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They’re a righteous lot these value hunters, aren’t they?
Do I take it then that you bet in every race you price up, The Dice Man? I presume there’s always one horse which lies beyond the boundary of perceived chance? But next time there’s a 5/4 chance which you have priced up at 11/8, and a supposed 12/1 shot available at 20/1, come and see me before your bookie.
The Netto wine was p*ss, by the way.
There is a lot of what Alf Garnet termed, "stating the bleedin’ obvious" going on.
Some have even resorted to quoting Talking Heads lyrics.
We all have our own methods. One man’s meat and all that. A winner is a winner is a winner !
But I’m sure we all draw the line at some point. For example, if Master Minded is offered up at 1/5 come Cheltenham, who in their right mind would steam into that – apart from HF of course ? !
However, if they go 1/2, I’ll gladly take a ton off the enemy – whether some consider it value or not.
Gambling Only Pays When You're Winning
Value has its place but the trouble is those who are value punters usually believe that actively seeking value is the only way of succeeding in betting in the long term. It isn’t, they are wrong but maybe its an ego thing? Perhaps they don’t like the thought of people actually being better judges of form / horses than they are? I don’t know but you will have to work hard to convince the value only brigade that there are other ways.
Okay DavidBrady you asked for it….
Calculate you average win/loss per bet (ie your total win/loss divided by number of bets), Compute the standard deviation Can be done easily in excel using the STDEV function, Calculate the standard error which is your standard deviation divided by the Square root of the number of bets placed. Finally, you then divide the average result by the standard error to come up with your T statistic.
Basically the higher your T stat the more confident you can be that your results are based on skill rather than luck. Any T stat of over 1 suggests that there is an 80% chance that it is down to luck rather than skill. When you get as high as a T stat of 3 then we are looking at 99%+ chance of your results being down to skill over luck. I would suggest in general you are looking for a T stat of 2 or higher which is generally 95%.
They’re a righteous lot these value hunters, aren’t they?
Do I take it then that you bet in every race you price up, The Dice Man? I presume there’s always one horse which lies beyond the boundary of perceived chance?
No, far from it. Pricing up to 100% will clearly always result in some horses in my book being different to the market. Personally I have a margin edge so that I will back (or lay) horses which are a certain % longer (or shorter) in the market than I think they should be.
But next time there’s a 5/4 chance which you have priced up at 11/8, and a supposed 12/1 shot available at 20/1, come and see me before your bookie.
The Netto wine was p*ss, by the way.
Not sure why you need to make it a personal challenge, but unfortunately I am a sucker for bravado and can’t back down
. If you would like to escrow money to someone and set up terms, I will do the same!!Value has its place but the trouble is those who are value punters usually believe that actively seeking value is the only way of succeeding in betting in the long term. It isn’t, they are wrong but maybe its an ego thing? Perhaps they don’t like the thought of people actually being better judges of form / horses than they are? I don’t know but you will have to work hard to convince the value only brigade that there are other ways.
Thing is though, if people are really good judges of form/horses, they will be betting on selections which almost certainly have a better chance than the market suggests – which means they are value.
Whatever way people want to describe it, if people are betting profitably over a long period of time, they are getting prices which are above the fair price for their selections. Which is called value. They might think of it in other words themselves, but that’s what it is.
I saw the term groundhog day mentioned before, and this discussion is very very similar to a few I haw have on poker forums (fora?) regarding the difference in attitude between the mathematical players of the internet age and the live players who prefer to ‘know’ the exact cards their opponent has.
Anyway, I think we’re going around in circles here (and most especially being a relative newcomer to this forum, I don’t want to be getting too belligerent
).stuartd75’s post is very valuable for those who really want to analyse their results though.
Well no surprise here. My t statistic is 0.74. I’ve only been betting for less than 3 months, and I’ve had a 98 and a 60 winner.
Better to be lucky than good is what people say.
Having run a scenario through excel manually, it would seem that the T-stat is biased towards better results at bigger prices
I used a sample of 1000 results, 100 at evs, 100 at 2/1, 100 at 3/1, etc up to 100 at 10/1
At break-even point on each price (ie 50 wins & 50 losses at evs; 25 win at 3/1 with 75 losers), the T-stat is 0
If you were to get just 2 positive results more than the break-even point at EACH price (52 winners at evs and 48 losers; 27 winners at 3/1 with 73 losers), you get a T-stat of 1.49. The ROI in this scenario is 11.7% which is actually very good
But if you get just 3 positive results more than the break-even point at EACH price (53 winners at evs and 47 losers; 28 winners at 3/1 with 72 losers), you get a T-stat of 2.37 which would seem very high for such a relatively minor variation from the 2 extra winners above
In fact every extra 10/1 winner gives an increase in T-stat of 0.11 while if we throw in a 33/1 winner the T-stat jumps by 0.22 – I also note that the ROI in this scenario is 19.3% which seems very unrealistic.
Given that the business end of the market is very efficient in horse-racing, it would seem that all any punter has to do is beat the SP and he will make a profit and that the stats will tell us that there is a 95% chance that this proft arose from skill as opposed to luck.
Is it that simple?
Beating SP is a big part of it for sure. Bear in mind that betting at Even money the bookies would only expect you to win about 47-48% of your bets so if you are beating that number by 5 then you are betting something like 10% more winners than the books would expect you to which is a pretty significant number. It doesn’t mean that there is no chance that you have been lucky but that there is a good chance that it is based on skill. If you can consistently beat SP that is a skill in itself and is something that the bookies look at when analysing you to see if you are a profitable customer or not. I have lost accounts in the past without ever making a profit with a bookie.
Bookies price races up wrong all the time for a variety of reasons. If one is a reasonably intelligent punter who specialises it is possible to pick up value bets on a regular basis. Discipline and correct staking are arguably even more important to being in front long-term than simply picking up value bets though.
Come on chaps, don’t run out of steam now. Time was when a value thread could run to twenty pages or more, with a selection of vivid tantrums and an expulsion or two.
Less reason and more rage!
I wasn’t saying don’t back a horse if its 4/1 not 9/2, but if you have missed the 4/1 and 9/2 on a horse and it is now as low as 2/1, then in my view its not worth backing.
Alternatively you can find value in other horses against a favourite you don’t like the look of. Yesterday for example there were 2 short priced horses that everybody seemed to be tipping up and neither got in the frame. I was lucky to pick the winner both times, but in a previous life I would have even considered backing 2 or 3 to take them on with.Having run a scenario through excel manually, it would seem that the T-stat is biased towards better results at bigger prices
I used a sample of 1000 results, 100 at evs, 100 at 2/1, 100 at 3/1, etc up to 100 at 10/1
At break-even point on each price (ie 50 wins & 50 losses at evs; 25 win at 3/1 with 75 losers), the T-stat is 0
If you were to get just 2 positive results more than the break-even point at EACH price (52 winners at evs and 48 losers; 27 winners at 3/1 with 73 losers), you get a T-stat of 1.49. The ROI in this scenario is 11.7% which is actually very good
But if you get just 3 positive results more than the break-even point at EACH price (53 winners at evs and 47 losers; 28 winners at 3/1 with 72 losers), you get a T-stat of 2.37 which would seem very high for such a relatively minor variation from the 2 extra winners above
In fact every extra 10/1 winner gives an increase in T-stat of 0.11 while if we throw in a 33/1 winner the T-stat jumps by 0.22 – I also note that the ROI in this scenario is 19.3% which seems very unrealistic.
Given that the business end of the market is very efficient in horse-racing, it would seem that all any punter has to do is beat the SP and he will make a profit and that the stats will tell us that there is a 95% chance that this proft arose from skill as opposed to luck.
Is it that simple?
The T-test relies is fancy mathematical guessing and output will be skewed when sample sizes are small. You might want to look at using the CHITEST function in excel (expected versus actual).
. If you would like to escrow money to someone and set up terms, I will do the same!!
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