Today's Horse Racing

[napshnap]

16:20 Ffos Las, "Sarah Jessica"

Do they troll that poor (I mean acting) actress from "Sex and the City"?

[eightbo]

you've just let us all know you watch sex and the city mate

[Derek27]

When I used to bet on horse racing I always kept a separate field for the country the horse was bred, but my database still went wrong when a horse from overseas had more than 18 characters in its name!

Racing data always seems to throw up new challenges Derek. 18 characters? Must have been from the days when disk space at a premium.
I generally find out when something fails in my processing but I do wonder how much gets through without causing a failure.
The last failure I had was when a runner became a non-runner for half an hour and then it became a runner again 20 minutes before the off but I assume that was caused by a Betfair mistake.

As far as I know, the 18 character limit is still in effect in most jurisdictions, not to save disk space but to stop owners giving horses ridiculously long names, as they did in the 70s. I wish they increased it to 22 and ban names of several words contracted into one.

[napshnap]

you've just let us all know you watch sex and the city mate

I have an alibi - I was a teenager with "needs".

[spreadbetting]

Thanks

hi sb, what does a typical trading day look like for you if you don't mind sharing?

Nothing too exciting unfortunately, get up and check my bots haven't done anything silly overnight. Set up my PC for the day's botting/trading maybe 20 minutes before the first race then plod thru the day's races one at a time taking breaks for food, Doctors, Pointless etc I don't do any pre trading research so generally only go to a market 5 minutes before the start, rarely watch the race these days and only have the racing channels to ensure I can jump ship before the off. Might do some coding if I have an idea to test out as I'm more looking to drop manual trading and leave everything to bots these days.

[eightbo]

Thank sb. I suppose the day would look a little different for those still developing their automation.

The conditions varied a lot today so did that mean you were stepping in and manually managing the occasional exit, or switching/turning off strategies based on your manual assessment?

[eightbo]

you've just let us all know you watch sex and the city mate

I have an alibi - I was a teenager with "needs".

All good man I've watched the movie where they go to Dubai. Even managed to learn something useful from it, won't tell you what tho

[spreadbetting]

Thank sb. I suppose the day would look a little different for those still developing their automation.

The conditions varied a lot today so did that mean you were stepping in and manually managing the occasional exit, or switching/turning off strategies based on your manual assessment?

I just let the bots get on with their own thing, I learnt a long time ago that tinkering manually with their entries and exits is a pointless exercise as you'll never know what works if you keep changing things.

Not sure what you mean by conditions varied a lot, seemed a pretty normal day's trading tbh but like I said earlier I'm not really that active these days a few trades a race and I'll switch off and do something else especially on Sundays.

[jamesg46]

you've just let us all know you watch sex and the city mate

I have an alibi - I was a teenager with "needs".

Oh boy... where the forum rules at

[eightbo]

if you let them do their own thing what did ya mean when you say you "plod thru the day's races one at a time taking breaks for food" - presumably you're monitoring them otherwise are you not just giving up those few hours in the afternoon?

And by varying conditions I meant I felt today was particularly spikey at times and I had to adjust to make the most out of it.
I'm looking forward to working on automation a bit more on the side each day as don't have anything too useful just yet, any pointers appreciated

[spreadbetting]

I do some manual trading so plod thru races but the bots on UK races are mainly in play and the other stuff they do self balances quickly so no need for me to interfere if they kick in. I have two accounts but manual and automatic don't really overlap as most bottled UK racing stuff is in play so generally use one account. I also bot dogs and aus racing but don't play those manually so they can run freely.

It can get tempting to balance out in play botted markets especially in photos etc but my racing knowledge is rubbish so I just leave them these days.

[eightbo]

Got it. Thank you.

[Wolf1877]

As far as I know, the 18 character limit is still in effect in most jurisdictions, not to save disk space but to stop owners giving horses ridiculously long names, as they did in the 70s. I wish they increased it to 22 and ban names of several words contracted into one.

Derek, I wasnt aware of the 18 char limit but my database seems to back this up - well almost.
As in everyday life the French seem to stretch the rules a bit - maybe they dont count spaces!
Arab racing rules also seem different. Not sure what would happen if these horses switched codes.
I allow 30 anyway as with varchar columns/fields there is not much cost to allowing for longer names.

"Rigadin de Beauchene" FR is 20 characters including 2 spaces.
https://www.racingpost.com/profile/hors ... chene/form

"Falco De Candale AA" FR is 19 characters including 3 spaces
https://www.racingpost.com/profile/hors ... le-aa/form

"Zayin Angkor Centurion" (GB) - runs ARAB races - 22 characters including 2 spaces
https://www.racingpost.com/profile/hors ... on-gb/form

[Derek27]

"Rigadin de Beauchene" FR is 20 characters including 2 spaces.
https://www.racingpost.com/profile/hors ... chene/form

That's the one that caused my code to halt!

French bred, but raced over here. Decent staying chaser, winning the Classic Chase at Warwick and Grand National Trial at Haydock.

I used to download the Sporting Life ABC of runners, convert it into excel format, import it into an Access database to report on all my noted horses running that day. But then Timeform, along with other sites, made all my hard work redundant with their online equivalents.

[Euler]

Some curious backing in the market today.