GREYHOUNDS

[Euler]

There is very little you could learn in seven days or so. So run a strategy for a while and study the results deeply to see where it is and isn't working.

[Jameseverard]

Cant waste any more money on something that could take months to get a profitable system for. Just thought people may have some ideas but don't worry

[ShaunWhite]

Hi all after wasting loads of money on this strategy, amended many times as well still losing. Has anyone actually been able to make money either automation or manually on greyhounds. I can't waste any more on something that appears to be flogging a dead horse

You should either use practice mode or use this time to just collect data and test your strategy in excel on that data. Going straight onto using real money is an expensive way to try ideas. And yes, people can/do make good steady money on the dogs but that usually comes after many months rather than weeks.

[ShaunWhite]

Cant waste any more money on something that could take months to get a profitable system for. Just thought people may have some ideas but don't worry

It's only wasted if you don't think it's going to pay off. You probably need to remember there's 100s if not 1000s of people trading these very small markets so competition for the available profit is fierce. Unlike playing football where you can set up a game vs people of your own ability, every sports market is full of top flight players and you can't expect any easy matches. Otherwise trading is like any other serious profession, it takes time to develop your abilities and you'll need to work harder and think smarter than your direct competition to get anywhere, you certainly can't just turn up and start making money in just a few months.

[Jameseverard]

Well people must have money to burn then if it takes months to find a system I haven't got the time or money to waste in finding out, I have spent hours upon hours in the last week trying to calculate and work out formulas and lost a lot an awful lot of money in doing so.
Hopefully some sort of half decent football will be returning in the next month to trade on , if not I will have to give up my betangel subscription as I am just throwing money down the drain

[Archery1969]

Well people must have money to burn then if it takes months to find a system I haven't got the time or money to waste in finding out, I have spent hours upon hours in the last week trying to calculate and work out formulas and lost a lot an awful lot of money in doing so.
Hopefully some sort of half decent football will be returning in the next month to trade on , if not I will have to give up my betangel subscription as I am just throwing money down the drain

Hi,

I started a thread awhile ago before the UK markets went down. Its not perfect but we not chucking money down the drain. Maybe the idea could be adapted for other greyhound markets ?

Cheers,

[ShaunWhite]

Well people must have money to burn then if it takes months to find a system I haven't got the time or money to waste in finding out, I have spent hours upon hours in the last week trying to calculate and work out formulas and lost a lot an awful lot of money in doing so.
Hopefully some sort of half decent football will be returning in the next month to trade on , if not I will have to give up my betangel subscription as I am just throwing money down the drain

Practice mode. It's not 100% accurate but near enough and it's free. Trading has and always will take a big investment in time and a decent amount of money. Even then only about 5% of people make anything. If you've been given the impression it's not like that then you've been misled. Either quit now if you don't want to make that commitment or change your approach so you can at least last long enough to give it a good go. It's unfortunate that you've had some early big losses but rather than it being burnt it was just the price of your first lesson in money management.

[Kai]

Cant waste any more money on something that could take months to get a profitable system for.

Hi James

I haven't even gotten to automation yet and I've been around for a few years trading for a living, in large part because I expect automation to be competitive and time consuming, no matter what ideas I think I have.

You have to make sure that your expectations are in line with reality, otherwise you can easily lose money be it manually or auto.

As you can see even auto gurus like Euler need some time and that's a generous hint for you there, that they're starting on that market from "scratch" and not inserting any bias into it, possibly allowing the market itself to show them where the opportunities are.

[spreadbetting]

Well people must have money to burn then if it takes months to find a system I haven't got the time or money to waste in finding out, I have spent hours upon hours in the last week trying to calculate and work out formulas and lost a lot an awful lot of money in doing so.
Hopefully some sort of half decent football will be returning in the next month to trade on , if not I will have to give up my betangel subscription as I am just throwing money down the drain

Just learn to use your time wisely, plenty of people post up working ideas that may only need a little lateral thinking. Dallas regularly helps people with formulas and bat files so dunno why you'd feel the need to spend hours upon hours when a simple request might have sorted it for you. Far too many traders like to make things hard for themselves then blame others when it goes tits up.

[PeterLe]

James
I haven't read the whole thread, but if you are laying one tick below best reverse, it would be worthwhile having a condition to check the back book percentage too
regards
Peter

[Trader Pat]

Well people must have money to burn then if it takes months to find a system I haven't got the time or money to waste in finding out, I have spent hours upon hours in the last week trying to calculate and work out formulas and lost a lot an awful lot of money in doing so.
Hopefully some sort of half decent football will be returning in the next month to trade on , if not I will have to give up my betangel subscription as I am just throwing money down the drain

I've dabbled with automation on and off for quite a while but never properly cracked it, I'm in an off period with it now until I can give some proper time to it.

Automation is obviously much tougher than manual trading and I'm frankly in awe at all the guys on here who are profitable with their automation. You say you have wasted hours upon hours in the last week but these guys spend months and months looking for angles and refining their strategies. From reading their posts its knowledge that is hard earned and takes months and years to acquire. So throwing in the towel after a week is very surprising to me, I'd love to know what exactly you were expecting when you started looking into automation?

To all you traders who make regular profits with automation I salute you (even the annoying ones)

[Jameseverard]

Sorry all for the post earlier I was really upset as I had lost a lot of money especially this morning. I will take the advice and not place any more money on the dogs and purely record the data and see if I can get any angles to work. Sorry again for the rant earlier

[Diacritical Quark]

Just to give you some hope, I started to trade Betfair a good few years ago, must have lost around £3k in total over about 5 years or so just by trying different strategies, in play, pre race, football, automation. I saw it as money spent learning a skill, the same as going to university almost.

I then discovered matched betting and moved away from trying to crack trading altogether. Once matched betting came to an end I ended up back here again maybe 2 or 3 months ago feeling like I was starting from scratch again really. I couldn't get anything to work on a consistent basis and would have lots of little wins followed by a big loss.

I have spent a long time looking at various different angles/edges and it's only when I took a step back and decided I was over complicating things that something really clicked.

You need to find a way of trading that suits your personality and style, but you have to keep going, the only way you will make it is by testing, testing, testing and testing. You can't just try something and within a few days have cracked it.

I'm currently working on an edge that I have been developing for weeks now, I keep honing, refining it, reading, watching studying the markets. I started on a practice account risking nothing, £0. I'm now testing with real money risking just £2 stakes and this is maybe 2 months down the line. This is a strategy that is pretty much fully automated by the way, I quickly realised that I can't manually trade as I don't have the discipline and lose my head far too quickly and chase losses. I realise this, recognise this but can't do anything about it, so I automate.

Keep going, the rewards once you get there are amazing.


image uploading website

[Kai]

Sorry again for the rant earlier

No worries.

It may be very difficult but as you can see you can at least get loads of advice from the auto gurus and plenty of encouragement from all camps.

Maybe work out how to progress without risking/losing (too much) money. Best of luck.

[PeterLe]

James
fire betangel up in practice mode and hook up excel, disconnect excel say 10 secs from the start, so the values in the excel cells remain after the race has started
Then calculate some values, ie

What is the lay book percentage
What is the back book percentage
Etc
remember pre off the book percentages wont stray too far (unlike in play), there only a small amount of slack in the book

Then start to change some of the odds to see what happens to the percentages. Start to think about what would happen if a spike came in (on the back or the lay side), would you want to be in the market at this point, if so, where would you want to be? Etc

(for in play) Picture in your minds eye, what would happen to the percentages if two or more were to trade under 2's. Then start to think about what would happen to the percentages in play if it wasn't a competitive race (looks like 3 of the 5 races at tampa so far tonight fall into the category, my automation didnt place a bet of those three. but that's fine, as race 1 was good)
(The very first race tonight at Tampa had a 1.08 Loser )

Have a think about when the market is at its most/least efficient (and quite often you will lie in bed just before you fall asleep doing this! unfortunately ) I remember when I first started, I would record the odds and the race and watched what happened to the odds at points during the race. Some things stood out a mile and they still do 13 years later.

Sorry to waffle on, but before you start putting real money in the markets, you should have a good grasp of what is happening, because there are some super clever guys/girls out there that will scoop up any easy money on the table
Regards
Peter