Automation Questions. Any comments welcome!

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Boothey07
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:57 pm

Hi Guys,

I'll give you a quick bit of context, I'm brand new to trading, only just started. I've been looking into and testing automation for the past week. I felt quite happy with it and went 'live' today. However I've made a loss, the loss being when a portion of the trade doesn't match, often being the lay side. This happend 11 or so times out of 43 races I think, UK and Ireland Win only Horses.

I wanted to know, is there anything I can do to avoid this, should I change the automation, maybe its too ambitious.
Or should I just put it down to a bad day and keep moving forward.

My Automation is as follows:

Back Favourite at Best Market Price(Fixed Stake £10) Offset 10 ticks lower. 10 mins before. (I've tried Betfair pos1 and Order by favouritism 1)
Keep All Unmatched 1 sec after race start
(Profit)GreenAll 1 sec after If Profit<= £1
(StopLoss)GreenAll 1min after If Profit >= -5

I seem to be having trouble when the favourite drifts and has a shocker of a race, often climbing quickly, causing my lay bet to not match, losing me my stake.

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Tom
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firlandsfarm
Posts: 2688
Joined: Sat May 03, 2014 8:20 am

Hi Boothey/Tom, welcome and good luck! :)

Is it the Offset bet that's not matching or the green-ups in-play?

Also ... do you mean your green-up criteria?

"GreenAll 1 sec after If Profit<= £1" means it won't green-up if the return is +£1.01 or more!
"GreenAll 1min after If Profit >= -5" means it will only green-up if the return is greater than -£5.

Should they be ...

GreenAll 1 sec after If Profit > £1
GreenAll 1min after If Profit < -£5

Remember a loss of £6 is numerically less than a loss of £5.

Also when you say "1 sec" and "1 min" do you mean "or more"?
Last edited by firlandsfarm on Sat Oct 24, 2020 11:48 am, edited 2 times in total.
neilb
Posts: 52
Joined: Thu Oct 15, 2009 8:17 pm

If you want your back bet to only be placed once your lay has been filled you need to enable fill or kill.
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ANGELS15
Posts: 844
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:57 am

Boothey07 wrote:
Fri Oct 23, 2020 9:32 pm
Hi Guys,

I'll give you a quick bit of context, I'm brand new to trading, only just started. I've been looking into and testing automation for the past week. I felt quite happy with it and went 'live' today. However I've made a loss, the loss being when a portion of the trade doesn't match, often being the lay side. This happend 11 or so times out of 43 races I think, UK and Ireland Win only Horses.

I wanted to know, is there anything I can do to avoid this, should I change the automation, maybe its too ambitious.
Or should I just put it down to a bad day and keep moving forward.

My Automation is as follows:

Back Favourite at Best Market Price(Fixed Stake £10) Offset 10 ticks lower. 10 mins before. (I've tried Betfair pos1 and Order by favouritism 1)
Keep All Unmatched 1 sec after race start
(Profit)GreenAll 1 sec after If Profit<= £1
(StopLoss)GreenAll 1min after If Profit >= -5

I seem to be having trouble when the favourite drifts and has a shocker of a race, often climbing quickly, causing my lay bet to not match, losing me my stake.

Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Tom
If I'm understanding correctly your'e backing the favourite 10 minutes before the race with an offset bet (10 ticks lower) to be kept in-play 1 sec after race start?

A few things spring to mind:

1) You may be backing your selection too early? It's quite likely that it may drift in the 10 minutes before the off moving further away from your lay bet. Markets can develop quite markedly in the 10 minutes leading to the off.

2) Just a thought perhaps you'd be better off placing your bets within 2 minutes of the off?

3) A 10 tick offset may not be enough to be profitable. As it stands you're getting it right 75% of the time but you may need to get it right 90%+ which is going to be very difficult.

4) Do you research your selections before the race to ascertain how likely they are to shorten in-running? It's possible with some horses they may only shorten if they're going to win or almost win. It seems likely that's what's happening here.

5) Why have a 1 second delay before your bet goes in play? You'd be surprised what can happen in a second. The 2nd favourite may be slow out of the gates causing the favourite to shorten by several ticks thereby giving you your profit right at the off. Perhaps better to just have a simple keep all bets rule?

These are only observations to consider not meant t be criticisms but I hope they're useful.

Good luck with your trading.
Boothey07
Posts: 9
Joined: Mon Oct 19, 2020 5:57 pm

Hi Everyone,

Thank you all so much for your replies. It's encouraging to see people want to help and are providing such good info.
I've spent the day trying to get to grips with the ladder and trading manually. Only using baby stakes £10 lay and £2.50 Backs, seem to be getting it (or maybe I've been lucky). Pulling a massive 0.40p on average :mrgreen:

Got to start somewhere eh, Going go keep watching and reading and hopefully, it all starts to click into place and the profits come.

I've created a new automation, swapping to laying first instead of backing, changed my green-up conditions and entering the market 2 minutes before.
It seems to work much better in practice (touch wood it stays that way)

I'm wanting to get something running almost on its own, so I can bump up my current earnings while I work from home and complete Uni.

Again, thank you guys for your input and good luck with your trading.

All the best,

Tom(Boothey07) :D
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