Peters Blog

[LeTiss]

Peter, I've just caught your National interview with Radio Berkshire last year - I was pleasantly surprised. I always thought of Henry Kelly as an absolute cock (especially Going for Gold!), but he actually seemed quite knowledgable on the concepts of trading as opposed to just gambling

What was he like off air?

[Euler]

I met him a few years ago and he took a big interest in it. He knows his stuff about horses so was quite intrigued by the whole trading side of things. It was a decent interview, we don't have prepared Q&A's it was just done off the cuff one morning. They phoned and said would you like to come in tomorrow so I did. My daughter would like to do something in media so it was a good opportunity for her to come along and see things from the other side and how it all works.

[andyfuller]

All I could think of while you were talking was the theme tune from Going For Gold:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY82spVBi8E



Used to love watching that when I was a kid, much better than the modern deal or no deal rubbish

[herbie]

Peter,
Your blog on sweet spots is fantastic
http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2014/07/06/sweet-spots/
The visual made me really hungry to explore further what Im trading.
For those trading tennis, it looks like he has given you a template to trade.
Happy trading.

thank you Peter
very generous

[PeterLe]

Peter
I read with interest your recent blog entry :-

http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2014/08 ... ng-system/
And though this is the best place to ask a couple of questions..(Fully appreciate you can't provide the full blue print )

- Were the initial bets placed pre race or in play?
- Did you close out the zero trade manually or automatically ?
- Did the spreadsheet run all day and only trigger on the ten races in the P&L? (looking at the time stamps I assume not)

I hooked up an old spreadsheet that Id worked on ages ago (laying system) and ran it on the last ten races last night, 6 no bets and 4 wins. (Slightly smaller stakes however!)
My missus is going to run it on her account today..Ill see how it gets on..(only small stakes)
I wouldn't feel comfortable laying as high as 6's though (if you take into account PC on the months profits, you do have to get a high strike rate), Im going for under 4's and maybe relax it a little if it fails to trigger..
Regards
Peter

[mbailey1705]

Hi Peter,

This thread is very interesting and the approach implied seems logical.

Just one point, when you mention not feeling comfortable laying at 6's, could you not just base the lay staking on a max liability for each horse and therefore not have to restrict any qualifiers up to a sensible odds ceiling.

The reason this type of approach appeals to me is that I spent 6 years betting horses with bookmakers simply taking value prices with bookies when the exchange win/place prices implied the horse was over priced. I never Layed off, just backed horses that were effectively 'arbs' and this resulted in an average 18% ROI year on year. I've now switched to trading as the bookies simply don't allow punters to win anymore in this Country! This lay approach is similar in as much as it is logical to lay horses that are overbacked at certain times in the same way as I backed horses to win when they were overpriced. The short term trend is not relevant, just the long term results of such a method.

For example, using my previous backing approach I backed around 30 to 40 horses a day with a total stake of circa £4k. ON bad days I lost £3k, but on good days I could profit £7k. The worst period lasted about 6 - 7 weeks resulting in a bank drop of £8k, but at the end of every year I was in profit. The key was to ride out the bad spells as I knew the odds were in my favour.

The great thing is using Bet Angel we can try such an approach on nominal stakes over a few months...

Cheers
Martin

[Euler]

As people have seen the market can diverge from mean unexpectedly from what would be considered normal, so I just thought I would try an see if there is value there.

The one I scratched I just changed my mind on.

All pre-off as that is where value on the racing is most 'pure'

[PeterLe]

I hooked up an old spreadsheet that Id worked on ages ago (laying system) and ran it on the last ten races last night, 6 no bets and 4 wins. (Slightly smaller stakes however!)
My missus is going to run it on her account today..Ill see how it gets on..(only small stakes)
I wouldn't feel comfortable laying as high as 6's though (if you take into account PC on the months profits, you do have to get a high strike rate), Im going for under 4's and maybe relax it a little if it fails to trigger..
Regards
Peter

Hi
Thanks for the reply Peter.
I ran the test I mentioned above earlier today..inspired by the blog, and I though it was worth sharing with anyone interested.
The system ran all day (on every race) triggered 15 times, won 12 lost 3. Initial lay odds set to a maximum of 3.5 Using a set stake of £5 it returned £25.05 (or 5 times stake)
Average lay odds matched at 2.87
Interestingly enough; had I used liability staking as suggested by Martin (liability of £17.50), it would have produced £78.55 before commission. A whopping 15 times stake.
The beauty of laying low is that there is more opportunity to increase stakes over time..
Anyway, just intended to inspire some newbies into giving a go (Remember low stakes, its such a low sample rate, it may be down to luck)
I think ill run it again tomorrow!
regards
Peter

[Zenyatta]

Interesting to see Peter's laying system. Having had no success with pre-race trading, I'm focusing on outright punting and/or in-play trades these days.

I define 4 punting zones, based on price

Zone 1: <3.00
Zone 2: 3.00-6.00
Zone 3: 6.00-9.00
Zone 4: 9.00+

Best value lays are in zone 1; best value backs are in zone 4. I won't lay in zone 4, and I won't back in zone 1, so 3.00 is my minimum price for back bets, and 9.00 is my maximum price for lays.

For lays bets, it's OK to punt outright, but for back bets, its too frustrating, because the selections don't win often enough...I often used to get long losing runs where my back selections were always just getting beaten into 2nd place, which was massively frustrating - whereas if I had been trading back-lay instead I would have won them all and avoided these long losing streaks.

So for back bets, I recommend in-play back-lay trades of 50-100 ticks , you will win much more often with these than outright back bets.

Might be a good idea not to lay outright for very short-priced lays also...push for lay-back trades of 50-100 ticks instead.

Cheers

[LinusP]

So value can only be found between 3-9? Back to lay strategys involve being very selective as long term they don't work, Jollygreen is the master in that field.

[Euler]

If you look at this chart, either the start the middle or the end of this move can't be right.

06-08-2014 - Bishop of Ruscombe_7885674 - a.png

[Zenyatta]

So value can only be found between 3-9? Back to lay strategys involve being very selective as long term they don't work, Jollygreen is the master in that field.

No, to recap what I said, I reckon the best lay value is below 3 and the best back value is above 9. So I will lay below 3 but not back. I will back above 9 but not lay. In the 3-9 range I'm happy to do both lay and back.

[mbailey1705]

Hi Peter,

So just to clarify, your screenshot from yesterdays trial was based upon you placing those lay bets In-running or pre-off? Looking at the BSP of the horses in your screenshot seems to imply that the lays must have occurred in-running.

A nice result by the way, got to be worth running the same trial over a month or so. I always like to judge a method/system on at least 1000 bets/trades to really be sure it has not just gone through a 'lucky spell'

Cheers
Martin

[PeterLe]

Hi Martin,
Yes all mine were in running.
I am going to re run this again today and see how it goes. (at those odds, I could allow the strike rate to fall to fall to 70%). As you say; you need a much larger sample rate than that..so will see how it goes..
(I did play around with a predictive spreadsheet last night and merely adding 3% of the rising P&L each day to the liability shows the power of compounding a successful system!).
Its a also a trade off too , as whilst the test is running, it is preventing the account from using a tried and tested successful system..
Regards
Peter

[NileVentures]

Interesting thread. Thanks for sharing the insight to your systems.
PeterLe - I would certainly be interested to know the ongoing progress of this method for you. I am also going to revive and modify a similar system that I previously started.
One Qu: What criteria do you use to trigger the bets in-running?