Australian Federal Police strike action paves useful precedent for speed camera protests

Here in Canberra, just as in many other parts of the country, there are speed camera vans which can be setup in a wide variety of locations to measure the speed of passing vehicles and issue speeding fines. Here, these are operated by ACT Government employees unlike some other jurisdictions where the operation is outsourced to private contractors. The ACT’s vans are white and have a retractable sign on the roof which states “your speed has been checked” but are otherwise fairly unremarkable vehicles.

I am strongly opposed to the existence of these, partially because I believe most speed limits should be abolished, but moreso because I believe they deny natural justice by:
1. Removing the element of discretion from the enforcing officer
2. Making it impossible for the driver to know with any certainty whether a fine will be issued, as the fines take weeks to be issued and delivered, thus removing some of the driver’s ability to contemporaneously collect and preserve evidence for their defence
3. Reverse the onus of proof, by requiring the registered owner of the vehicle to prove that they either weren’t speeding (practically impossible if they don’t have the opportunity to collect evidence at the time) or they weren’t the driver involved; in a society where a person is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, there are grave problems with the processes of the speed camera van system.

There is also an issue that is not confined to the speed camera vans but more broadly of the infringement notice system which is used by the speed camera vans among other government agencies, that the receiver is coerced into accepting the fine rather than defending it in court by virtue of the infringement notice fine being substantially less than a court could impose. It is effectively a coercive tool to make people admit guilt by offering them a smaller punishment, and for many people it is simpler to just admit guilt, even if they don’t believe they were guilty, rather than go through the process of defending the charge when the system will effectively treat them as guilty until proven innocent.

I also believe that the speed cameras are not an effective road safety tool as they don’t do anything to correct driver behaviour at the time of the offence. In my view, only police officers should be able to conduct speed enforcement as they have the authority to stop a driver at the time, something which the speed camera vans can’t do, and police also have the ability to exercise discretion based on the circumstances at the time. I believe that speeding fine should only be able to be issued if police detect a driver to be speeding, and then make a reasonable effort to intercept the driver.

A couple years ago I decided to make my position on this matter known. Apart from writing a submission (which was largely ignored) to an ACT Legislative Assembly inquiry into road safety, I also had a sign produced.

Abolish Speed Cameras sign

When I saw a speed camera van and had the time to do so, I would set up an impromptu protest near the speed camera van, where I stood there waving the sign about. This received an overwhelmingly positive response from passing motorists.

Originally, and this is starting to get the point of why I’m writing this today, I was setting up somewhere in the line of sight of the speed camera van, partially obscuring the camera’s view of traffic. On the second occasion of this, the speed camera van operator called the police and they attended. The police officer asked me to leave the area. The ACT has a Human Rights Act which, among other things, protects the right to peaceful demonstration, so I wasn’t going to leave without the police officer providing a very good reason as to why they thought I had to do so. The police officer claimed that I was breaking the law by “hindering a territory official” which is quite a stretch considering that law was really designed to allow emergency services to go about their business without being obstructed, not to protect bureaucrats sitting in vans, and given I was not interacting with the speed camera van operator or preventing them from operating their equipment, it was unlikely that such a charge would hold up in court. However, it was likely that the police officer would take me into custody if I didn’t oblige and move on, so I moved on.

It’s also worth noting that if merely being in the line of sight of the camera between it and passing vehicles could be said to meet the criteria of “hindering a territory official” then every driver of a vehicle in the lane closest to the speed camera would be contravening this law by blocking the view of a further away lane.

Furthermore, the Human Rights Act’s protection of the right to peaceful demonstration applies unless a law specifically prohibits the activity. Standing somewhere with a sign is not an illegal activity unless a prohibition zone is created, which is what was done by the ACT Government in the streets near the abortion clinic in the city. It was necessary for the government to specifically list the areas in which protesting abortion were to be illegal in order to overcome the Human Rights Act. There is no legislation to create a prohibition zone in the vicinity of a movable object such as a speed camera van, so really, it was an empty threat to charge me with “hindering a territory official”.

Regardless, to ease tensions and keep the peace, on future occasions I moved my protests across the road from the speed camera vans, or occasionally opposite their headquarters in Hume at their shift changeover, so that I would not be in their line of sight of traffic. The speed camera van operators (apart from one) still don’t like it and I have even had one stop doing their work of their own volition to take photos of me and threaten legal action, but obviously what I am doing is perfectly legal and should be perfectly legal in a democratic nation, so nothing has come of it.

What brings all of this up at this point in time is that the Australian Federal Police, who provide police services to Canberra among other things, are about to embark on strike activity. They won’t be walking off the job as such, but will engage in various activities, one of which caught my attention as being relevant to my activities.

Union members voted on 36 potential actions which range from putting slogans on AFP vehicles and uniforms and blocking mobile speed vans, to not attending court matters, not transporting alleged offenders, and not investigating any referrals to the AFP from the offices of politicians where no offence has been committed.

Blocking mobile speed vans. In other words, demonstrating in a place which will block the view of a speed camera van. The very activity which they threatened to charge me over. There is no difference from a legal standpoint between them demonstrating for better pay and conditions in front of a speed camera van, and me demonstrating against speed cameras in front of a speed camera van. The only potential legal difference is that police officers have special powers not afforded to civilians, however the wording of the proposed strike action makes it clear that the officers are not considered to be working whenever they conduct their strike activity, so it cannot be argued that they are using special powers available to police officers at such a time.

The exact wording of the proposed action, as notified to the Fair Work Commission, is slightly less clear than what the writer of the news article has interpreted it to mean

21. The indefinite or periodic interruption of work for members to park police vehicles in front of speed cameras, at school zones and any Australian Federal Police related Government facility while displaying emergency lights.

It was suggested to me that “in front of speed cameras” could mean they’re a little down the road and slowing passing motorists with their flashing lights before the motorists would reach the speed camera. If this is the case, it is still a useful precedent for my activities as my current across-the-road approach tends to slow down traffic as it passes, which is exactly what the police strike action would do. Given the stated aim of the speed camera program is to reduce the speed of motorists, it is impossible to argue that my actions or those of the striking police officers are “hindering a territory official” when the actions in fact help them to reach their stated aim.

Regardless of how exactly the strike action plays out, the precedent set by the proposals alone is enough to confirm what I have believed all along. It is perfectly legal within the ACT to protest near a speed camera van, regardless of the reason for the protest, unless it happen to be a protest against abortion within a couple blocks of Moore Street in the city. So waving an “abolish speed cameras” sign is A-OK!

Samuel

Add comment March 19th, 2024 at 05:11am

When actors get the blueberries in Go-Lo, there will be indoor skiing

The other day during my sleep I had a dream that I had taken a job as an actor. I was supposed to play a doctor in a rural town and the filming was to take place in a town about ten hours drive from Canberra. Of course, I am not an actor, so I was hoping that the people in charge didn’t notice my distinct lack of acting skills.

I drove to this remote town with one of the other actors and they spent most of the trip reading their lines from a very small notebook. After we arrived in the town there was a meeting of everyone involved in the filming, and I read through a larger notebook containing my lines, but paid no attention to the meeting so I missed all of the details about the filming schedule.

I then went to the only store in town, which was a very large version of a Go-Lo store (which used to be a discount store with many hundreds of outlets across Australia) which had floor tiles which looked like an Aldi store. There was a wall of discount blueberries, half in small size and the other half in large size. They were very tasty so I decided to buy some, however as the store was very large, it was recommended that customers wear skis so they could travel through the store more quickly. I started skiing towards the checkouts however ended up at the other end of the store in the high speed aisle and found myself doing laps of the store at 80km/h while all the paths to the checkouts were blocked so I was required to just continue circling the store on skis while eating blueberries!

Samuel

1 comment March 18th, 2024 at 11:02pm

The Sunday Share: Take On Me

The last time we saw Weezer a couple weeks ago, we didn’t actually see them because they weren’t in their own video clip, instead having other people parody them. I sense a theme here because this week, once again, they’re not in their own video clip.

Instead, we’re taking a trip back in time through the magic of acting, and meeting Weezer’s lead singer’s teenage band as they perform the big hit of the day, A-Ha’s Take On Me.

As it happens, I actually prefer this rendition of the song over the original. The original is an irreplaceable classic, of course, but this one makes me want to turn the volume up and hear it a few more times in a row!
(You, of course, are free to not do that if it is not your desire…)

Samuel

1 comment March 17th, 2024 at 07:17am

Radio for the opposite of an insomniac

Going back through some of my notes, I came across this dream I had in 2018 about a rather unusual concept in radio programming.

There was a show called “Snoring away the snooze-o-grams”. The show consisted almost entirely of people snoring with only occasional interruptions for commercial breaks. The show was said to be very popular with advertisers as they saw it as a way around the laws against subliminal advertising!

Samuel

1 comment March 15th, 2024 at 03:45am

Tips and tricks for getting the most out of betting bots

As is probably obvious by now, I am using a few betting bots produced by Steve and Michael. Over time using them I have developed a few habits and routines to keep them running at their best and most efficient. I thought it was worth creating a bit of a guide on some of the things I do to keep the bots running optimally.

The video covers everything from preventing Windows Update from interrupting 24/7 bot operations until I’m ready for them to run, managing memory usage to keep bots running quickly, using the tabs in ways which enhance profitability, and keeping archives of results without needing to keep them loaded in the bots, and some other bits and pieces which I find helpful.

The Windows Update Blocker utility which I’m using to give me complete control over when Windows Updates get to run is a free utility from Sordum. I cannot emphasise enough that you should NOT use this to prevent Windows Updates from running completely, but rather only to prevent them from running at inconvenient times. Windows Updates are an important function on any Windows-based computer for maintaining security.

If you’re comfortable using Windows Group Policy or the Windows Registry Editor and you have a professional version of Windows 10 or 11, or a server edition of Windows, Windows Central has a guide on how to manage Windows Updates through those methods without needing a third-party utility. This is probably a better method than the Windows Update Blocker utility, but it doesn’t work on home editions of Windows and I have seen Windows ignore it occasionally if it thinks the update it wants to install is particularly important.

And the bots I’m currently running and a featured in the video, although my hints and tips apply more broadly to more bots than just these.

ANZ Horse Bot
Fav Money Staking Bot
Lay Grey Bot
Lay Pro Football Bot

Hopefully these tips can help you in some way.

Samuel

2 comments March 12th, 2024 at 09:15pm

The Sunday Share: Another trip to Africa

We’re off to Africa again this week. Unfortunately something went awry in translation so it’s not entirely clear where we’re going, but at least the catering is good, well, some of the time…

Samuel

Add comment March 10th, 2024 at 07:13am

David Morrow has retired

Some very sad news went through Australia’s sporting and media worlds a few weeks ago as sports commentator David Morrow announced he has been diagnosed with brain cancer, will not return to the airwaves for this year’s rugby league season, and is retiring. While David has commentated just about every sport you can name over his decades of broadcasting, he undoubtedly leaves the biggest hole in the rugby league world where he has been a consistent high-profile voice of the game on radio, bringing the passion and excitement of the game to people right across the country and indeed the world.

David’s career spans something in the order of 50 years or more, and while he has called most Australian professional sports at one time or another, he is best known for his work as a rugby league commentator. Most of this was at the ABC where he was one of their leading rugby league commentators until he became the victim of a technical error and a subsequent bureaucratic farce, which led him to move to 2GB’s Continuous Call Team in 2015 where he became their main commentator. I recall at the time of the ABC peculiarities, 2UE was a competitor to 2GB and had rugby union broadcast rights, and I mentioned to then-Drive host Jason Morrison that 2UE should hire David. As it turned out, after David moved to 2GB, 2UE came under the same ownership as 2GB and became “Macquarie Sports Radio” for a while where David spent some time commentating cricket, so I suppose he was hired by 2UE in a roundabout way.

David joined the ABC in 1980 and was involved in a number of Olympic broadcasts, but what many people probably don’t know or remember is that through the 80s and 90s, the ABC had television rights to a number of lower-tier professional sports such as basketball and David popped up as a commentator in front of a national television audience on just about everything except VFL (well, as far as I can tell he didn’t call any VFL). Through my work I have had the pleasure of seeing many ABC TV sport broadcast tapes from those years in recent times and lost count of how many times David turned up on them. His distinctive voice and passion for whatever sport he called always stood out. There was also a period of time, prior to the formation of the National Rugby League, where ABC TV had some rugby league television broadcast rights, including during the Super League years where ABC ran their own commentary over the top of a Fox Sports broadcast, and David had some involvement there too, which was always a delight.

One thing which David has always managed is to remember that sport is entertainment, and commentary should recognise that. I dare say that this has probably been a bit easier since moving to 2GB where the commentators have a bit more scope and freedom than those at the ABC do to have fun while calling a game and go a little bit off-topic at times. It is my view that some of David’s best work has been at 2GB over the last nine years where he adapted to the 2GB style very well and brought the audience a fantastic combination of insightful commentary, reasons to laugh, and a great passion for the game of rugby league and other sports too. His chemistry with Darryl Brohman in particular and their ability to bounce off each other during a call with everything from serious analysis to the utterly absurd has been a highlight of the broadcasts. It has been a true delight to hear.

Away from the broadcast box, David is very highly regarded among the rest of the media as one of the nicest people in the business. The last time I mentioned David on this blog was when he made the move to 2GB. I originally made an error in recounting his reasons for making the move and I received an email from David pointing it out and requesting it be corrected. While I didn’t recognise the email address and couldn’t be sure I was really corresponding with David, the facts bore out so I was more than willing to make a correction. David, however, sensing my concern about the legitimacy of the correspondence, followed up with a phone call to assure me that the email was really from him and we had a brief chat. It was a very nice gesture and one which meant a lot to me.

In David’s absence, Mark Levy is stepping up to the plate at 2GB as their main rugby league commentator, while Ray Hadley is also picking up a few extra games (having confined himself primarily to State of Origin and the finals in recent years). David leaves big shoes to fill and a style which won’t be imitated; I’m sure Mark will do well in his own style but David will be sorely missed.

Some years ago a work colleague said to me that he thought my interest in many sports was more of an interest in the commentary than in the actual sports a lot of the time. In many ways that is true. I tend to seek out the commentary which appeals to me the most and will often watch or listen to a game which doesn’t particularly interest me just to hear the commentary. Andrew Self on TalkSport calls a few Premier League games and is always fun; Tim Gossage calling AFL is an inimitable experience; Darren McAullay’s deep rich voice calling Western Australian horse racing gets me to pay attention even if I am not invested in the race; Joe Tessitore calling American college football is enough to get me to switch on a game I otherwise wouldn’t watch (Joe did an excellent job calling NFL Monday night games for a few years and should never have been dropped from the role); Rex Hunt, when he was still calling AFL, never delivered a dull moment. Brenton Speed, now working for Nine and calling a lot of tennis, can get me to watch players I’ve never heard of with names which seem to have all of the consonants and none of the vowels. I could go on for quite a while.

David Morrow was one of those voices on my list of “if he’s calling, I’m listening”. I am going to miss hearing him and checking to see which games he is calling each week.

I sincerely wish David all the best for the future. I hope he is able to maintain a high quality of life and can continue to enjoy all that life has to offer, especially his passions of various sports including horse racing, and time with his family. It is also my hope that one day, David will feel well enough to have the occasional cameo in broadcasting. I’m sure his adoring fans will be delighted if that were to occur.

All the best David, and thanks for the many many years of great commentary.

Samuel

1 comment March 8th, 2024 at 07:06am

A profitable update on horse and greyhound results, plus a cameo from Pebbles and Shyley

I’ve been quite pleased with the results of the horse strategies which I ran through last week, and the greyhounds have been doing well too, but required more patience than I could provide so I made a change the other day and it’s been quite pleasing. This morning I decided it was a good time to update you on the results.

Shyley insisted on having her say around the seven minute mark and Pebbles joined her for a cameo.

I also gave a sneak peek of a soccer strategy I’m working on. I had hoped to provide details by now but I made some big changes to the strategy the other day and it hasn’t been running for long enough (and I don’t have the data to run a decent simulation on) to have enough confidence in it to be willing to properly details the strategy yet. But it’s started well so hopefully by early next week I can do that.

Some of the graphs in the video might be a touch small, so here they are. Click any of them to enlarge them.

Backing horses in the $2-$3 odds range in the Fav Money Maker Bot using a 50c starting stake, $25 profit target and $50 stop loss
Results from the Fav Money Bot

It hit a stop loss early on as Friday wasn’t a great day for it (and my laying results for Saturday indicate Saturday would have been disastrous so it’s a good thing I followed my strategy and stopped the bot for Saturday and resumed it for Sunday), but has hit two profit targets since to be ahead. This is the sort of pattern I expected based on the modeling in the strategy details post where it seemed clear that stop losses would occur occasionally but the profit targets would be more frequent and would overcome the losses and then some.

Laying horses in the $2-$3 odds range in the ANZ Horse Bot using a 25c profit target per race and $100 stop loss
Results from the ANZ Horse Bot

It’s a slow and steady system which is working well. Saturday was an absolute standout of a day, but I slept through most of it so I didn’t get to enjoy it as it happened, and woke to a rather nice increase in profit later.

The greyhounds in the Lay Grey Bot.

The strategy which I ran through previously was working but required more patience than I was willing to provide to it. Effectively it was profitable however it would have some bad runs which would create a large drawdown, and a number of slightly-better-than-break-even days, and then the occasional standout period which would rocket it back up into profit. A good system if you have patience and a bankroll capable of withstanding some big drawdowns along the way. I wanted to try something different so I ran some numbers on a few days worth of Australia and New Zealand dog races to see if laying the third and fourth favourites at odds of under $8 would work with this staking system. The benefit of under $8 is that after a loss, the recovery cycle recovers into profit without needing further wins and can be in quite a good profit if the odds were quite low on the losing bet.

I had looked at something similar in my early attempts at this staking system but had included some higher odds runners and wasn’t taking anything under $5 as I figured anything paying less than that would be too much of a risk. The results then weren’t great and led to my further revisions into the strategies which I posted previously. A difference here is that I wouldn’t be even looking at odds over $8 and would take anything less, which means that at worst it only would need a strike rate of 83.33%. What I found from running the numbers was that the 3rd favourites under $8 could get me a strike rate of 86.52% and the 4th favourites 89.01%.

I decided to launch this strategy on Tuesday morning in the wee hours while the UK dogs were running. It took off like a rocket making $40 profit by 9am. After that the Australian day wasn’t great, and it has been up and down on the third favourites ever since, making profit overall but acting much like the rollercoaster ride of the previous systems on a shorter timeframe. The fourth favourites however have just been a steady upwards trajectory and have made $50 profit over the two and a half days.
Results from the Lay Grey Bot

It is worth noting that the third favourites have a lot of activity through the AU/NZ races and also through the UK races, with the evening session (UK time) of the UK dogs being the best performer so far. The fourth favourites get minimal activity through the Australian and New Zealand races, with one or two bets per meeting usually, but quite a bit of activity in the UK which makes sense as the smaller field sizes would lead to lower odds on a fourth favourite. The fourth favourites have less activity but more consistient results.

I have decided to run with the fourth favourites and stopped the third favourites.

I’m also working on a soccer laying strategy which has made a dollar in the day and a half it has been running. Weekends have much more activity than weekdays for soccer, so I’m hopeful that results will continue on their current path and I can share details with you next week.

Until then, greetings from myself and Pebbles and Shyley
Pebbles and Shyley appear in the video

Samuel

Add comment March 7th, 2024 at 01:28pm

The vehicles hail from somewhere which sounds unpleasant

Canberra is rather well-known from its road markings at the point where two lanes merge which read “LANE ONE FORM”, a directive which seems rather unwise to disobey given the bureaucracy which issued it seems to have a loose grasp on the English language and would be likely to misunderstand any attempt at offering up an excuse and fine you for some other breach in addition to failing to LANE ONE FORM.

On a recent journey around the suburban streets with Pebbles and Shyley, I found a marking which provided some insight into the origin of this backwards bureaucracy…and it is a place which sounds unwelcoming.

VEHICLES OF BEWARE

They come in their vehicles from the place known only as Beware. As Bernard Woolley so eloquently noted in Yes Minister in regards to the Greeks, “It’s obvious, really: the Greeks would never suggest bewaring of themselves, if one can use such a participle (bewaring that is)” and the same could surely be said of the bureaucrats who write backwards in this way. So if it is not the bureaucrats we should bewaring of (yes Bernard, one can use such a participle) then it must be their location.

There must be an awful lot of red tape emanating from Beware, in addition to vehicles carrying bureaucrats full of backwards phrases. Backwards red tape; now that is a terrifying prospect.

Samuel

Add comment March 5th, 2024 at 05:25am

John Kerr’s steam-powered turntables

John Kerr, the long-time overnight talk radio host who retired from that life 11 years ago and has been playing country music on Gold Coast community station 94.1FM almost ever since, is someone who long-time readers of this blog will know I enjoy listening to. It was a sad day when he retired from his overnight show and a very exciting day when he resurfaced a few months later with his country music show.

I quite enjoy John’s country music show however I rarely get a chance to hear it live and usually record it to hear later on. On my little internal home radio station the show actually airs in part of one of John’s old timeslots from 12am-3am Sunday. I’m not a big fan of newer country music but some of it is OK. Thankfully John plays a good mix of both the old and new so it is an enjoyable show.

John and his show appeared in one of my strange dreams yesterday. In the dream, John’s show had been networked to other community radio stations around the country and John was touring his show to some of the towns which could now hear it. On this particular week he was going to Tumut, which isn’t far from Canberra (and has a fondness for me as back when I used to present news bulletins for AIR News on a weekend, the community station there, Sounds Of The Mountains aired those bulletins and had a working webstream, so I had an opportunity to hear how it sounded on the air, and an opportunity or two to drop in to the station where manager David Eisenhower was always a pleasure to see) and his show was to broadcast live from a local community hall in front of an audience.

John was all set up to go. He sat at a table up on stage with a big microphone and what appeared to be some sort of glowing antenna behind him to send the signal back to the Gold Coast. John plugged everything in but none of the CD players would work. John’s show had started to go to air so he started telling the audience how technology had let him down once again and he started interviewing the mayor of Tumut who made the startling announcement “oh no, of course those won’t work, we don’t allow electricity in the hall as it’s a very terrible health and safety risk, and I was wondering why you were plugging them in when there’s no power in here”.

John was beside himself. “What?? You’re joking aren’t you?” he excitedly exclaimed at the mayor.
“No, I won the election on the banning of electricity from the hall” came the stern reply.
“Well, do you allow fire?” John asked
“Ahhh, Yes” the mayor replied sheepishly, not knowing what John might be proposing to do.
“Good, well I have a plan” announced John “but it will take a few minutes so you must fill in briefly”.

John disappeared out the back for a few minutes and the mayor started singing. A few moments later there was smoke everywhere. John had setup a boiler at the back of the stage and was shoveling coal into it, with a big fire. He then put three large turntables on the desk of the stage and hooked up a pipe from the boiler to the back of each one and started playing records. They took a few moments to get up to speed but it worked, steam powered turntables!

Unfortunately it was so hot and with so much smoke, that nobody could see much of anything and everyone gathered at the radio station to listen instead, and admire the smoke billowing out of the community hall from a distance.

Samuel

2 comments March 3rd, 2024 at 05:15pm

The Sunday Share: A trip to Africa

This week we’re going to Africa!

I’m sure you’re familiar with Toto’s song “Africa”. Well a few years ago a more modern group, Weezer, produced a cover version of it after a campaign on Twitter requested it for reasons which aren’t particularly clear to anyone whatsoever.

To make matters even more peculiar, the video clip which they produced to go with it features Weird Al Yankovic acting a parody of Weezer lead singer Rivers Cuomo in what is apparently a send-up of a much older Weezer video clip for a song which I’m not really acquainted, plus some extra Weird Al accordion weirdness.

I’m not much of a fan of Weezer’s own work, but their covers of other people’s songs tend to be quite good. This is no exception.

Samuel

Add comment March 3rd, 2024 at 06:52am

Automated horse betting: A profitable lay strategy, and one which should work backing horses too

In fact it should be possible to back and lay the same horse and come out a winner no matter who wins the race.

It’s March and the autumn racing carnival is just starting to appear, so it’s a good time for me to demonstrate a strategy which I have been using to generate slow and steady profits, and a derivative of that strategy which I have put through its paces in a spreadsheet, have confidence in, and have launched into production today.

I am using two bots for this, both of which I’m really just scratching the surface of their capabilities by using them in very specific ways. First up the ANZ Horse Bot is running my laying strategy. The settings I’m using in it are remarkably simple but have been honed over some time to get them to the point where I consider them mature and reliable. The bot itself though has an incredibly powerful stats engine which I’m not currently using, but can be used to find the runners which meet almost any form indicator or bit of statistical criteria you could think of, and then place bets on them per your instructions.

The other is the Fav Money Staking bot, which I’m using for the backing strategy. Again, I’m using quite simple settings, but the abilities of the bot go far beyond how I’m using it and I will be interested in exploring those options further after I have bedded-in the backing strategy to the point where I’m comfortable that it works in reality as well as it does on paper.

I have a video up today running through the details of my strategies, a bit of the thought process behind them, how they’re set up in the bots, plus a quick look at some of the more advanced functions of the bots.

But it’s also important to document the strategies here, so here we go.

The laying strategy
I have been running this strategy for a while now and it has been a consistent performer. It’s not going to set the world on fire but it is consistent and should scale up a bit from where I have been using it.

The premise is simple. In the odds range of 2.00 to 2.99, lay the horse with the lowest odds. Often this is the favourite in the race, sometimes it’s the second favourite. In some races there are no horses in this odds range in which case the race is skipped. Favourites tend to win about a third of the time overall in horse racing, with their strike rate generally improving at lower odds. In the 2.00 to 2.99 range, I find the lowest priced runner wins about 40% of the time, so lay betting gets a strike rate of 60%.

This strategy works with a Stop At A Winner staking plan. That is, you have a set profit target to reach per winning race, and you increase your staking after each loss so that you can reach your target and recover the losses in a single win. Then you stop increasing staking and start again with a new series of bets aiming for a target. Lay betting with SAW staking at this odds range has fairly gentle stake increases and so works quite well.

I have been running the system at a very moderate target of 25c per win (I think I got mixed up and said 50c in the video) across thoroughbred racing and harness racing, and have been seeing an average return of a bit over $3 per day. Saturdays tend to outperform everything which a much higher strike rate and profit rate, which makes sense given the quality of racing on a Saturday is generally higher and thus it’s harder for the favourites to defeat their competition.

This is the results graph from the last three weeks of bets
Results graph of the lay strategy over the last three weeks

$69.39 profit in three weeks. Doesn’t sound like much when put like that, but considering this is off a profit target of 25c per winning race, I consider it quite a tidy little sum.

Most importantly, it grows consistently. And while some days are slightly tougher than others, the system hasn’t come close to reaching a stop loss and rarely has more than a few losses in a row which makes it quite safe in performing its loss recovery as per the Stop At A Winner Principle.

These are the settings I have been using.
The laying settings in the ANZ Bot
(click image to enlarge)

They are fairly open in terms of which races qualify as I don’t see much point in reducing the volume of races when there are already plenty of races which don’t have a runner in my odds range and thus don’t qualify. As long as there is some liquidity in the market and there’s a horse meeting the odds criteria, I’m happy. If you wanted to take steps to reduce the volume of races and/or possibly increase the strike rate, increasing the mimiumum amount matched in the market or adjusting the number of runners in the race may achieve this. But I haven’t seen the need to do so and thus haven’t tested it.

One important thing in these settings is the inplay action is set to Take SP. This means that if the bet isn’t matched by the time the race jumps, the volume of unmatched bets with the Take SP are put through a calculation and get matched together at whatever prices the weight of the market dictates. It’s similar to the TAB dividends process. The odds you get from this are usually better than TAB odds but might be worse than you had been trying to get matched at, meaning if the race goes your way, you might not win quite as much as you hoped. But I consider that a better outcome than getting only partially matched (which can happen in rapidly moving markets) and barely getting any return at all. You might prefer to not have this process and to cancel an unmatched or partially unmatched bet at the jump, but I don’t recommend it.

The Backing Strategy
As I mentioned, the horses in this odds range are winning about 40% of the time. A 40% strike rate on bets in horse racing is a good achievement, but when the odds on offer for them is as low as this ($2.00 to $2.99) it’s actually a bit of a challenge to make a profit out of it. I had tried using the SAW staking method on backing these runners but found it was far too easy and frequent to have a losing streak of 8, 9, 10 races in a row and hit a stop loss, and it happened regularly enough the wins could not overcome the losses.

Still, 40% strike rate. There had to be something that would work.

Well, Steve and Michael who produced the ANZ Bot I’m using for the laying strategy do quite a bit of work on staking strategies and often then produce bots which take advantage of the unique features of each staking strategy. One strategy I had been looking at and thinking it might be a good fit for my 40% strike rate on short price runners conundrum is called Fav Money Staking because it is designed with the odds range of favourites in mind. It uses a more gentle staking progression than Stop At A Winner and doesn’t expect to turn a profit out of one winning race but rather out of a few in a series.

They have a bot to go with it. The Fav Money Staking bot. My only concern with it was that even if it was suitable for my specific horse selection criteria, as far as I could see it didn’t have the same option as the ANZ bot to pick “any selection” within an odds range and instead required you to choose a favourite ranking (ie. first favourite, second favourite, etc). This concerned me because it would require me to split my selection criteria in to two parts:
1. 1st favourite between 2.00 and 2.99
2. 2nd favourite between 2.00 and 2.99 if the first favourite is under 2.00.
This would result in the staking running separately on these strategies and potentially result in significant differences in outcomes to what I had modeled. Thankfully, it turns out my fears were unfounded.

I discovered while preparing the video that the “any selection” option is available in Fav Money Staking Bot. Whether it was there the whole time and it just wasn’t clear to me from the available documentation, or it was added in to a version at some stage, I don’t know. But it is quite a relief because it means I can run exactly the selection criteria in Fav Money Staking as I can in ANZ Bot, and thus my modeling should be valid.

The selection criteria is one thing. Wrangling the options of the Fav Money Staking system is another. Ultimately it is a fairly straight forward system in that you give it a starting stake, and it works out the sequence from that starting point, continuing until either the profit target or stop loss are met.

To model this and figure out how best to set this up, I took my lay results from the last three weeks, plotted them in Excel as if they were Back bets, then figured out the staking based on a 50c starting stake and plotted the results with various profit and stop loss settings.

At first I had no real success. Any combination I tried with the same selections as ANZ Bot just didn’t want to turn a consistent profit.

$5 profit target / $50 stop loss
All eligible runners $5 profit target and $50 stop loss
It turned a profit, but hit stop loss three times and spent most of the three weeks circulating around the same spot. The pattern showed clearly that it would probably only break even in the long run.

So I took my observations about Saturday racing being tougher for backing winners and pulled all of the Saturday races out. With the same profit target and stop loss, things improved.
A profit without Saturday racing
$135.63 profit, in fact. There was a stop loss in there, but it didn’t seem to do much damage.

Still, it did take the better part of a week to undo a stop loss, and that would be a concern in a period with a worse strike rate, so I kept fiddling.

$25 profit target / $50 stop loss / no Saturdays
A much bigger profit on a $25 profit target without Saturday racing
$263.58 profit. A much faster rate of increase along the way makes two stop losses look like blips. The faster rate of increase means that stop losses are minor inconveniences rather than generators of disappointing weekly results. Quite clearly by extending how long the staking progression has to run for, it resulted in the bigger stakes later on in the progression ultimately landing on enough winners to fly ahead.

I also tried a $20 target but it had very similar results to the $5 target

And at the other end of the scale, a 1c profit target, effectively meaning the staking progression should rarely ever need to go very far and thus limiting the risk of stop loss.
1c target
It avoided a stop loss even if one staking progression did go on for a bit and bring some drawdown briefly, but it also was quite slow compared to the $25 target and, if it had reached the stop loss, would probably have taken a couple weeks to dig out from it.

So after all of that modeling, I settled on a $25 profit target and set about setting up the bot accordingly.

These are the settings I am using.
The laying settings in the Fav Money Bot
(click image to enlarge)

Now, I set that up this morning and we haven’t quite reached today’s racing yet so I don’t have any real world results yet, and it is Friday today so while I anticipate a decent result today, tomorrow is Saturday and the system calls for no bets to be placed on Saturday racing, so I will have to stop the bot from placing bets tomorrow (either by pushing the stop button or deselecting the races…the stop button is the better idea, I just have to remember to start it again on Sunday morning). As such, I don’t expect to have useful results to show you until late next week at the earliest when a decent number of bets have gone through and I can see how the results compare to the modeling and, hopefully, be able to report it is all tickety-boo.

Combined strategies
I am continuing to run the lay strategy as it has proven itself to be a reliable workhorse for a while now. The upshot of running both the back and lay strategies simultaneously is that I will almost always be both backing and laying the same horse, meaning I will have a bet on for a specific horse to win and another bet for that same horse to lose. Sounds mad when you put it like that, but as the different strategies will be at different points in their staking plans and indeed are using different staking plans, they should both win in the long run across the multitude of races.

So effectively, it doesn’t matter who wins the race, the very fact that the race is being run is enough to generate a profit if these systems both work according to plan.

If you’re interested in trying something similar, or maybe entirely different strategies, the two bots I’m using and plenty of documentation about them are available at these links:
Fav Money Staking Bot
ANZ Both

I can’t wait to see how these strategies perform together. It’s going to be fascinating. I look forward to bringing you some results soon.

Samuel

Add comment March 1st, 2024 at 01:06pm

You are hereby sentenced to greet the alien invasion!

A regular feature on this blog many years ago was recaps of my very peculiar dreams. In the time that I wasn’t maintaining the blog, my dreams usually ended up on my Facebook page. Facebook’s “memories” feature likes to remind me of them on an annual basis so I see no reason why I shouldn’t entertain you with the back catalogue of the strange goings-ons in my head during the most sleepful hours.

Today we head back to the year 2019.

It was 3am and I decided to visit the Magistrates Court.

When I got there a magistrate and prosecutor greeted me. The magistrate told me I didn’t need to enter a plea, and he found me guilty. I asked what the charges were and the magistrate said “nobody knows…it’s a secret”. He then sentenced me to stand guard outside the railway station until the aliens arrive. At this point the magistrate morphed in to radio host Clyde Lewis, who proceeded to give me a long lecture about the warring alien tribes of Neptune and Mars putting our moon aliens at risk, which would force the moon aliens to take shelter at the railway station.

I then went to the railway station. American political operative Roger Stone appeared with a fax machine and a black jellybean milkshake, and told me President Trump would fax a greeting to the aliens and I had to give it to them. The milkshake was to be my payment. This was a recurring theme in my dreams at this time, that Roger Stone would reward me with black jelly beans for doing things for President Trump.

My lawyer, who had missed everything to this point, stood on top of Telstra Tower and smiled.

Samuel

2 comments March 1st, 2024 at 02:36am

Adventures In Betting: Further revision to the greyhound selection criteria

It would be fair to say that last week’s revision to the selection criteria for the greyhounds in the LayPro88 staking system didn’t quite go according to plan. The third favourites improved quite a bit and were roughly breaking even throughout the week, ending very slightly down. Good news but still room for improvement. The fourth favourites though started off badly (as seen in my day trip to Goulburn) and stayed there, sitting roughly level most days but with a downward trend overall.

Graph of greyhound results

Breaking it down into odds ranges tells a bit of a story
Greyhound results by odds range
(HTML table formatting is a pain, it’s much easier to just take a screenshot out of Excel rather than paste the data in and fix up the HTML formatting, especially on a table this size).

It is notable that the strike rate on the higher odds for the fourth favourites dropped off by about 5-10 percentage points. This explains most of the trouble. With five bets in the recovery cycle following a loss, it is not possible to fully recoup a loss on anything paying over $8 without more winning bets after the recovery cycle. As such, the higher the odds, the higher the required strike rate, but at the same time the higher odds tend to improve the strike rate and the systems don’t turn a profit without something in the higher odds ranges. The dropoff in strike rate at the top end of the odds was costly. There will always be some variability in strike rate in any form of racing and it’s possible this was just a bad week, but it’s important to be able to handle a bad week and the performance in this week was worse than I would like to see from a bad week. Eliminating losses entirely isn’t possible, however reducing the damage they do is the aim so that the profitable days can far outweigh the bad ones should be achievable.

Based on this data, I have reduced the top end of the odds range from $15 to $13 for both the third and fourth favourites. The fourth favourites have a decent chunk of activity in that range, and losses are very costly up there. When the strike rate drops at that end, it is virtually impossible for the rest of the system to compensate.

I have made the same change on the third favourites. While the losses at that end of the third favourites remain rare, they are still costly. If things go well I might reconsider allowing the third favourites up to $14, but I’m not sure that the greatly increased strike rate up there is worth the risk of losses.

On the low end of the scale, the third favourites remain at a $6 odds minimum. This end continues to perform well despite a lower than desired strike rate as a five bet recovery cycle recoups more than the lost amount. The strike rate for the fourth favourites below $7 was poor when it was in use previously, and the handful of bets which got placed at the lower odds due to market flucturations at bet placement time remained at about the same strike rate, so the $7 minimum seems to be fine there.

So, starting today the new odds ranges have been set as:
3rd favourites: $6-$13
4th favourites: $7-$13

And another week begins…

Incidentally, I’m running LayGreyBot in a virtual machine along with a few other bots. While the bots themselves don’t use much memory, their memory usage does increase over time but tends to level off after a few days. Windows 10, even with as much of the unnecessary preinstalled bloatware disabled as possible, tends to take up a bit of memory and doesn’t always handle that expansion of memory usage from the bots very well. The host machine for the virtual machine is used for other purposes intermittently and doesn’t have a huge amount of RAM to begin with, so I originally only assigned 2GB of RAM to the Windows VM, which was fine with one bot when I started out, but with multiple bots running it started to cause unexpected application crashes and the odd full Windows reboot. 3GB was better but not great, I’ve found 4GB is fine for running multiple bots. My advice for Windows 10 is allocate 1GB for Windows and 500MB per bot, then allocate an extra 1GB if running more than one bot. I haven’t tested Windows 11 but wouldn’t expect it to be any more efficient.

At some stage I’ll probably look at moving the bots onto another machine with more resources. Whether that’s the existing VM moved on to more generous hardware, or whether I build a new environment as either a physical standalone machine or a new VM, I haven’t decided yet.

Samuel

Add comment February 29th, 2024 at 02:02pm

ASIO’s annual statement is an ongoing source of hilarity

It really is hard to take ASIO’s annual threat assessment statements seriously. Each year they seem to become more detached from reality and read more like one of my dreams than anything which could actually have happened or be a plausible concern about something which might happen.

This year’s statement made me laugh hysterically for a few minutes. In it, there are details of a supposed foreign group of spies who were apparently doing exactly what you would expect them to do: posing as legitimate business-people, bureaucrats, diplomats etc, trying to connect with people who are in some way connected to government or politics and offering them seemingly real consulting roles so that they can then be subtly probed for more sensitive information. Nothing remarkable in this. It’s exactly what you would expect foreign spies to do, and exactly what I expect our own spies at ASIS are doing overseas.

The real laugh came in the form of how they thwarted the threat from a group ASIO laughably dubbed “The A-Team”

We confronted the A-team directly. Late last year, the team leader thought he was grooming another Australian online. Little did he know he was actually speaking with an ASIO officer – the spy was being spied on, the player was being played. You can imagine his horror when my officer revealed himself and declared, “we know who you are. We know what you are doing. Stop it or there will be further consequences.”

An utterly terrifying digital finger-wagging in an online chat. “Stop being naughty or we’ll do something about it!”. ASIO expect the public to take this nonsense seriously?

ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess goes on…

Like other public servants, spies are required to tell their security teams about suspicious approaches so I sure hope the team leader lodged a contact report!

That’s quite an assumption to make. Assuming that policies and procedures for foreign government workers are the same as for Australian government employees. Naive would be an understatement. I’m sure that the foreign spy, receiving such an empty threat, laughed as much as I did when I read it.

The media is reporting it as “job done, threat averted” but Mr. Burgess continues and confirms that, actually, they didn’t stop much of anything.

We decided to confront the A-team and then speak about it publicly as part of a real-world, real-time disruption. We want the A-team to know its cover is blown. We want the A-team’s bosses to know its cover is blown. If the team leader failed to report our conversation to his spymasters, he will now have to explain why he didn’t, along with how ASIO knows so much about his team’s operations and identities.

I want the A-team and its masters to understand if they target Australia, ASIO will target them; we will make their jobs as difficult, costly and painful as possible.

In other words, “we don’t think they stopped when we wagged our finger at them, and we want them to know that if we catch them doing it again, we will wag our finger at them again”.

To be fair, earlier in the story Mr. Burgess did mention that they stopped a handful of Australians from communicating with the foreign spies, although it’s notable that some of those people apparently knew they were dealing with foreign spies and were happy to provide them with information, so I’m sure those people will be able to recommence communications through other means. About the only thing which can really be done is to remove their access to secret information, but given that in one of those cases the information was about the internal machinations of a political party and not secret government information, it’s hard to see how it is any of ASIO’s business, and is in fact quite an overreach on ASIO’s behalf. There is really no difference between that type of information being given to and reported on by the media and read by foreign governments, and just being given directly to foreign governments. It is not a state secret and none of ASIO’s business who knows it. That this is apparently their crowning achievement for the year makes one wonder about the half a billion dollars or more of taxpayer funds that ASIO receives every year, and what other more useful things it could be spent on.

Quite frankly the whole thing is either absurd because it has been made up as security theatre propaganda, or absurd because all they have done is prove ASIO has no real ability to stop foreign spying and are in fact spying on Australians themselves more than the foreign spies are.

The whole thing is laughable.

Samuel

Add comment February 29th, 2024 at 07:28am

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