Why does scaling up make a winning bot fail?

[weemac]

I think it is a visibility issue. When I raise the stakes it becomes obvious which is my bot, and then someone must set to work figuring it out. I made its entry rules as disguised as possible,.....

I think it's far more basic than that. No-one really cares what your bot, or mine, are doing, unless they're patently idiotic or genius bots.

What even a casual overnight BF website observer sees is that whereas, before yesterday £6 on average was waiting to lay horse X, now on average £7 or £8 is waiting. This, in a marginal sense, scares off bad-value backers, lessens your chance of getting matched, encourages leap-froggers, and lessens your chance of getting matched on the other side when the time comes. It's all marginal, but it adds up very quickly in these jittery, illiquid markets. No amount of disguising will help, imo, until BF introduce a dark pool version of the site, with invisible bets permitted.

[Fugazi]

I think it is a visibility issue. When I raise the stakes it becomes obvious which is my bot, and then someone must set to work figuring it out. I made its entry rules as disguised as possible,.....

I think it's far more basic than that. No-one really cares what your bot, or mine, are doing, unless they're patently idiotic or genius bots.

What even a casual overnight BF website observer sees is that whereas, before yesterday £6 on average was waiting to lay horse X, now on average £7 or £8 is waiting. This, in a marginal sense, scares off bad-value backers, lessens your chance of getting matched, encourages leap-froggers, and lessens your chance of getting matched on the other side when the time comes. It's all marginal, but it adds up very quickly in these jittery, illiquid markets. No amount of disguising will help, imo, until BF introduce a dark pool version of the site, with invisible bets permitted.

Genius answer.


You're right, nobody can be arsed to squeeze 50p out of my bot. And it happens way too soon for that to be the case.

Invisible bets..now thats an interesting concept!

[Crazyskier]

I have wrestled with precisely this phenomenon on both dogs and horses for several years now. I'm consistently winning low amounts that seem to reach a plateau in stake size / frequency above which they flat line or worse, start being unprofitable.

I've tested so many parameters over quite large sample sizes, yet can not for the life of me find a way to get larger stakes through, or smaller ones more frequently.

I've pretty much resigned myself to accepting paying for a decent holiday each year and BF only ever being able to be a hobby rather than full time income stream. The upside is that I can 'set and forget' with a high degree of confidence as my strats are so refined and consistent by now, albeit small stakes.

CS