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Betlarge,
With the utmost of respect, I have to disagree with the contention that it is the number of bets that counts in a statistical sample – a statistical sample that you want to gauge your performance and future plans off of, that is. I know its been commented on in this forum countless times, but, in my opinion, race selection plays an important part in the process too. And, what of the enjoyment of it all? Surely, enjoyment is lost when you reduce bet selection to a numbers exercise? – I’m in no way disputing that you’ve worked your fingers to the bone in studying the form Betlarge, but with that many bets over a five month period, it just boggles my mind how you kept your sanity!
I would love to see some of statistics behind the experiment – did you by chance, ever put the information in spreadsheet format? Just asking because I think it would be facinating to see the percentage breakdowns between the savers and main picks, the low and high priced winners, types of race won, time of day for most wins etc etc
Back in the day, my dad finally hit upon a "system" where he only backed horses in listed or group races, no more than 5% of his total bank, and the horse had to be 5/2 or better. It actually worked for him – no great winnings but successful each year over a 5 year period (enough to pay for annual holidays etc). I have not gained that level of self-dicipline nor have the time to commit to the research but someday I’m hoping to get back into it.
Best of luck in the future Betlarge
A good read. There will be no advice in how to be a successful pro gambler coming from these quarters
Betlarge.
Brilliant series of threads without any doubt and regardless of result, an experience! Cheers for that.The ROI may not be where you may have hoped it would be, and the £/hr may be irking you somewhat.
If I’m not mistaken you had "
a separate £30K for this venture
".
Therefore an increase of 19.67% of capital looks like a lovely result to me.Yes, nearly 20% "mark-up", and in just five months, very impressive indeed.
I’d suggest a re-evaluation of financial results and the consideration of compound, compound, and compound! But only on the basis that it doesn’t become a daily grind that "irks" you more than the net result.
Anyhow, keep on keeping on.
A worthwhile experiment, Mike, and the most interesting thread I’ve ever seen on the forum. I think 5 months is plenty time to decide if you have the emotional aptitude for pro-punting. That, above all, in my opinion is the key factor.
Of course, form knowledge and brutal hard work are prerequisites, but you need to be that fella out of Mr Kipling’s
If
, to make it in the long term. I wouldn’t even attempt it. I know I can probably squeeze a small profit out a season’s punting for fun. I know I can hole a three-foot putt for fun. When there’s a hot brand in your brain marked ‘You need to make this to feed yourself/family/dog’, it’s a whole different prospect.
Graham Cunningham was the man who summed it up, for me at least, not through words, but through actions. I respect his judgement 95% of the time. Occasionally he gets fixed on something and won’t let it go (a bit like most of us, I suppose).
You might know that Graham started a tipping service online a few years back. He gave everyone a free month to establish himself and knocked it out the park regularly, ending up with a fat profit. As soon as he began charging, the pressure was on. A short run of bad results had him questioning his choices and ability and very soon afterwards the game was up. He couldn’t handle the responsibility to the folks paying him to pick winners. For clarity, I’ve not spoken to him about it, this is just my reading of what happened.
What I took from your post last month was that a sudden turn of fortunes affected you noticeably…maybe I’m wrong.
The other biggy is that you mentioned how little, if any enjoyment you were getting from it toward the end. I think you’ll do a lot better now and go back to getting plenty fun from it as well as some profit.
Congratulations on both trying and on making the right decision (imo) at the right time.
The jumps will soon be here. Cue Card will be coming over the Kempton horizon on Boxing Day, his saddlebags stuffed with winnings. Fill yer boots!
Thank-you for your kind words Joe.
I also respect Cunningham’s form-book knowledge although his slightly messianic delivery can be a bit wearisome at times. But as you say, there’s nothing quite like doing it for real! As soon as you start doing things outside your comfort zone, it’s a whole different ball game. Technically I could have made five times as much simply by upping my stake to £1000 a race; in reality I can only believe such a move would end in disaster.
I wasn’t enjoying it particularly towards the last 2-3 weeks to be honest. Probably because I was determined to reach the end of September – my arbitrary, predetermined cut-off point vaguely based on the probably false assumption that the Flat gets ‘difficult’ by October – and I’d had just so much similar-style low-grade Flat racing day in, day out all summer. It’s a bit like the grim last couple of miles of a marathon (I should imagine!!).
You comment that I seemed affected by the downturn in fortunes which came in mid-August. I’d done well enough in June and July and was going well again until I had a very poor run. I don’t really think I was affected too much. I’m a pretty sanguine punter to be honest – I’d shrugged off a losing run in excess of 30 earlier in the campaign – and I thought I maintained my discipline right until the end, which is probably the main indicator of how one copes with outrageous fortune.
However, there is no escaping the fact that the key to enjoyment of the process is making money. If my performance in the 4-5 weeks had been like mid-summer I’d have been skipping gaily through meadows!
Mike
A good read. There will be no advice in how to be a successful pro gambler coming from these quarters
Nor from these. I can tell you how to be a pretty rubbish one, mind!
Mike
You mentioned that you bet £200 per race, often meaning split-stakes to accommodate ‘savers’ rather than level-stakes overall: the staking plan that I think you generally favour
Perhaps you did, but if not I reckon it would be worthwhile exercise converting your campaign bets to £200 level stakes for comparison. It may provide a sigh of relief or another wearing of the hair shirt: I somewhat suspect the latter
A sigh of relief: you’re adept at identifying value and edge
A hair shirt: you’re adept at identifying value but not edgeHi Drone.
You are often an advocate of level stakes betting, what other staking strategies have you trialed during your experiences betting and what comparisons have you drawn?
Personally I use a fixed stake, but on a scaling basis deduced from experimenting with kelly.
Mike, well done on your endeavor. It has been highly interesting to follow.
Apologies for being lazy TBRacing but can I reply to your question with copies of posts I’ve made in the past (all of them replies to Gingertipster, to no surprise perhaps
) as I’ve little else to add to them and some of the supplementary points made in them may be of some relevance to the experiences Betlarge has had this summerI don’t in any way claim they are ‘correct’ – is there any such betting strategy – being just my opinion born of personal betting experience
For the record the staking plans I’ve used, or experimented with would be a better term are
Set percentage of start-up bank (Level non-edge determined stakes)
Set Percentage of current bank (Variable non-edge determined stakes)
Level Base Bet + Square Root of available bank (BBSR) (sort of a mixture of the above 2)
Kelly Criterion (edge determined stakes)
Cover to win (bet to return a set amount)
All Each Way (crazy?)
…and the familiar random staking dependent on mood, exaltation or desperationwith the first being where I started and to where I returned after many years circumnavigating choppy seas
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Yes level stakes regardless of price or assessed edge (value)
Essentially you’re using the Kelly Criterion http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_criterion to determine stake Ginger i.e you stake more heavily the greater you assess the value/edge/advantage to be. This is all fine and dandy in principle , and is undoubtedly the soundest strategy to maximise profit but with one very big proviso: in necessitates the accurate assessment of ‘true odds’. Now I am quite prepared to believe you are better at this than I am but what I found (and I’ve tried all forms of staking including your favoured stakes-to-edge Kelly type) is that although I’m competent at knowing when a horse is value (I make a long-term profit) and hence worth a bet I am not good at assessing its true chance, hence Kelly for me did not perform any better than level stakes, though as it happened there wasn’t a great deal in it.
Two other advantages of level stakes IMO is that firstly its good for the blood pressure minimising the after-the-event ‘wish I had more/less on’ and secondly maximises profit on winning longer shots when the natural inclination is to have less on, as the chance of winning is deemed less.
I’m certainly not saying level stakes is the only way to stake, simply that for me – and I suspect the majority if they took time to analyse their bets – it is a simple and efficient way to operate
The boredom point is well made though. For the recreational punter not concerned about long term profit or the maximsing of that profit, stake whatever you like and enjoy the moment.
Ekeing out a profit from punting is indeed essentially a boring exercise.
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I recall having mentioned this a few times before but anyway…
…a simple if not wholly foolproof method to determine whether you are adept at assessing the ‘true (less untrue) probability’ of a horse’s chance (over a suitably large, bigger the better sample) is to run whatever value-based staking plan you’re using in tandem with 1pt level stakes.
Then at the conclusion of the experiment simply work out the POT/ROI of the two plans
If your value-based variable staking plan outperforms level stakes you can be quietly confident you are better at assessing true odds than the market as a whole
You do of course need to make a profit in the first place for any staking plan to outperform level stakes
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Yep, Ginger’s staking plan while superficially impressive as it involves a lot of decimal points derived from value-added-or-negated supposition is essentially a ‘safe’ strategy geared towards non-breakage of bank: the long-odds bets when perceived as ‘value’ tend to be minimum or ‘few point’ bets.
Safe ‘cover to win’ betting of this type is in some ways admirable as it means bread will always be on the table for breakfast the morning after, but is in my view basically the betting strategy of the conservative coward, cocksure that his estimation of odds ‘n’ chance is accurate
Been there, done that and wore the hair shirt when the big winning one was bet for peanuts
So…level stakes on all bets it is. Boring maybe, and it goes against the ‘serious’ bettors’ grain, given that ‘serious’ seems to mean dogmatic, definitive assigning of chance resulting in a stake dependent on perceived ‘edge’
I’ve asked this of Gingertips several times in the past and have yet to receive an answer: so once again
Ginger: do you compare the returns of your variable staking with level staking? If not why not?
‘never bet more than you can afford to lose’ yeah, yeah wise words blah, blah
Bet what you can just about afford to lose on all bets, so each bet staked worries you slightly and hurts a bit should it lose – fun bets soon cease to be fun
Assuming of course your intention is not to bet for fun or entertainment, but to make money
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For the record: I did answer all Drone’s points (above) at the time, but don’t think Mike would like another of his threads morphing in to another staking debate.
Value Is EverythingWell done Mike, as others have said it’s been an enjoyable and honest read.
I have a question regarding the subject of form books, a very stupid one but sure look…
What exactly
is
a form book?
Does the form available on RP, ATR, Sporting Life and Irish Racing websites qualify as form books?
If not, what is different about a form book?
For the record: I did answer all Drone’s points (above) at the time, but don’t think Mike would like another of his threads morphing in to another staking debate.
So how exactly
do
you stake again Ginge?
Just to clear up my staking. I bet £200 per race either as a win single, a vaguely proportionate split between two similarly-fancied horses, or a majority bet on one horse (say £130-£160) with one or two ‘savers’.
There was no particular ‘science’ to this as such, just gut feel. I’m of the belief that unless one can gauge the odds of each horse with phenomenal accuracy (which I can’t) it’s not worthwhile trying to ascertain the ‘level’ of value and staking. At my level, staking does not drive my betting, studying form does.
Drone asked whether I would have made more betting £200 on the nose all selections. Possibly, I’d need to export all my data from Betfair and analyse it which is not something I’m bothered about at the moment. However, I do think the ‘smoothing’ effect of multiple bets in one race and the fact that one ameliorates bad losing runs with at least some returns is beneficial psychologically.
The only reason I was backing in £200 units was that I’d done it before four years ago and it was just a stake I was comfortable with.
Mike
For the record: I did answer all Drone’s points (above) at the time, but don’t think Mike would like another of his threads morphing in to another staking debate.
Sorry Ginger, on reflection it was rather silly just to post my missives from those threads as they lack context, which is unfair on you and all others who posted on the threads
They were snipped from the threads I posted on Betlarge’s last monthly report which are
https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … 16&t=75109
Gets going on page 4https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … =2&t=85375
https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … =3&t=83940
Like I said I’m just getting lazy, no slight on you intended dear boy
Well done Mike, as others have said it’s been an enjoyable and honest read.
I have a question regarding the subject of form books, a very stupid one but sure look…
What exactly
is
a form book?
Does the form available on RP, ATR, Sporting Life and Irish Racing websites qualify as form books?
If not, what is different about a form book?
No traditional ‘form books’ as such – do they still exist?
I used a premium subscription to the RP website, the free Timeform cards, the Racing Post printed version every day and a subscription to RUK.
Technically, I should knock the not inconsiderable cost of those off my profit, although I have subscribed to the RP website and RUK for years anyway and will continue to do so.
Mike
Thanks for the response Mike.
I’m still a bit confused though, Ginger mentioned a Timeform form book – what sort of info does this contain Ginger?
Just more differing opinions from different people my good man. Garfield will no doubt expand on this in circa 1000 characters.
For the record: I did answer all Drone’s points (above) at the time, but don’t think Mike would like another of his threads morphing in to another staking debate.
Sorry Ginger, on reflection it was rather silly just to post my missives from those threads as they lack context, which is unfair on you and all others who posted on the threads
They were snipped from the threads I posted on Betlarge’s last monthly report which are
https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … 16&t=75109
Gets going on page 4https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … =2&t=85375
https://theracingforum.co.uk/horse-r … =3&t=83940
Like I said I’m just getting lazy, no slight on you intended dear boy
Not unfair on me at all Drone. I had no problem with the way you posted before, just did not want people to think I was ignoring it. Thumbs up.
Value Is Everything
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