sample to ascertain whether you really do have a 1% edge. Or is it me looking at this from the wrong angle?

I'm simply saying it's easier to find something that will return me £101 for every £100 I bet not necessarily 56/101 rather than something that will return me 20%. If I can churn over enough 1%'s over time I'm happy enough with the crumbs everyone leaves behind.

I'm not sure why the forum seems obsessed with sample sizes, if I know something wins and think I have a good idea why it works I just bet on them I don't need to wait for 10,000 events to confirm it for me.

SB, that's a breath of fresh air. i've always been a mechanics based *practitioner*, rather than a stats believer and think i get your approach quite well. i guess to acrue the profits, you need to be triggering out a fair number of those transactions. definitely the crumbs are there, as i'm sure your years of experience are telling you. as they say up here, MONY A MICKLE MAKS A MUCKLE!!

[northbound]

Fair enough and I'm sure the crumbs are there, otherwise all us relative newbies would have given up long ago

However, if we are not yet profiting consistently, it's because we haven't found angles that can reliably produce 1%. Or perhaps plenty of beginners find them, but they are the wrong angles: they produce 1% 100 times out of 101, then lose 100% 1 time out of 100.

Hence our questions, which I'm sure look really stupid when you are on the other side of the fence and have it all figured out.

[ShaunWhite]

There's more than one way to skin a cat. And all of those ways can be done well or done badly.
If everyone had the same technique then we'd all just be passing round the same mickle and never make a muckle.

[northbound]

There's more than one way to skin a cat. And all of those ways can be done well or done badly.

I agree

[ShaunWhite]

Hence our questions, which I'm sure look really stupid when you are on the other side of the fence and have it all figured out.

No no no no don't think that. It's NOT asking questions that makes people stupid.

Doesn't matter either if you need to ask once or ten times. More than 10 and yes, maybe they're stupid

[spreadbetting]

Fair enough and I'm sure the crumbs are there, otherwise all us relative newbies would have given up long ago

However, if we are not yet profiting consistently, it's because we haven't found angles that can reliably produce 1%. Or perhaps plenty of beginners find them, but they are the wrong angles: they produce 1% 100 times out of 101, then lose 100% 1 time out of 100.

Hence our questions, which I'm sure look really stupid when you are on the other side of the fence and have it all figured out.

Like Shaun says there aren't any stupid questions. If you don't understand something you ask til you do, the only stupid thing would be to worry about maintaining some kind of ego on an anonymous forum. It's easy enough to make another account if you've shot yourself in the foot on here.

[ruthlessimon]

because we haven't found angles that can reliably produce 1%.

I think SB's right about small edges, but mentally how many people could hack that, even with a bot?

Let's say I was averaging +1tick a race over 10,000 races - even with massive scale, that's still a crumby p&l imo.

Is a +1tick average really the limit of the opportunity available??

Which then opens a wider question which never really get's talked about - how does one improve a said edge (where are true limits to profitability)

[spreadbetting]

because we haven't found angles that can reliably produce 1%.

I think SB's right about small edges, but mentally how many people could hack that, even with a bot?

Let's say I was averaging +1tick a race over 10,000 races - even with massive scale, that's still a crumby p&l imo.

Is a +1tick average really the limit of the opportunity available??

Which then opens a wider question which never really get's talked about - how does one improve a said edge (where are true limits to profitability)

I'd have thought mentally that would be the whole point of running bots, so you can accept the small returns without feeling the need to up rates or stakes to unrealistic amounts.

I run a bot on the dogs that is averaging around 66p a race , a very simple strategy that I could easily increase the profitability of it if I did it manually. But the money just isn't there in the dog markets so even though I could increase it's profitability eventually it becomes a case of diminishing returns and my time is spent better elsewhere rather than spending all day on the dogs for maybe another 50% return. I've been running it for a long time and last 3 months it churned over 15000 markets so the pennies do add up.

[eightbo]

I'd like to share some extremely relevant words from Brent Penfold on the topic of defining your strategy, and 'mechanical' vs. 'discretionary' traders: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAvBbBvth0Q&t=36m51s
36:51 - 42:55

改善

[northbound]

I run a bot on the dogs that is averaging around 66p a race

SB, If you don't mind me asking: do your strategies always return a profit in every race, sometimes bigger sometimes lower? Or do you have winning and losing races?

[spreadbetting]

Can't remember the %'s offhand but probably around 65% strike rate win/lose, it was originally set up to churn money to generate commission for PC. My view with bots is that you need to take a value based approach rather than trying to green up every market.

[northbound]

Can't remember the %'s offhand but probably around 65% strike rate win/lose, it was originally set up to churn money to generate commission for PC. My view with bots is that you need to take a value based approach rather than trying to green up every market.

Thanks and I do agree with the latter statement.

Gotta say that we turned this thread into something completely different to what the original poster intended.

[ShaunWhite]

Let's say I was averaging +1tick a race over 10,000 races - even with massive scale, that's still a crumby p&l imo.

So then you find another one, and then another one. Scale works in all directions.

[ShaunWhite]

Gotta say that we turned this thread into something completely different to what the original poster intended.

I hope if nothing else that the diverse range of techniques mentioned will be reassurance that his cat skinning days are far from over, even if he's found that method 1 has been a bit gory.