Back Testing

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Charon
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 1:09 pm

How many 'back testing' you do before going 'live' with a strategy. I have some sort of strategy and analysed around 100 matches trough Fracsoft /Betfair historical data/Practice mode, but is it enough? Or do you go 'live' with lower stakes/liability? Any tips?
freddy
Posts: 1132
Joined: Sun Aug 01, 2010 8:22 pm

imo It doesn't really matter if you have back tested it over a 1,0000000 markets,
it still gives no guarantees it will work going forward.

Edges come and go all the time it's very much a moving target im afraid.

the best way is just to go for it with a small bank and if it works it will quickly grow and if not you've not lost much and can go on to try the next idea ;) .
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Bet Angel
Posts: 4031
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 3:47 pm

When the variability of your returns don't vary much in % terms then you probably have a bit enough sample. But back testing doesn't really tell you much because there is a tendency to see patterns in historical data that don't really exist.

If you do go forward with a strategy then set up a control account to measure relative performance.
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Shamrock
Posts: 205
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2010 11:41 am

Bet Angel wrote:If you do go forward with a strategy then set up a control account to measure relative performance.
By a control account do you mean a second account?
Charon
Posts: 70
Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 1:09 pm

Shamrock wrote:
Bet Angel wrote:If you do go forward with a strategy then set up a control account to measure relative performance.
By a control account do you mean a second account?
I don't understand it either.
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Shamrock
Posts: 205
Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2010 11:41 am

Nice Blog, thank you, consider me enlightened.
When you said set up a control account, I thought you ment use a seperate account for that strategy so as you could seperate it from your main account and this would make it easy to review. I was not sure if Betfair would allow you to do this, it would be nice if they would.
Wyndon
Posts: 237
Joined: Sun Nov 13, 2011 10:14 am

One way to use back testing is to split your data. Formulate a strategy based on one portion and test it on the remainder.
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