How would you paper trade before going live ?

[oriental_express]

Hi there guys Just wanted to know your thoughts on paper trading. Im testing some NBA stuff and just wanted to have an idea of how many games should be tested before going live ? I've tested 57 games and its proving profitable over a period of 8 days. How long would you paper trade for ?

[aliando]

Re: How would you paper trade before going live ? difficult to say really, but the longer the trial, the more realistic the outcome. hopefully there'll be some more useful answers coming mate :welcome to the lounge by the way

[davidc]

Re: How would you paper trade before going live ? Any way to back test?

[slapdash]

Re: How would you paper trade before going live ? It really depends how cautious you are. It helps to know a little statistics to judge how significant your results are. If you're betting on NBA, then probably most of your potential bets are at around evens or a bit less? In that case, based on level stakes bets of 1 point, the "standard deviation" of your profit/loss after a given number of bets (very roughly, the "typical" amount that your profit/loss will vary due to chance) is about the square root of the number of bets. The square root of 57 is around 7.5, so that means that typically you'd expect to have something between a 7.5 point loss and a 7.5 point profit at this stage if your system rated to break even in the long run, and it's not that unlikely it would be up to twice this. Unless you're showing a really big profit, something like 20 points, then 57 bets is not really enough to be confident that a system is profitable. Is it possible to look at historical data to check your system? Otherwise I'm afraid you're going to have to keep records for quite a large number of bets to be really confident that the system will be profitable.