Much is made of creating a system, money management, staking etc, all very important. The difference between profit and loss can be decided by a swing in outcomes of only a few percent. There is one factor, seldom mentioned, that can weigh more heavily on the final profit or loss outcome. That is the efficiency of placing a bet.

"It can't be that hard", I hear you say. Sure, work out all your bets early in the day, put them in your bot, set and forget. However there is one category of punter that reacts only to the price triggers and is dependent on placing a bet as late as possible, because that's where all is revealed about the chances or otherwise of a horse winning or losing, just before the Close and usually after the Official Start time.

I'm one such punter and can't use a bot to place these kind of bets. In a way that's good, it's a niche market devoid of all bots and droids. They've already placed their bets unless going In-Play. The downside for me is dealing with inefficiencies in placing my bets.

Take yesterday for example, on paper (as if I was a bot) I would have placed 40 bets, had no accidents and made 1.4 points profit. What happened in reality was I placed 18 bets, no accidents and made 0.8 points profit. Pretty inefficient, hey? I've forsaken 0.6 points (at $500 liability = $300) profit, due to other influences. A massive 40%. You think you've got problems Aussie, with a few percent creep in dividends....lol

What are these influences:
1. Too many systems. I am trying to scan each race for 6 sets of system rules.
2. Not enough time to execute the bets before the Close.
3. Too many races closing within a few minutes of each other, especially if you consider Harness races as well.
4. Distractions, phone rings, someone at the door etc
5. Boredom, on Mon & Tue plenty of time between races but your mindset wanders, you start yawning then get distracted.
6. Mind games, comes into play when you miss a successful bet and the next one's an accident. The bad brain chemistry starts warming up.
7. Becoming protective, once you've made a good profit and it's time to place another bet, you think should I risk it?
8. Fatigue, this sort of betting can wear you down very quickly, you start missing things, making mistakes.
9. Lack of discipline, not sticking to the rules of your system, staking or money management.
10. Self doubt, after a a loss thoughts about is the system right, should I scrap it, start coming into play.

By no means the full list but enough said, it is a battle of the mind and body. Is it worthwhile then? I believe it is because all that's really happening here is you are having less bets and profit/loss but if the systems are profitable and deliver the same or comparable POT despite the inefficiencies and only an analysis of your Betfair account can confirm that, then set yourself an average profit target and increase your staking to deliver same result.

It's Me versus the machine UB, for example: Well done to him for achieving his 100 points. How can you compete against multi botted systems running 24/7? Well you can't, BUT I'd hazard a guess that to achieve that result his bots might have had to place thousands of bets. If your system/s deliver 10 points profit for 100 bets in the same time frame, then don't say to yourself, "I can't compete with that", say to yourself, "How much do I want to make on average each day?", and work with your system and it's inherit inefficiencies to deliver that result. If it means your stake/liability, to deliver that outcome, is outside the realms of your 2% of bank, sobeit! You'll just have to wait a little longer to build the Bank up.

Set & forget has never worked for me whereas working each race right up to the jump & I do ok but experience all of the points you set-out above RP.

No magic workaround that I know of other than to take regular breaks throughout the year to let one's brain have a well deserved spell & reset for another round of slow torture

Hi RP,

Totally Agree with all the points you raised and also with the point that there is always going to be new, exiting and unexpected ways that prevent punters from placing winning bets.

As far as your point 1 and too many systems, this would be your major issue I gather. The only way to over come that is to automate the way you gather the information and then run the systems (all of them) together when you click on a race. This way each time you refresh a race information all your systems/calculations are refreshed, updated and presented to you. This would greatly improve your punting life and leave you to actually placing bets rather then trying to do all that AND place bets.

As a fellow punter, it is what I have in our program; because I have long ago recognised the issues that you are raising as very real and valid for all of us who don't want or can't automate their betting entirely. Semi automation is the next best thing and lends itself especially to people like you who need to make decisions very close to jump time. Our program actually talks to me as well to let me know about bet changes and so on, but that is just an added luxury where I don't have to sit there waiting for a bet, as long as I am within an earshot I know its time.

http://www.propun.com.au/racing_for...ead.php?t=27765

All the best

__________________
Michal - Ratings2Win Pty Ltd
R2W Axis - Axis is Australia's leading horse racing software and database;
with sophisticated form analysis tools and accurate horse performance ratings for TAB meetings.
http://www.ratings2win.com.au/

Set n Forgets have existed since 1997,
It's in the architecture/logic/scripting and a program to run the script.

Today they call it BOT or DROIDS or whatever else the flavor of the month is,
I won't say it's wrong, but refuse to use those terminologies as illustrations, personal choice.

Most programmers usually know ZILCH about the logic, they want to have proof of the end result first, and you cannot get an end result until the programming is sorted to prove the POT, catch 22.

The "logic" comes from the punter, who has to base an architecture, based on what experience the punter has prior to deciding to go down the Set n Forget path based on actual POT hard data.
Would you give your hard earn't experience and information away ?

It's one gigantic Loop but one must have a selection method/s and results management process sorted before coding can actually begin.

The other problem that's been encountered is this;
Let's say the S n F side of things is all sorted tested and working;
There is no guarantee the TAB or receiver of bets will have their ********es sorted when the bytes travel from program to TAB sever/s.

There is a way around this though, a "sure fire" way the bets/data bytes will usually always be accepted out of your respective PC/Program,
98% ~ of the time.

The "winner" in all this is, who has a feasible architecture.

Can you elaborate on what that sure fire way is?

Having been around punting for a long time now I have played around with auto betting, I have a personally programed solution that uses betfair and there are few others like Net Bet pro and Rapid bet but these are TOTE solutions and only accept Tote win/place bets and exotics; not fixed bets.

Betting to fixed prices is nearly impossible due to the possibility of having your bet reduced/rejected/price change. Betfair is the only one because you know what liquidity is available at a price so that is a unique situation. And regrdless of what criticism is leveled at betfair regarding commissions and down time, theirs is a top class API.

But automatically betting fixed price and having an option where to bet is the most important. As I already mentioned the limitations apply outside of betfair that make it very hard to do this; unless you accept that 'you get what you get' when you place a bet which most people don't (rightfully) want to accept. There is one further risk; after spending hundreds of hours setting up your automated betting you get your account/access shut off, (remember most agencies are not interested in winners)that would just be lovely!

There are some other solutions Im sure and I would be interested in hearing about them as I don't have the time to research this as much as I would like.

__________________
Michal - Ratings2Win Pty Ltd
R2W Axis - Axis is Australia's leading horse racing software and database;
with sophisticated form analysis tools and accurate horse performance ratings for TAB meetings.
http://www.ratings2win.com.au/

AND



I'm not a programmer, it does not mean however I can't "see" where a problem and or solution may be.

It depends on the type of application you have created, I can't say what to code and what not to code, but I can say if let's say a TAB's server is not accepting a packet of information from your application, then where does the actual problem exist ?
Where did it, ( the packets of data bytes) precisely fall and what are or were the error logs in reply in accordance to your program's error logs?
Hope that makes sense.

If the actual precise point of data breakdown can be established and what caused it, was it from anything to physical phone line damage, in that case neither you or the TAB is at fault... see what I'm trying to get at ?

Ok, if there was no evidence of physical phone line damage, or some other interference beyond the TAB and your program, then where exactly does the problem reside, is it at the "entrance point" of the TAB's server?

Was it too much data at the last minutes before start of race....?

Let's say you have 30 seconds before advertised time of race start, your loaded bets are set to go off at that point in time;
How long does it take to send?
How long does it take for the TAB to respond?
and how long does it take for your program to "tell" you the bet was sent but not accepted?
And then how long does it take for your program to counter-respond?

And has the race by now started ?

Does it happen mostly on the races if it were a successful bet but never made it, it won ?
and if it did get through, it lost?

( law of Murrrfea ? )


If you can eliminate each millisecond of this vital part of the process, your are sure to see where it needs to get fixed, and closer to the "sure fire".
It would be interesting to do a few of these "under the bonnet" things here.
The logs and experiences at this level of the punting game.

Hope these probables help

Puntz

RP, Can you automate SOME of the betting with your bot or do ALL the systems rely on the bets being made at the very last second?

__________________
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.”

― Earl Nightingale

Hi Puntz,

Thanks for that, I thought that you had an actual solution, that is why I asked. What you wrote is much akin to debugging steps, something I do all the time and I have been there in regards to this issue. However you certainly have the logic in your thinking, most people struggle with that.

The main issue as far as I see it, is that the limitation to auto betting is the lack of 'receivers'; institutions that are set up to accept bets through API. The ones I mentioned are the ones I am aware of; Betfair, Tatts and Tabcorp. These have a set of protocols and these ensure that the process goes smoothly. The only time I have an issue is when the whole Betfair goes down; not much I can do there, outside of that my bot executes faithfully. Are there any other institutions that have a reliable API? Anyone?

__________________
Michal - Ratings2Win Pty Ltd
R2W Axis - Axis is Australia's leading horse racing software and database;
with sophisticated form analysis tools and accurate horse performance ratings for TAB meetings.
http://www.ratings2win.com.au/

M



So you are looking for a way to send a bet to where exactly ?

Hi Puntz,

I think you are misunderstanding me. I just wanted to know what other solutions are out there. As in what other betting agencies are there that have a reliable API outside of Betfair, Tatts and Tabcorp. The way you came across initially was like you had a solution, I don't need help with programing, at least I don't think I need it. For me automatic betting is a hobby but I have too little time to properly research what is out there.

Thanks Anyway for your suggestions earlier.

__________________
Michal - Ratings2Win Pty Ltd
R2W Axis - Axis is Australia's leading horse racing software and database;
with sophisticated form analysis tools and accurate horse performance ratings for TAB meetings.
http://www.ratings2win.com.au/