Truth about in running?

[Georget79]

Hi all,

I've dabbled in the racing markets for a long time, and always enjoyed the in play markets, and seen more success, rather than pre race.

However every strategy I try always starts brilliant, works great for a week or even longer, then turns on its head, leading me to beleive the strategy was just an illusion. ive heard of this kind of thing before, that it is common, something can appear to work for a while but is only really luck. I've spent hours analysing data, form etc, but in the long term that too hasn't helped, seemingly.

I'm willing to put in the time and effort, and even pay for courses to become better and learn good strategies that will be profitable long term, but the only traders I've seen that offer in running courses are either heavily doubted, or trashed on this forum.

I am starting to wonder then, are there really actually that many people who can profit from in play long term? Because I'm starting to beleive that maybe it's only HIGHLY skilled race readers or those trackside that can be profitable.

Am I wrong? And if so, can anyone reccomend someone reputable traders that specialise in-play and have courses?

Many thanks

[ANGELS15]

Hi George

I've been doing Dobbing and Back to Lay betting for the last 5 years. I've managed to maintain a 60% success rate with the dobbing over that period. I've kept records and done around 9000 selections to date.

I do understand your pain as in the past I tried various strategies which appeared to promise success only to fail miserably once I went live with them. Typically I would identify opportunities or selections which fit a certain criteria. Once I went live the opportunities or selections would dry up or underperform.

The most consistent of all my successes has come with the dobbing, however that also has had it's fair share of ups and downs. When I first started doing it I could expect to find at least 150 selections a month sometimes well over 200.

Since 2019 I've struggled to find a decent no of selections some months there's only been around 50. Also I used to grade them like saying 'A' were top selections with a very good chance, 'B' average and 'C' borderline but worth a risk. Until 2019 I could expect around 10% As, 60% Bs and 30% Cs. Nowadays it's more like 1% As, 40% Bs and 50% Cs.

For some reason February - April this year were terrible, not many slelections and those that I could identfy were poor.

Things are going on around us in the background that affect what we do. It could be the weather, the economy, cultural and other changes and trends that affect the industry in all sorts of ways.

Also some things that we may think we see could well be an illusion.

I'll give you an example. Around 20 odd years ago when I was purely a punter I thought I spotted a betting system. It seemed that in 6 runner or less races on the flat up to 10 furlongs the top weights showed a profit. I researched it and looked up stats going back 10 years and the stats appeared to back this up. Anyway I started backing these top weights. I think the first one won but thereafter none of the others did.

In those times there were'nt that many of these small fields say less than 1/2 dozen a month. Anyway it was likely that the horses in the stats won because they were just good horses and not because of my stats.

You need to have an understanding of what you're doing and why you're doing it. I've managed to identity what to look for and as far as I can seen as long as there's in-play betting horses will lengthen and shorten.

You have to have a sound an tested method.

Good luck on your journey.

[Georget79]

Hi George

I've been doing Dobbing and Back to Lay betting for the last 5 years. I've managed to maintain a 60% success rate with the dobbing over that period. I've kept records and done around 9000 selections to date.

I do understand your pain as in the past I tried various strategies which appeared to promise success only to fail miserably once I went live with them. Typically I would identify opportunities or selections which fit a certain criteria. Once I went live the opportunities or selections would dry up or underperform.

The most consistent of all my successes has come with the dobbing, however that also has had it's fair share of ups and downs. When I first started doing it I could expect to find at least 150 selections a month sometimes well over 200.

Since 2019 I've struggled to find a decent no of selections some months there's only been around 50. Also I used to grade them like saying 'A' were top selections with a very good chance, 'B' average and 'C' borderline but worth a risk. Until 2019 I could expect around 10% As, 60% Bs and 30% Cs. Nowadays it's more like 1% As, 40% Bs and 50% Cs.

For some reason February - April this year were terrible, not many slelections and those that I could identfy were poor.

Things are going on around us in the background that affect what we do. It could be the weather, the economy, cultural and other changes and trends that affect the industry in all sorts of ways.

Also some things that we may think we see could well be an illusion.

I'll give you an example. Around 20 odd years ago when I was purely a punter I thought I spotted a betting system. It seemed that in 6 runner or less races on the flat up to 10 furlongs the top weights showed a profit. I researched it and looked up stats going back 10 years and the stats appeared to back this up. Anyway I started backing these top weights. I think the first one won but thereafter none of the others did.

In those times there were'nt that many of these small fields say less than 1/2 dozen a month. Anyway it was likely that the horses in the stats won because they were just good horses and not because of my stats.

You need to have an understanding of what you're doing and why you're doing it. I've managed to identity what to look for and as far as I can seen as long as there's in-play betting horses will lengthen and shorten.

You have to have a sound an tested method.

Good luck on your journey.

Thanks mate. I think the problem with things like dobbing for me was selection. I've tried it a few times and I'm still baffled about how to select horses. Ones that seem obvious to me are never mentioned in daily selections made by some well known traders. In fact I see them sometimes select horses that have little history of dobbing in play and I don't understand that.

The other thing about this kind of in play trade, is how long do you wait until you know you've got a decent working strategy, after one month of consistent profit? 2?

Any tips for knowing when a decent strategy has been identified and how long before we can say its passed the test of time?

Cheers. George

[ANGELS15]

Hi George

I've been doing Dobbing and Back to Lay betting for the last 5 years. I've managed to maintain a 60% success rate with the dobbing over that period. I've kept records and done around 9000 selections to date.

I do understand your pain as in the past I tried various strategies which appeared to promise success only to fail miserably once I went live with them. Typically I would identify opportunities or selections which fit a certain criteria. Once I went live the opportunities or selections would dry up or underperform.

The most consistent of all my successes has come with the dobbing, however that also has had it's fair share of ups and downs. When I first started doing it I could expect to find at least 150 selections a month sometimes well over 200.

Since 2019 I've struggled to find a decent no of selections some months there's only been around 50. Also I used to grade them like saying 'A' were top selections with a very good chance, 'B' average and 'C' borderline but worth a risk. Until 2019 I could expect around 10% As, 60% Bs and 30% Cs. Nowadays it's more like 1% As, 40% Bs and 50% Cs.

For some reason February - April this year were terrible, not many slelections and those that I could identfy were poor.

Things are going on around us in the background that affect what we do. It could be the weather, the economy, cultural and other changes and trends that affect the industry in all sorts of ways.

Also some things that we may think we see could well be an illusion.

I'll give you an example. Around 20 odd years ago when I was purely a punter I thought I spotted a betting system. It seemed that in 6 runner or less races on the flat up to 10 furlongs the top weights showed a profit. I researched it and looked up stats going back 10 years and the stats appeared to back this up. Anyway I started backing these top weights. I think the first one won but thereafter none of the others did.

In those times there were'nt that many of these small fields say less than 1/2 dozen a month. Anyway it was likely that the horses in the stats won because they were just good horses and not because of my stats.

You need to have an understanding of what you're doing and why you're doing it. I've managed to identity what to look for and as far as I can seen as long as there's in-play betting horses will lengthen and shorten.

You have to have a sound an tested method.

Good luck on your journey.

Thanks mate. I think the problem with things like dobbing for me was selection. I've tried it a few times and I'm still baffled about how to select horses. Ones that seem obvious to me are never mentioned in daily selections made by some well known traders. In fact I see them sometimes select horses that have little history of dobbing in play and I don't understand that.

The other thing about this kind of in play trade, is how long do you wait until you know you've got a decent working strategy, after one month of consistent profit? 2?

Any tips for knowing when a decent strategy has been identified and how long before we can say its passed the test of time?

Cheers. George

Hi George

I would say in order to start to get an idea of whether this kind of strategy is profitable you would need to test it on several hundred selections. In my case I tried it out for about 3 months prior to going live. I dobbed at least 500 horses in that time. Like I said in those times I was finding plenty of selections so this helped to get decent test results.

Also you have to understand the effects of seasonality on your results, ie coming to the end/start. of the flat/jumps season etc. Right now the flat season is well underway so you should get some decent results.

Above all you need to understand and recognise value so that you can identify selections that are overpriced and trade them accordingly.

You need to develop some knowlege of racing so that you can identify what makes a good sprinter, stayer or jumper. i reccomend timeform if you're new to racing. Currently you can subscribe to their online service for £30 monthly (previously was £70 month). It seems a lot but there is a lot of online guidance about racing and they provide good indicators for horses that shorten in running. It used to be possible to look at the in-running info (Betfair high and lows) against each horse without having to subscribe. You could check to see if that's still possible.

[ShaunWhite]

There's things that work but very little that doesn't need some constant refinement. But from what you say I think it's just down to sample size. With margins being as small as they are then results pan out over months rather than weeks, and over a week a losing strategy can be up and a winning one can be down. As for strategy then it's pretty much the same as all markets, looking for or asking for mispricings; they'll either return to a truer price for a 'price move' trade or leave them as value bets. I can't go into too much detail but one approach in winter might be to ask for say 200/1 as the horses approach/clear a jump, you'll obviously end up backing a few fallers but plenty put their nose in the dirt, the layers dive in, you get your 200/1 and it recovers....early in the race is obv best. Then there's the TPD data, that's got alsorts of interesting angles about relative speeds, cadence etc.

I do think it's best though to use automation for what it's best at, reacting quickly or watching every animal in every field all the time. I'm not a big advocate of things like dobbing because it'll probably be worse at it than you would be doing it yourself, and the limited scale. Having as few selection criteria as possible is important too (they're just points of weakness waiting to fail), take the idea above about exploiting the people that panic at a stumble, there's no selection involved and it could in theory be acting on several at the same time or working 247 for no daily study. The only things you need to worry about are when and how much margin to ask for, right job for the right tool.

It's tough though, but paying for courses will probably be frustrating. These guys aren't exactly intellectual heavyweights and what they say is just common sense really, all trading is just the application of common sense, that's why it's hard to teach because you either have that or not.

[ShaunWhite]

But tbh honest George if you ask 10 people you'll probably get 10 answers. And lots of things do work. It's just a matter of zooming in on a niche and being the best at it, or ideally it's a niche not many others consider. I've met a lot of traders and the big stand out is that everyone has a different way of doing this that suits their interests or abilities or they've simply spotted a small situations that others haven't. Take dobbing, lots do it, dozens do it on a very likely contender, so you get very late smallish moves when they all lump on when it lines up prominantly. That's a small area of interest on it's own.

Spend a week not trading and just watch markets or the racing, that's always time well spent because you'll think of half a dozen things to explore.

[MattP]

I'm not a fan of dobbing as examples I've seen tend to be based on old data (previous races) and look at the horse in isolation rather than the whole race makeup. For your horse to shorten something else has the lengthen, have you identified that horse?

I'm also not convinced if you are entering at SP if that's really the best risk/reward ratio. If the horse wins you only make 50% of stake, if it doesn't dob you lose 100% stake. I wonder how it would look if you laid at the dob price and exited at SP?

I'm in the race reading aspect and it's taken a lot of work but not necessarily at race reading. Discipline and Safety are the two things I have to reiterate every day. I don't try and trade every race, I rarely trade more than 2 races in a day (2 entries, likely watch more) and some days I watch and don't enter a trade (that is a liberating experience!). You watch 2 hours of racing, BetAngel open, ready to click but don't enter because the right opportunity didn't present itself.

For me the secret is knowing when not to trade, protect your bank and the obvious ones will appear. I don't try and lay a faller, that's not in my trading plan. I don't lay the leader. I don't lay high prices, I assume those backing have better reasoning than me, I can't look at a horse and say 16.0 is wrong it should be 20.0 right now. I don't get involved in the last 3 furlongs, I think that's its own niche with or without TPD.

[Andriy]

Though not related to specific strategies and automation, but how to read a race, this weeks Simon Nott interview is with Matthew Mantle, an in-running punter. If you find it interesting / of use for ideas, it's probably worthwhile digging out the previous interview from a couple of years back.

https://www.starsportsbet.co.uk/betting ... ng-punter/

[megarain]

I used to frequent track in-running hospitality rooms, which were set-up for 6- to as many as 14 traders.

The best of the best would know every jockey style, horse characteristics running style etc, and they were v v hard to beat.

Sure, a lot were there to pound the 1.01 button 50 yards out, but the ones who got the money had more skills.

Acquiring these skills takes time, and I generally find in-running liquidity to be dropping - but, it's still a living (If, and its big IF, you are good enough).

[ANGELS15]

I used to frequent track in-running hospitality rooms, which were set-up for 6- to as many as 14 traders.

The best of the best would know every jockey style, horse characteristics running style etc, and they were v v hard to beat.

Sure, a lot were there to pound the 1.01 button 50 yards out, but the ones who got the money had more skills.

Acquiring these skills takes time, and I generally find in-running liquidity to be dropping - but, it's still a living (If, and its big IF, you are good enough).

I totally agree re the declining liquidity. Another thing I've noticed in the last 6 months is that there's more of a disparity between the pictures and the in-running show. Previously a winning horse would be long odds on ahead of the pictures. Nowadays they sometimes show as 1.4, 1.5 even when in the pictures they appear to have won before suddenly going to 1.01 in the last stride.

[Logijunior]

This is a really interesting thread and rather than entering a reply to a particular point I wanted to give a thought from a trader approx 3 years in who started as pre race and now is solely IP. (please be gentle as I this is only my second post )

I found IP through a 50% free trial of a well known Horseracing results/database system. I started to DOB very simply using the data and my experience in punting and after over 4,000 markets managed to achieve an average 64% success rate focussing only on 1 horse per race via manual trading.

BUT the key was I could not improve my strike rate no matter what I tried so rather than be the fly bashing into the glass I started to look at how I could make my trading more Asymmetrical - i.e. move away from classic DOB to winning more when I win and losing less when I lose. This has been a game changer - losses now equate to between 80-90% on average and win to 125-130% on average. So my advice on IP - find a basic way to make it work with a decent strike rate and win/loss ratio and then work hard on improving the success of the win side and decreasing the size of the loss side. I know that it is not rocket science, but from someone who still considers themself a novice it seems to be working...for now...as this year does seem to be tougher with declining IP liquidity and declining field sizes. But that could also just be variation (being optimistic?)...

[jamesedwards]

So my advice on IP - find a basic way to make it work with a decent strike rate and win/loss ratio and then work hard on improving the success of the win side and decreasing the size of the loss side.

↑↑↑ This ↑↑↑

[eightbo]

I made a bit of a breakthrough with IP when I realised you don't need to trade you can just value bet. When you force exits you're often having to give away a bit of value.
Instead, get laser-focused on perfecting entries and work within a max liability range per market. Size down as required.

Overall there are many, many angles. Some from the livevideo sure, but several others more fundamental in nature. Directionless experimenting often seems like a waste of time but isn't, there'll be many cases where you find something out about how the markets work, and then can factor that in to your decisions, or even turn it into an outright edge. Try to categorise it a little bit and stay on a theme before switching it up e.g. you choose to focus on the activity in the final 2 furlongs while not having something specific in mind. Journal the process and if you're really stuck then change theme.

Lastly aim to reach conclusions why an order you're placing is value. Couldn't it be that you are the one giving away value? Why not? Challenge your own assumptions through this process. Speaking to others can help as well if possible as we can have a few blind spots when our reasoning comes from the same angle as our judgments.

[Bubace]

Though not related to specific strategies and automation, but how to read a race, this weeks Simon Nott interview is with Matthew Mantle, an in-running punter. If you find it interesting / of use for ideas, it's probably worthwhile digging out the previous interview from a couple of years back.

https://www.starsportsbet.co.uk/betting ... ng-punter/

Found this series of interviews interesting.

though wasn't sure about laying a huge wedge on Frankel when 15 lengths clear in the Queen Anne, Seemed a gutsy move