Where's my profit gone?

[Kithanga]

Struggling to turn a profit over the last 12 months or so despite beating SP hands down. The prices I'm taking are on average 35% above SP yet my ROI is around 2%. How can this be after nearly 500 bets at an average of about 7-1? Surely I should be well up? People talk a lot these days about how accurate the market is and how horses that shorten in the on course market do better than they used to. But that just isn't playing out for me at all. Last few bets for me 13-2 into 4-1 lost 7-2 into 3-1 lost 14-1 into 8-1 lost 8-1 into 6-1 lost 7-1 into 3-1 lost 8-1 into 4-1 lost 7-1 into 9-2 lost 5-1 into 7-2 lost 4-1 into 9-4 lost 11-4 into 6-5 won 13-2 into 5-1 lost 11-4 into 5-2 lost Not a single drifter yet a terrible set of results, many being unplaced. I just can't fathom it as I'm not talking about half a dozen bets, this is over 500 or so. Help!

[TheBoyRooney]

Re: Where's my profit gone? What was your previous 500 results compared? if It was to continue in this manner you need to think about laying at sp.

[erhaab1965]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Simple....you need to access your bet selection. You are picking losers not winners. I have the same problem too. I'd much rather back a 4/5 winner rather than backing a loser which has gone from 8/1 to 9/2. Beating SP is no good if they consistently lose.

[jayalexander]

Re: Where's my profit gone? If you're regularly finding runners whose prices contract that much before the off then you should consider laying them off for profit before the race even begins. Then perhaps use some of the profit to back at the new price or just leave some of the original stake for the win.

[Primevil]

Re: Where's my profit gone? If you were only TRADING, you would be ££££'s in front, Seriously if we are talking this amount, become a trader.....Forget winning races Just the dozen you give, for a £100 bet on each horse, at the price you take, Even trading out at the dreaded betfair SP, without knowing exactley what that was, but allowing 10% extra, I make it a £400 - £450 profit on these dozen ....win lose or draw...on your trade. 40% ball park is huge in the trade world. My advice.... if this is not a selective capture, and you are hitting this in over 80% of your bets, even allowing for slight loss on the 20% trades (setting out pre race variables), Turn to Trading, give it a go.... but then the buzz of backing a winner, when you find one goes...Cant have it all but it is all about not losing cash if possible.

[Kithanga]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Thanks guys. I am picking the ones I think have a good chance Erhaab. I have thought about trading Primevil, just not sure whether the ones you don't manage to lay off wipe out your small profit from the ones you do lay off. Stats are 624 bets 84 took lower than SP, 291 had a less than 10% advantage on SP (which I'm assuming wipes out any profit once commission and bigger exchange SP taken into account)

[Elchubb]

Simple......Sample size! If we continue to beat BSP (assuming that's the closest thing we have to assess the true chances of an outcome!) then over time we'll profit but that's not gonna come as one smooth line on a graph, it'll have it's peaks and troff's, it's just variance! Sounds like your just going through a downswing but if roi is still2% I suppose it's not even really a downswing, just keep doing what your doing and if you continue to beat BSP then your luck will change and results should eventually revert to the mean(hopefully with a nice little upswing of results!)

[Aidymac]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Beating SP means nothing though. You still have to find winners. I you back 1,000 horses at 100/1, and they all have an SP of 66/1, would you expect any to win?

[Kithanga]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Hopefully Elchubb although it's soul destroying at the moment. Today: Halstatt 4.15 into 3.50 3rd Nini Ok 15.0 into 8.0 unplaced Sir Maximilian 5.50 into 3.50 unplaced Star Of Mayfair 6.5 into ???? It just feels like, if it's backed and I'm on it no chance then the next race some other well backed animal scoots in. I know Aidymac and I just can't pick my nose at the moment. Don't know why

[Elchubb]

Re: Where's my profit gone?

Beating SP means nothing though. You still have to find winners. I you back 1,000 horses at 100/1, and they all have an SP of 66/1, would you expect any to win?

If SP was a true reflection of the horses chances then i'd expect 15 of them to win!

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone?

If SP was a true reflection of the horses chances then i'd expect 15 of them to win!

But sp is not a true reflection of a horses chance of winning, it is a reflection of balancing the book As I cant get them to format properly with cut and paste, heres a screenshot of the printout of 85,000 + runners sp's from a database I have. So if all you value punters are wondering why your losing, Or you think a horse is running at better odds than you think it should be,just look at the numbers they dont lie. No smoke and mirrors value this and that there... pure fact as Rafa would say. Sits back and waits for the ... "Ah its only a small sample , but in the long run" blah blah blah :eyes

[The Saint]

WAY too hungover to comment properly at the moment.... Anyone can beat SP on a regular basis - because on course bookmakers and traditional bookmakers don't run a book to 100%. The figures above would be a truer analysis if they were isolated into different prices and you used Betfair SP as this is done to 100%. The SP return is squeezed on course to as much as 140% so of course everything will show a loss. Betfair SP is almost a perfect expression of a horses true chance in the long term according to my research - it's always around a 100% book.

[The Saint]

Simple......Sample size! If we continue to beat BSP (assuming that's the closest thing we have to assess the true chances of an outcome!) then over time we'll profit but that's not gonna come as one smooth line on a graph, it'll have it's peaks and troff's, it's just variance! Sounds like your just going through a downswing but if roi is still2% I suppose it's not even really a downswing, just keep doing what your doing and if you continue to beat BSP then your luck will change and results should eventually revert to the mean(hopefully with a nice little upswing of results!)

So assuming Kithanga is beating Betfair SP by the percentages quoted I'd agree with the above post 100% :)

[Kithanga]

Re: Where's my profit gone? I agree with your stats machine which is why I was expecting a bigger profit from SP+35%. Taking your price band of 6-4 to 15-8 and assuming I'm getting 6-4 +35% (i.e. the worst possible in that banding) then the return from 573 winners would be 1733.32 minus the 1657 laid out gives a profit of 76.32 or 4.6%. The reality is that there would have been a higher strike rate of just pure 6-4 chances so the profit would be a tad higher at about 5% say. I kind of agree with an earlier post that it may be just pure variance. However, if it is then why don't the likes of Hugh Taylor or Pricewise suffer the same 'variance' when there average price is much higher?

[The Saint]

WAY too hungover to comment properly at the moment.... Anyone can beat SP on a regular basis - because on course bookmakers and traditional bookmakers don't run a book to 100%. The figures above would be a truer analysis if they were isolated into different prices and you used Betfair SP as this is done to 100%. The SP return is squeezed on course to as much as 140% so of course everything will show a loss. Betfair SP is almost a perfect expression of a horses true chance in the long term according to my research - it's always around a 100% book.

And if this weren't true, then Bookmakers wouldn't ban accounts left right and centre that beat SP or Betfair SP on a regular basis. If you can't bet with a Bookmaker and beat Betfair SO then the chance of making a profit is reduced dramatically. THIS is exactly why account closure happens. If you had a winning account with a bookmaker that never beat SP it would remain open because the Bookmaker would just back your bets back at higher odds. They trade with people who don't beat SP and shut off any that do. That's proof that beating BETFAIR SP is essential in the long term IMHO.

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone? I cant be arsed arguing or downloading BF database but someone on here must have the BF database and I would be gobsmacked to say the least if the horses won to anywhere near the "near perfect" as you say chance of winning. Plus if as you say BF is "near perfect" then surely that throws value punting out the window as you would break even in this imaginary "long run" . that is bandied about. The logic just doesn't add up as I said smoke and mirrors.

[The Saint]

Re: Where's my profit gone?

I cant be arsed arguing or downloading BF database but someone on here must have the BF database and I would be gobsmacked to say the least if the horses won to anywhere near the "near perfect" as you say chance of winning. Plus if as you say BF is "near perfect" then surely that throws value punting out the window as you would break even in this imaginary "long run" . that is bandied about. The logic just doesn't add up as I said smoke and mirrors.

I'm on it m8 - prepare to be gobsmaked ;) Perfect proof of why I am an intermanible bore on account closures and why they are such a ball ache!!

[The Saint]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Not perfect but a very fair reflection of actual chance/expectancy. 4th and 5th colums show the Actual Win % and the Expected Win %. [ATTACH]4957[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]4958[/ATTACH] [ATTACH]4959[/ATTACH]

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone?

I agree with your stats machine which is why I was expecting a bigger profit from SP+35%. Taking your price band of 6-4 to 15-8 and assuming I'm getting 6-4 +35% (i.e. the worst possible in that banding) then the return from 573 winners would be 1733.32 minus the 1657 laid out gives a profit of 76.32 or 4.6%. The reality is that there would have been a higher strike rate of just pure 6-4 chances so the profit would be a tad higher at about 5% say. I kind of agree with an earlier post that it may be just pure variance. However' date=' if it is then why don't the likes of Hugh Taylor or Pricewise suffer the same 'variance' when there average price is much higher?[/quote'] I would take Hugh Taylors stats with a rather large pinch of salt if I were you, In another post on PL I did snapshot analysis of his results and it seems he tends to forget to remove his stake from the profits (tut tut). When you look at %age stat returns it is taken that you have backed every bet at those odds to give a true reflection,not just the ones you fancy. I think that is why your calcs are not adding up if there were another 10 6/4 shots that day ,they could have won at the correct %age its just that yours was in the losing bunch,so the stats still show blah blah blah but you wonder why your not winning, this is because you are jumping from a variable selection method(form or whatever)to a stats based fixed method which is the way I bet. I would have to have an edge over all the 6/4 range and back the lot rather than cherry pick just 1 out of the group

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Looked at the BF odds Saint and not much different as mine when broken down a couple of % here and there not exactly the +40% mentioned Low range High Odds > 4/1

[The Saint]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Thanks Machine - I suppose simplistically we can say this, 'Beating Betfair SP or even just SP, gives you a much better chance of beating the Bookmaker than betting at SP. Regardless, you still need to have a valid selection method and just beating SP is not a guaranteed success model although it will definatly help - you're still going to require luck and the mentality of a robot' Having witnessed Kithanga's past performance and knowledge base, I'm confident that the bets mentioned in the OP are a statistical blip. Kithanga - any better off EW or trading out in-running at say 20% of the odds you took? I know we have had this discussion many times but might be worth revisiting and running the results through. I know my results will be better as win only in the long term but the journey is so much smoother trading out or betting EW depending on the make up of the race or the running style of a selection.

[Kithanga]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Thanks guys. Yes Saint I ran that through last week actually. I assumed that I'd trade out to return stake at my price less 40% and leave any others to run, level stake. It came out broadly the same but was less volatile. EW wasn't that bad but not as good as level stakes. I think I need to revisit the selection source as I can't see me bettering SP by any more than I have been doing. EW on the ones 9-1 and above may be the answer. That range win only was very profitable (+54.77 pts level stake) from 17 wins and 24 places but a small sample size (192 bets) so may just be variance again. 10-3 to 9-1 was poor and had highest volume of bets. Under 10-3 profitable (again only 110 bets) 12 points profit. Maybe I'm just being sucked into backing shorter priced ones too often

[BillyHills]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Thanks for the figures Machine, and what you say makes a lot of sense:ok Saint your dead right about on course bookies, so tight its unreal, its not hard to beat the SP's as you have said, we see it happen on about every post in the BBOTD every day. Especially on the longer priced horses. Keep plodding on Kithanga, i was enjoying the best spell of the year in March/April and now cant buy a winner, for me mostly to do with venturing onto the flat but even the jumpers are misbehaving now!

[Kithanga]

Re: Where's my profit gone? Machine, to pick up on your earlier point about me not backing every runner in a price band. It's a fair point and I understand what you're saying. I'm using stats and form to narrow down and (hopefully) eliminate losers from the sample. Fact is I'm clearly not doing that well enough. I did some further research last night prompted by all the comments I've received (thanks everyone). I wanted to find out if I was (ignoring SP's) taking too short a price in reality, which would explain the poor ROI. How to work this out though? What I did was a calculation of the price compared to the number of runners. So 4-1 in an 8 runner race = 50%, 8-1 = 100%, etc. The rough idea was to see how the relatively unfancied animals had performed, as opposed to those that were just a big price as there's a difference in punters pereption of winning chance between a 5-1 shot in a 30 runner race and one in a 5 runner race. The first is a hot favourite, the second an outsider. Anyway, here's the result and it makes interesting reading. Anyone else got similar? Overall sample 621 bets, 100 wins, profit of 41.81 (6%) 50%+ 501 bets 72 wins 57.87 profit (12%) 75%+ 311 bets 40 wins 91.45 profit (29%) 100%+ 189 bets 21 wins 56.43 profit (30%) 125%+ 99 bets 10 wins 39.55 profit (40%) 150%+ 67 bets 8 wins 57.72 profit (86%) Obviously the sample size is getting really low towards the end but the profits look better even from 50%+ range. The profits are also better than the 2% I've achieved just by playing at level stakes. Maybe I've not only been tempted into too many short ones but have obviously staked more on them too. Hope that gives you all something to think about with your results too. We're always learning in this game :-)

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone?

How to work this out though? What I did was a calculation of the price compared to the number of runners. So 4-1 in an 8 runner race = 50%, 8-1 = 100%, etc.

I may be wrong but I think your calc's may be out a bit 8 runner race = 1/8 = 12.5% = 8.00 or 7/1, which makes half the field 12.5%/50% = 25% = 4.00 = 3/1

[The Saint]

Re: Where's my profit gone? With reference to 'where has my profit gone?', from a different angle, I too am suffering my worst year that I have records for. In profit but to less than I can afford to live on and unless the pattern changes for the better in the relitively near future, I'll be leaving the game behind which will be an enourmous wrench but life goes on... We shall see. It has been widely reported that 73% of trainers are finding it hard to turn a profit from training. If we believe this to be true then is it any wonder that gambles are being plotted and landed/not landed all over the place, horses are being run over the wrong trip/ground/course etc in order to lower their hcap marks for the 'right' day? There is nothing wrong or illegal in that practice - in fact, it's essential with the current hcapping system. However, the game has been proven to be corrupt - the AW has become ridiculous in that respect. It's not all corrupt, I'm not saying that for a second - my selections (although not always actual bets:wall) are as good as they have ever been in Group Races but I can't jump stakes 5x in order to just play on these. Is it possible that Kithanga or anyone else for that matter is beating SP more regularly becasue Bookmakers take less and less money on a selection before shortening it up and then there is an exageratted 'sheep' effect as traders, market followers etc get involved at any price? Don't know the answers. Some gambles I just look at open mouthed because unless the horse has suddently developed 'pace' he or she has never shown before, then he's not going to win over 5f for the first time in 20 attempts etc - however, I rarely lay these because overall, I do think the last 5 minutes of betting on the exchages is now a far bigger indicator than the early morning market moves. Certainly at the lower levels anyway. Not said to antagonise or be negative, but the levels of corruption/non-triers/the trainers need to make ends meet etc etc MUST be having some effect on punters who had/have formally achieved better ROI and Strike Rates. Open to the fact it might just be a statistical blip but also open to the hypothesis. Have to keep adapting and changing in this game in order to survive but I don't think it's healthy to play into a loaded deck where only some a priviledged to be able to see all the cards.

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone? The only way to get racing reasonably fair is to ban the exchanges and increase the prize money..........full stop It wont stop all the fiddling but it will stop around 80-85% I would imagine as the horse would have to win rather than what we have now of not running to their true potential due to laying the horse to lose and making more than the prize money on offer for that race. What really gets my back up is when someone like Fallon (fiddling) and Dettori (coke head) get a ban then they are welcomed back with open arms by the racing fraternity. Fcuk em life ban from the sport end of , send out a message to the up and coming jocks and trainers piss about and thats it,unfortunately they wont because a lot of so called racing experts who couldnt survive in the big wide world are making hell of a lot of money out the game for basically doing jack sh*t as they know the result before the race is run.

[The Saint]

Agree with most of that Machine - am interested on your views concerning banning the exchanges in order to prevent corruption. It's not as if 'cheating' wasn't happening before there arrival. You could still lay a horse backing everything else in the race and surely they make corruption more see through now and people are at least banned and exposed... Presumably, account closure wouldn't be so common place without the exchanges but we'd be up against it as far as 'over-round' went wouldn't we?

[Machine]

Re: Where's my profit gone?

It's not as if 'cheating' wasn't happening before there arrival. You could still lay a horse backing everything else in the race. Presumably, account closure wouldn't be so common place without the exchanges but we'd be up against it as far as 'over-round' went wouldn't we?

If you went back to no exchanges it would be hard to lay your own horse as due to the overound you couldnt just back all the others or if you could the profit %age would be so negligable that the amounts you'd have to shovel on would be astronomic to make it worthwhile,plus would ring more alarm bells than a muslim in the queens bedroom. Wherever there is money there will be corruption of some fashion,that is the nature of the beast, chop off the head of the beast and a large part of the problems will be removed. At the moment all books are playing against betfair/betdaq setting their book just below BF or BD and as we have shown the odds are not a million miles out. Get rid of these and they compete against each other leaving room for 'errors' between books hence more chance for the punter to profit from said 'errors' (hypothetically speaking of course)

[The Saint]

If you went back to no exchanges it would be hard to lay your own horse as due to the overound you couldnt just back all the others or if you could the profit %age would be so negligable that the amounts you'd have to shovel on would be astronomic to make it worthwhile,plus would ring more alarm bells than a muslim in the queens bedroom. Wherever there is money there will be corruption of some fashion,that is the nature of the beast, chop off the head of the beast and a large part of the problems will be removed. At the moment all books are playing against betfair/betdaq setting their book just below BF or BD and as we have shown the odds are not a million miles out. Get rid of these and they compete against each other leaving room for 'errors' between books hence more chance for the punter to profit from said 'errors' (hypothetically speaking of course)

Fair points - from my (possibly selective) memory before exchanges and my time in the industry, it was the short ones that would be allegedly, 'stopped' due to the large percentage of the book they took out. Tended to be in smaller fields too so the maths wasn't too taxing I would imagine! Granted the exchanges make this laying malarkey easier for the average owner/trainer in the kno but personally, I would be wary of going back to pre-exchange days given the unscrupulous actions of Bookmakers that we've witnessed over the past few years. I suppose the 'evidence' I could present would be the amount of convictions since the exchanges which have increased 20-fold.... Easy to exploit the bookmaker errors but not so easy to do it twice with the same firm in my experience. If prize money goes up, corruption goes down... Trainers can make ends meet, owners stand half a chance.... Another option would be to abolish the dross racing and spread out the good stuff a little more evenly - I talk from a punters point of view of course rather than a course manager who needs to ensure attendance etc.