Samuel's Blog

Adventures In Betting: Always wait for the bad days to weed out the weak points of a system

February 21st, 2024 at 12:30pm

It might sound strange to say that I have been waiting eagerly for a losing period on the LayPro88 greyhound system, but it has come and I’m actually very delighted about it. If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, my previous post outlining and explaining the system is here.

With any betting system, I always want to see a bad day in action. It’s great to have good days with nice profits, but it is inevitable that betting systems will have bad days, so with any betting system I always want to see it have a bad period so that I can see where the real weaknesses are. It’s impossible to completely prevent days with losses from occurring and one should always be prepared for that, but data gathered on a bad run is invaluable in showing where the weaknesses are and what can be adjusted to reduce the frequency with which bad days will occur. Ultimately the aim is to reduce the bad days so that, although they will result in a loss, that loss is inconsequential when considered alongside all of the good days.

When I set up a system, I always wait for the first bad period to come along and then I analyse the data from those days and determine whether
a) there is a weakness which can be removed, or
b) the system as a whole is the issue and needs serious revision

The greyhound system has been going so well that it has taken a few weeks to get there but now that the bad period has visited, I’m delighted to say it fits category A.

You may recall I have been running with two similar systems running concurrently.
1. Lay the fourth favourite if it is paying odds of $5.00 to $15.00 and is paying at least $2.00 more than the favourite.
2. Lay the third favourite if it is paying odds of $5.00 to $9.00 and is paying at least $1.50 more than the favourite.

The fourth favourites have been steaming along making nice profits, so I’m not too concerned about them but took the opportunity to analyse them a bit anyway. The third favourites on the other hand have been troublesome. It stands to reason that the third favourites would win more often than fourth favourites and would pose more trouble with this system which is betting that they will lose, so this wasn’t unexpected, but was a good opportunity for analysis and revision when the trouble finally provided enough data.

The third favourites have been struggling for a few days. Some periods of profit but mostly small losses slowly accumulating. You may recall I originally set the upper odds limit at $9 because the recovery cycles can fully recover any losses at this amount without needing extra wins. Unfortunately this odds range was not producing a high enough strike rate to always get through the recovery cycles, so the stake sizes increased slowly over a few days until the reached the stop loss limits I had set (the stakes had grown from the $0.50 starting point to over $6). At this point the LayGreyBot accepted the loss, gave up on trying to recover it, and started afresh with a new cycle at the original stake size (it can also be set to stop completely).

Over the course of four days, 17/2 to 20/2, the 3rd favourites system placed 652 bets and had 547 wins, a strike rate of 83.90%. Well short of the 88% generally required to make consistent profits in a LayPro88 system, and short even of the 84.5% the third favourites have previously needed to return a break even result.

I decided the best option was to perform a breakdown of this period by odds range and see if some odds ranges were pulling the whole system down. It did not disappoint. Note that even though the systems is set to $5.00-$9.00, occasionally it will pick up a runner just outside of this range due to variability in the market in the seconds leading up to the race.

Clearly anything under $6 is a problem. The $8 range was strangely problematic too but with a relatively low volume of bets, so not worth removing from the system given the 9+ range which was performing well would also need to be removed in order to do so.

Out of interest I decided to see how third favourites at higher odds ranges were performing. $9-$15 seemed like a good range given the fourth favourites are betting up to $15 odds. As the bot has not been looking at these ranges, I didn’t have data to hand which I could simply analyse in a spreadsheet, so instead I had to go through Betfair’s results pages and check manually race-by-race. I only went back as far as the 18th but got more than enough data to reach a conclusion.

The higher odds, while low in volume, add a bit to the strike rate, and even half a percentage point on the strike rate really can make a big difference with this system. The solution based on the data is obvious. I have adjusted the odds range for the third favourites from the previous $5-$9 range to a new $6-$15.

And on the fourth favourites I ran a similar analysis and received some interesting results which also led to a change.

Anything under $7 seemed to be performing quite poorly here, and although the system was running profitably, an extra percentage point or so on the strike rate doesn’t hurt at all (quite the opposite actually!!) so I have revised the odds range for the fourth favourites from the previous $5-$15 to a new range of $7-$15.

And now the new ranges are underway and the monitoring continues.

(Update: Further revisions on 29 February)

Samuel

Entry Filed under: Adventures In Betting

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