Paper betting - advice sought

[Zoob]

I'm more of a football fan (when it comes to both watching, and betting), but when the season finished I started gathering info on horse racing.

I know fairly little about horse racing, (that'll set the alarm bells ringing...) therefore, because I have a background in stats, I started paper betting based on the odds of the horses in each race.

My bets are mostly lays (average of around 9/2), but also involve some backing.

Depending on the the betfair odds, number of runners and some other factors, I place one of 5 bets (i.e. laying horses at certain odds, or backing at certain odds...) . For each type of bet, I have followed between 100 and 300 races. In total, I've paper bet in over 800 races over the last 40 or so days.

I'm currently averaging around +4 points per day, with 2 out of 3 days being winners, and the average winning day being better than the average losing day.

800 races seems a lot to me, but since horse racing goes on all year round with an average of 20 UK races a day, I'm not sure if 800 over 40 days is a big enough sample size.

The fact that I'm doing so well from my paper betting makes me think I should start betting for real, but I'd be interested to know how long any of you punters think a system should be tested for before going live?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated...

Cheers.

[slapdash]

to PL, Zoob!

It's the size of the sample that matters, not the total number of races. So
the information you get from a sample of 800 races will be just as reliable,
whether there are 7000 or 7000000 races a year, so long as the sample
is chosen randomly.

What I'd be most careful about is that if your sample comes from 40
consecutive days, then it may well be biased. For example, your sample
covers the start of the flat season, when there are a lot of horses running
with no recent form, and it's quite likely that a system based on market
information would perform differently during this period.

[Zoob]

Thanks Slapdash.

Although the sample has been chosen randomly, I had not really taken into account the effect of including the start of the flat season in the sample.

I've selected either all races per day or a random number per day, from around 40 days out of the last 50. I'm also conscious that the change in weather (i.e. it rained a lot for the first half of the paper betting and has been glorious weather since).

The start of the flat season would seem to affect one of the bets I place - it was far more successful at the start than it has been recently, but the other bets have made consistent allbeit small gains over the period.

[slapdash]

Originally Posted by Zoob

Although the sample has been chosen randomly, I had not really taken into account the effect of including the start of the flat season in the sample.

That was just meant to be one example. There are probably lots of reasons
why some systems will do well at some times of the year but not at others.
For example, the weather may have an effect, as you mention.

Ideally, you'd backtest your systems over a whole year, but that may be
difficult to do, depending on what data the selections are based on.

[THE % MAN]

I could not agree more with salpdash's views. Personally I would leave out days when the extremes in the going [Heavy,Firm and Hard]are given as that days going for the course. Like slapdash says the time of the year must also be taken into consideration and perhaps even more so this year as it as only just settled down since the begining of the flat. Also do you keep seperate records for type of race, field size, age group, finnishing pos LTO or are they just a general mix of everthing. Sometimes when you keep different stats like those mentioned this can improve your returns.Also the more back tracking you can do the better and a few slight changes may be needed for the different months of the season.
You've put a fair amount of work into this already and things look quite good but if theirs anyway you can put your findings to other times of the year and you still get favourable results then you would have more idea of what to expect.
THE % MAN

[Zoob]

Cheers % Man,

I do track different types of race, number of runners, distance etc. Obviously the more data I collect the better I'll be able to analyse very specific races.

I agree that different times of year will produce different results. Perhaps my quandry is that I'm also aware that different weather patterns across different years means that if I was to paper bet for a whole year, I still might not get an accurate picture - theoretically I'd have to paper bet for several years to get a clear picture of normal / abnormal weather conditions across a 'typical' year - and I'm not sure such a thing exists when it comes to weather in the UK...

Will of course plug on and see what happens - above all I'm just looking for consistency and stability within any given system...

Very appreciative of the useful input - I made the mistake of asking a similar question on the betfair forum a few weeks back, and just received snide and very un-funny attempts at comedy responses...

[Datapunter]

Zoob,

so you asked a serious question on the Betfair forum........ you are a brave man



Just an additional thought.
I suggest you start actually placing bets, simply at minimal stakes, for 2 reasons;

First as with any betting system your profit depends on getting good enough prices. Paper betting is great but in many cases the prices you get in real life differ from what you get on paper. May apply here depending on the specifics of your system of course. If the real-life prices are smaller then they may swallow up any paper betting profit.

Also keep an eye on available volume, again if applicable, many paper betting systems note prices that look really good but if there is only few pounds available there isn't much future in it is there.



Second it will give you a view on the amount of time it will take to run the system with money. I've looked at quite a few systems that looked great on paper but took just about all day to actually execute. If in future you are not willing or able to spend the time actually required placing the bets you should reconsider the amount of time you 'invest' in the paper betting.

[THE % MAN]

Originally Posted by Zoob

Very appreciative of the useful input - I made the mistake of asking a similar question on the betfair forum a few weeks back, and just received snide and very un-funny attempts at comedy responses...

If you ask for help on hear mate you will get posative responces from the guys and if they can help in anyway they will give thier honest views. This forum is the best around and if any dipsticks come around they are shown the door.

[Zoob]

Originally Posted by THE % MAN

If you ask for help on hear mate you will get posative responces from the guys and if they can help in anyway they will give thier honest views. This forum is the best around and if any dipsticks come around they are shown the door.

That's good to know.... Hopefully I'll be able to help out others when it comes to football betting issues, which as I said is more familiar ground for me...

Datapunter - I totally appreciate the point you're making; the paper betting I've been doing already involves several hours work a day. Should I 'go live' it will actually require slightly less work, strange as that may sound.

And when I'm doing the paper betting, I'm over cautious when it comes to the price taken - I look at the price and volume available; if in doubt, I'll take the lower price when backing and the hugher price when laying...All bets taken are based on price and volume available...