In this video I demonstrate how the power of stats and form can be used to improve the selection criteria and the profits in automated betting on horse racing.
The video ended up being a bit longer than I anticipated, and there’s still more to cover in a future video or two, so to help you navigate it, chapters have been added accordingly.
00:00 Introduction
01:49 Recent results
05:13 Configuring stats filters in ANZ Horse Bot
06:24 The stats the bot is using
07:20 The stats engine: ANZ Horse Ratings
11:35 Using the ANZ Ratings Analyser to hone strategies
19:20 Configuring the best performing strategy in the Analyser and Bot
20:20 Building and testing new strategies in the Analyser
25:22 Exploring results in the analyser
27:20 Some high-priced winners from Saturday
28:24 How the bot used the stats to find the winner of Belmont race 4
31:10 Using the analyser to check your strategies are performing as they should
33:38 The settings for the 2nd best strategy
36:01 The first winner for the day pays $8.40
36:51 Summary
Back when Jim Ball was the overnight host on Sydney’s 2GB, he used Paul Kelly’s “Sydney From A 747” as his theme song, at least until circumstances changed.
When Macquarie Radio made an arrangement with Pacific Star to turn Melbourne’s 3MP 1377 in to Melbourne Talk Radio MTR 1377, Jim’s show was networked into Melbourne and it became inappropriate for Sydney From A 747 to continue to be used for the show. Instead, he opted to use Peggy Lee’s “It’s A Good Day” which had previously been used as his closing theme.
There was a period of time where Jim moved to 2UE (where he was again syndicated) and then moved back to 2GB. My recollection of this is hazy but I think the Peggy Lee song continued to be his theme music during this time.
For the majority of Rush Limbaugh’s 30+ years on the air, th instrumental portions of this song greeted the airwaves at six past the hour, three times per day, five days per week. It became as much an icon of the American media landscape as Rush himself. There was a clever edit at about the 30 second mark to jump to another instrumental section around the 2:28 mark which was Rush’s cue to begin talking.
Rush picked this song as his theme song primarily due to its strong unique bass line, but the irony of a conservative using a very anti-conservative song wasn’t lost on him. There’s a funny loophole in the way royalties work in American radio that using a short clip of a song doesn’t necessarily result in a requirement to pay royalties for its use, so Limbaugh, albeit playing 40-ish seconds of the song across hundreds of radio stations, used the song royalty-free for many years. Eventually EMI issued a cease-and-desist order and Limabugh temporarily stopped using the song. However the song’s writer Chrissie Hynde was interviewed and stated her parents loved Limbaugh’s show and she didn’t mind her music being used in that way. It also helped that around that time, Rush was vocally opposing a plan by the EPA to test chemicals on animals, putting him in rare agreement with PETA which was one of Chrissie Hynde’s favourite organisations, so a payment arrangement was reached and Rush used the song forever more.
After Rush’s passing, the theme song continued to be used during the guest hosts which filled his timeslot and for about a year by Travis Clay and Buck Sexton whose show Premiere Radio moved into Rush’s old timeslot. They now use a different piece of music.
40-odd seconds of intro music might seem like an awful lot, but for whatever reason it has been the standard in syndicated talk radio in the US for a long time. My theory is that as they generally run on a 40 second delay, allowing them to dump a short portion of the delay if necessary without coming out of delay completely, having the long intro allows the show’s producers to be entirely sure they are in delay when the broadcast begins. It also allows affiliate stations to be a little bit late getting into the show without missing anything, and run their own idents over the intro. One of the best examples of this is from this clip from KXNT Las Vegas in 2009 (April 27, to be precise) where the board operator did a masterful job of crossfading the weather bed with Rush’s into under newsreader Kristen Flowers and putting a hybrid station ID / Rush show announcement to air over the intro before Rush began to speak.
Wrapping up the series on finding value by hedging and dutching greyhounds in Hedge Dog Bot, Samuel looks at the results of the various methods tested in recent weeks and highlights the ones which show the most potential for profit.
“I saw a UFO and nobody believes me” and if you described seeing some of the odd alien creatures in this video, I’m not surprised they don’t believe you!
Clippity clippity clop
The horses wouldn’t go in the gate
The starter couldn’t start the race
The punters were sad
The bookies were mad
So the jockeys went and ran the race
The horses were pleased
The punters appeased
Clippity clippity clop
Continuing from last week’s video of finding value on the dogs by dutching at level stakes, this week I provide an update on results from last week’s strategy, and continue looking for more value at level staking by adding a hedge bet (insurance) on the favourite, with results from some days of that. Plus, the next stage in testing, and some exciting news about the return of British greyhound racing to free to air television.
Jeff Wayne’s musical rendition of The War Of The Worlds is a true masterpiece. And I always get a bit of amusement from the assertions early in the piece from the expert astronomer that nothing could possibly live on mars, let alone be coming from there to invade.
There is a highlight right at the end in the epilogue where NASA have sent a rover to Mars and then lose communications with it and the rest of their facilities (including one in “Can-Berra” which great considering I live in Canberra) and another invasion begins.
Last night while I was watching the federal budget (or the “Magical Mythical Numbers Night at the Federal Circus” as I have taken to calling it, given I don’t think there’s been a believable budget in almost 20 years, apart from one about ten years ago) I noticed Bill Shorten sitting at the far end of the front bench and it reminded me of a dream I had just before the 2019 election when he was the opposition leader.
In that year I was booth captain for a political party at one of the polling places in Canberra. This meant I was effectively the supervisor of the volunteers for that party at that polling place, there for the full day to set up and pack up, and coordinate the volunteers through the day while also speaking to voters myself and handing out how to vote cards, etc. I recall taking a 45 minute break for a late breakfast / early lunch but that was my only real break in the day, and I was there until well into the evening as a scrutineer for the vote count as well. On that day I also helped set up signage at a number of other polling places around Canberra, so it was a very long day, and the days preceding it were very busy with campaign activities too. I am no longer a member of that political party, or any political party for that matter, having become very disillusioned with much of politics and governments since.
Naturally the election was on my mind quite a lot in the days before that election, and it is no surprise that it entered my dreams.
In the dream it was Election Day, probably early-afternoon, and Bill Shorten turned up at my polling place.
The voters didn’t pay much attention to him so he decided to get their attention by making things levitate, including the building being used as the polling place.
The election official in charge, my Year 6 teacher Mrs. Brophy, came out of the polling place and furiously told Bill that “levitating is not permitted within the 6 metre campaigning exclusion zone” and he must “put the building down at once”, so Bill put the building down and Mrs. Brophy closed the polls early and started counting the ballots in the middle of the road.
Seeing Bill Shorten down the far end of the front bench on the TV coverage of the budget, with seemingly a bit of a gap between him and the rest of the front bench, made me wonder if he ever dreams of being back in the leadership role of the Labor Party, and if he could, if he would levitate things in the House of Representatives to make it happen?
As a number of people who watch these videos have expressed an interest in level staking, as opposed to the progression or recovery staking systems in most of the videos to date, I have set about trying to find an automated system which can deliver profit with level stakes on the greyhounds. The trick is to find odds which exceed the strike rate of certain runners.
In smaller greyhound fields, the outsiders of the field tend to present this value while still having a reasonable chance of winning races and delivering a profit.
My testing hasn’t all been smooth sailing but it has led me to a system which I’m now testing and has started off well. Here’s a look at what I’ve tested and what I’m doing now. And in a week I’ll come back with more results.
In this dream I was in Antarctica and working for Chief Superintendent Christopher Foyle (of the TV show “Foyle’s War”) where I made the great discovery that it was possible not only to detect a murderer by using the magical powers of a teapot, but to restrain a suspect too.
Mr. Foyle was greatly pleased by this as a combination of Antarctica’s occupational health and safety policies and their human rights legislation meant it was no longer permissible to physically touch or hold a suspect in the course of arresting them, and Mr. Foyle was absolutely adamant that those laws must be strictly adhered to, so detaining people by waving a teapot around made working within the rules much easier.
Mr. Foyle informed me that the fact I am a wizard was his main reason for hiring me, as he thought skills involving magic and inanimate objects would come in handy one day.
I received an email the other day with some questions about obtaining data from the betting bots I’ve been using and demonstrating, and graphing that data.
For the most part I think it’s a fairly straight forward process, but there’s a few little tips and tricks which can make the data more useful, so I thought it warranted a video.
Some songs are a real product of their time and a glimpse into the prevailing mindset of the day. This is one of them.
From a time when the cold war and nuclear armageddon seemed to be a real and imminent threat, and UFO sightings were a dime a dozen, along came a song from The Buchanan Brothers to combine the two with a dose of religious advice. A real time capsule of its day.
I had a most peculiar dream yesterday that I was playing golf with dinosaurs. Big furry purple dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were very friendly although they didn’t speak any English and roared occasionally.
To make the game stranger, the par score on each hole was variable. There was the standard par score, but before teeing off it was required that you had to search the hole and catch a crocodile. The crocodile, which did speak English, would then award you extra shots on the hole’s par score depending on a criteria which wasn’t entirely clear but a dinosaur did try to explain to me through roars and placing multiple crocodiles on scales and weighing golf balls.
On one hole which was notionally a par 5 I was granted a par 8 and the dinosaur was granted a par 9. I have absolutely no idea why though.