Hi all I thought I'd share a recent experience with you and was curious as to whether others had experienced similar. When I first looked into Bet Angel six months ago I saw various videos on youtube which gave an insight into trading and building automation. I then realised It was possible for an ordinary punter like myself to discover a new dimension to using the exchanges. I then learned about dobbing and saw how it was possible to create automation to do this.
I had heard in the distant past of people offsetting their bets on the exchange but hadn't fully grasped the concept of how they did it so thought no more about it until I discovered Bet Angel.
I realised that trading was really the way to go having in the past devised many betting strategies which did not yield long term profits.
In March I started dobbing as I thought it could be something I could be putting my experience to use whilst learning to trade as many new people have done by watching the videos and reading what the experienced traders were advising.
I was finding anything from 3 to 8 horses a day to dob and I very quickly established a strike rate of 60+ %. I was using £6 stakes for the 1st 6 weeks increased it to £8 stakes around the end of April and then £12 in May. The strike rate of 60+ % was still consistent . Typically I might get 2 out 5 one day but the next day it could be 7 out of 9 or 4 out of 5. By July I felt confident enough to increase my stakes to £24 and I did this throughout August as well still maintaining a strike rate of 62%. I figured with these stakes I could make around £600 - £700 a month just on dobbing alone. By the end of August I had dobbed around 750 horses
Then literally from the 1st of September boom! my strike rate throughout the whole of this month has been about 35% I couldntt understand what happened and how having drawn up what I felt was a useful set of rules to pick the selections they performed so poorly. I may well ask a todler to pick my selections.
I really stupidly thought I was on to a good system at last. My experience in the past with systems is that even after researching them and testing them the moment you go live with them in the real world either the number of selections that meet the criteria seem to dry up or the few that you actually find run like crap.
I realise now that some systems can be an illusion however dobbing is not new it must have been around as long as exchange markets have been around and isn't likely to dissappear anytime soon.
I wonder what other traders think and whether they experienced something similar and if so how they managed to bounce back from it.
Dobbing strike rate mystery
You've ran into the seasonality of racing (summer evening racing finished 31st aug) Ok so its not that simple that you suddenly started struggling from the following day but wind the clock back to April it was the start of the new flat season as the months progressed more become known about the horses which seems to be reflected in your results, now the flat season has ended we are about to transist into the jumps with a whole crop of new horses which little is known about, this uncertainty will be reflected in the market but slowly as we get into the season things will start to settle down again up until Cheltenham next march when the jumps tail off and the whole process begins again with the start of the new flat season in april.
Basically you may need to make some adjustments to a strategy but before doing anything to drastic with something thats worked over the last few months just take into account were we actually are in the season and factor that in
Basically you may need to make some adjustments to a strategy but before doing anything to drastic with something thats worked over the last few months just take into account were we actually are in the season and factor that in
Thanks for your input Dallas it's much appreciated. I was wondering about the seasonality. I tend to think of September as still being 'summery'. This particular september the autumn has come quite suddenly and sharply with differing ground conditions to what we had in the summer.
I think the best course of action is to ease off for a few weeks and build my bank up and when I start back and start in the same way I did in March this year with lower stakes and if all goes well keep things up until March next year and re-evaluate.
Also I think the jump selections are going to pose their own challenges as potentially there is much more that can go wrong in a jumps race so it will be interesting to see what strike rate I can acheive. Having said that to date I've dobbed around 900 horses probabaly around 10% of those were jumpers due to there being less jump racing in the summer. However I beleive I acheived more than 50% with those jumpers so there is a little hope there.
I think the best course of action is to ease off for a few weeks and build my bank up and when I start back and start in the same way I did in March this year with lower stakes and if all goes well keep things up until March next year and re-evaluate.
Also I think the jump selections are going to pose their own challenges as potentially there is much more that can go wrong in a jumps race so it will be interesting to see what strike rate I can acheive. Having said that to date I've dobbed around 900 horses probabaly around 10% of those were jumpers due to there being less jump racing in the summer. However I beleive I acheived more than 50% with those jumpers so there is a little hope there.