Win2Win UK Horse Racing Forum - Blogs http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php Free uk horse racing advice, tips, info, staking, staking, forum, systems,betting,betfair. en Fri, 16 May 2008 17:18:13 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/images/misc/rss.jpg Win2Win UK Horse Racing Forum - Blogs http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php finally back in uk http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=55 Fri, 16 May 2008 10:48:15 GMT well im finally back in uk for 3 weeks after doing a 5 week hitch (1 week overtime) coming back on the plane on wed from heathrow to manchester i was was sat next to fabio capello and i couldnt believe it !! had my photo taken and asked him if he... well im finally back in uk for 3 weeks after doing a 5 week hitch (1 week overtime)

coming back on the plane on wed from heathrow to manchester i was was sat next to fabio capello and i couldnt believe it !! had my photo taken and asked him if he had heard of tranmere which he says he has but i doubt it lol

just been looking for a cheap holiday on teltext holidays and got a 10 day break to cuba for 825 thats for two people including tax and transfers in a 4 star hotel all inclusive, it is a cancellation from thomas cook so must be my lucky week

on the horse racing side i have had a good start to this month out of the 5 bets i have had since wed only two have let me down

winners
assertive won backed at 13/2
lush lasses backed at 9/4

e/w bet
blue chip placed backed at 8/1

2 let downs
castlemore u/p
thoutmosis was placed

today i have had two bets
1:40 york maggie lou
6:20 hamilton metroland ]]> lowe1 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=55 A Change of Fortunes http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=54 Mon, 12 May 2008 20:38:53 GMT We are just over a third of the way through May and I have seen such a radical change in my gambling fortunes over the past couple of weeks that I think all the bad luck I have ever experienced is being cancelled out in one go. It's been a change of fortunes in a couple of ways as a (comparative) fortune has changed hands in that period too. Someone out there must have lost what I have gained.

So what's been doing so well the past few days? Two words: Double Top. I completed a proper staking review on it not that long ago and concluded that I should up my staking from 3% to 3.5% on the percentage staking plan. And I am SO glad I did that as it has thrown up a few lovely winners and larger stakes meant larger profits. I honestly thought the writing was on the wall after a bad day last Thursday which saw me lose over £120 thanks to a couple of losing Stoute runners and winners on the Easy Money lays amongst others. But I bounced right back the next day and made all but a few quid of it back with Michael Stoute and the Double Top system coming good, plus a solid but unremarkable day of laying. Saturday was a great day with over £200 coming my way, again primarily due to the Double Top and Stoute systems. And Double Top did it again yesterday, making up the bulk of my £50 profit, and again today contributing heavily towards another three figure profit.

I am now up nearly £300 for the month which means I am up over £250 for year. And to put things into context the Double Top system has added over £400 to my bottom line so far this year, and it's not even running at a strike rate much above normal (around 36%) and I have seen a losing run of 16 this year too. But a 23% ROI is not to be sniffed at and that's what I am experiencing on this system this year. Awesome stuff :D ]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=54 W2W A+ staking review http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=53 Sat, 10 May 2008 16:39:35 GMT *W2W A+* Bets: 728 Winners: 274 SR: 37.64% LWR: 5 LLR: 10 *Step 1: Initialise all candidate staking plans* Unsurprisingly, this system uses a £200 starting bank and 3% percentage staking as the benchmark plan against which all others will be... W2W A+
Bets: 728
Winners: 274
SR: 37.64%
LWR: 5
LLR: 10

Step 1: Initialise all candidate staking plans

Unsurprisingly, this system uses a £200 starting bank and 3% percentage staking as the benchmark plan against which all others will be compared in this review. I will be looking at fixed, level, percentage, ratchet and square root staking plans. Initially all will be set to use the same £6 stake (3% of the starting bank), in the case of the fixed stake plan this means a target profit of £2 per race as my first bet went off at 1/3.

I am looking at profit, ROI and bank extremes (peak and trough) just to get an idea of how the various plans compare.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...8&d=1210437569

This simplified analysis shows that the system is probably profitable, if we optimize the staking plans, but not to a great degree. At first glance the reported profit for the percentage system looks out of line with the other values but I have checked it a couple of times and it is correct. This indicates to me straightaway that perhaps percentage staking is not that well suited to this system, which is unfortunate as that is what I have been using to date. But it looks like we can improve on it, which is good news.

The following chart shows the progress of the various staking plans above (with the exception of the ratchet plan which can’t be shown alongside the standard percentage plan unfortunately). As you can see, the banks never really seem to get going.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...9&d=1210437569

The banks start to improve from around bet 550 onwards and peak around bet number 675 before tailing off again. But even at the peak the banks haven’t risen much compared to the relatively big troughs experienced earlier in the betting sequence.

Step 2: Optimise with TSM

Level Stakes
Optimisation of the level stakes plan has failed in TSM as all possible stakes result in the system making a loss. Was I wrong about this system being marginally profitable? When level stakes fails to show a profit I am always a little concerned about the other staking plans.

Fixed Stakes
I’ve never been convinced by the name of this one as the stakes aren’t fixed, the target profit is. But never mind that for now. The Staking Machines gives the same results as for level stakes – nothing can be done with the staking plan to make these bets profitable.

Percentage Stakes
When optimizing percentage staking plans you can allow TSM to change the bank size, up to a given maximum, and also vary the percentage of the bank that should be staked on each bet. Unfortunately no combinations of these parameters produce a profit.

Ratchet Stakes
Nothing going here either I’m afraid. This staking plan proved to better than the regular percentage version in the previous step but here we can’t get it to show a profit.

Square Root Stakes
The final throw of the dice doesn’t bring us much joy either. No initial stakes on the square root plan result in us making a profit. I even tried allowing TSM to include the starting bank in the square root calculations but that hasn’t helped.

If the selections are unprofitable, according to the data I have recorded, then there is little point continuing this staking plan analysis. That said, I do want to continue for a short while just to assure myself that the conclusions I draw make sense.

The system has a strike rate of 37.64% which means I need decimal odds of 2.66 in order to break even. According to TSM the average odds of the selections is 3.24 but unfortunately the average odds of the winners is only 2.65, making the system marginally unprofitable. Why such a difference between the average odds and the average win odds I wonder. It means the average odds of the losing bets is 3.60, nearly a whole point above that of the winners. Hmmm.

According to my own spreadsheet I have a slightly negative overbet on the A+ bets meaning the prices I have taken, overall, are worse than the starting price. That’s not great and may account for some of the loss shown but my overbet isn’t very negative (-0.51%) so unless I could turn that round and get it up around 10% or so I don’t think it’s going to make a huge difference to the profits (or lack of) I experience when following these bets. My overbet has recently taken a bit of a dip after being up around the 1% mark earlier in April. But even that isn’t going to make difference to matters.

I had a winning year on these in 2007 (+8.50xBB) and also in 2005 (+3.91xBB) but I have experienced losses in 2004, 2006 and 2008 of -8.76xBB, -2.26xBB and -5.61xBB respectively. I think it is finally time to give up on this system. I am not getting anywhere with it and the bank I have reserved for it could be better invested elsewhere.

Conclusions: Abandon system
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]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=53 How to Build a UK Horse Racing System – Adding Filters http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=52 Sat, 10 May 2008 15:06:50 GMT My last post on this subject showed you how to target a SR to work with. Now getting the SR you are looking for in the majority of cases will result in year-on-years losses if you are using two base variables (a few systems can be profitable with... My last post on this subject showed you how to target a SR to work with. Now getting the SR you are looking for in the majority of cases will result in year-on-years losses if you are using two base variables (a few systems can be profitable with just two, but most of the time it is not that easy!).

This post we are going to look at adding a filter. In most cases this will reduce the losses to an acceptable level; in others you may hit a profit.

When looking for what filters to use, you are looking for ones that do not massively influence the SR, nor wipe out a lot of qualifiers. I know many folk who see that one variable may show -10% ROI, so they use that as a filter not paying attention to the fact it has also wiped out 80% of qualifiers. The idea is to use filters to keep in as many qualifiers as possible, as the more you have, the more turn over, and that should result in quicker profits.

So how do you know what variables to aim for? Well a few are usually consistent whatever the system, and I list a few below:

Horses must not be a filly/mare – This is because many go off false prices, and like all women, never seem to have the same day twice. (If you’re a lady reading this, I’ll get my coat!!)

Blinkers/Visors/Other headgear – Generally speaking, you are looking for horses that have are not wearing any headgear, as if they are, it is an admittance that the horse has a quirk. Now some of these horse that wear headgear are decent beasts, but statistically over all, they do not perform as well as those without.

F/c Price – In most cases, anything over 7/2 starts to become a little random, and they also bring the SR down. Also keeping it at 7/2 or below, you are concentrating on races that are not as competitive as those priced above.

Unlucky LTO (Last Time Out) – These horses help swell the bookies satchels. Yes some win, the majority don’t though.

Going – Stats can become erratic when you have extremes of ground like Heavy & Firm.

Stall position – Very few folk take notice of this, but if the stalls are placed in the middle of the track, which they do at Newmarket (no idea why, as the horses end up on the rails anyway in most cases), this can really screw up results, and knock SR’s down by over 5% in some cases. When method betting, if I see the stalls are in the middle I’ll either not bet, or cut the stakes.

Now for our system we are building now, and I have not planned any of this in advance, so you know as much as me if it will end up profitable, I am going to use WEIGHT as a filter. This is a useful filter for both Handicaps & Non-Handicaps, as the higher in the weights the better the horse is supposed to be, and in most cases this is correct.

If we look at the table below we clearly see that the Top Weights are not good with a negative ROI at 6.67%, however we cannot get rid of that one as it contains the majority of the potential qualifiers, and upholds the SR. The SR remains constant down the list until you reach 8th+, then it seriously falls off the radar. It is clearly visible that we do not want these, and also they do not fit into the SR ‘cluster’ we have above, so we will dump them by adding a 3rd rule:

Horse must be No.7 or less in the race. (Horses are numbered from 1 downwards, with 1 the Top Weight).

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...6&d=1210432004

So what effect does that have on the overall results so far?

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...7&d=1210432004

As you can see, we have kept the potential qualifiers high (this is not always the case with filters though, but is what you should keep in mind), and also maintained the overall SR, in fact we have got it bang on 40%. More importantly though we have reduced the LSP% from -5% to -4% Level Stakes Profit: You would now only lose £4 for every £100 bet). This is the figure we should concentrate on as it needs to be a positive figure overall, as in the year 2003.

In the next post we will add another filter.
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]]> Win2Win http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=52 NH Monthly staking review http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=51 Sat, 10 May 2008 14:50:27 GMT Hopefully I have now got this staking review process fine-tuned and I can rattle out a few more in quick succession. Perhaps I’ll cut down on some of the wordier sections too. I will be skipping step 1 as the type of plans I will investigate will be... Hopefully I have now got this staking review process fine-tuned and I can rattle out a few more in quick succession. Perhaps I’ll cut down on some of the wordier sections too. I will be skipping step 1 as the type of plans I will investigate will be the same for each system, namely Level, Fixed, Percentage (with and without ratchet) and Square Root.

NH Monthly
Bets: 555
Winners: 191
SR: 34.41%
LWR: 5
LLR: 25

Step 1: Initialise all candidate staking plans

The benchmark for this system, as with most systems that I will review the staking for, will be the 3% percentage staking plan I currently employ. The bank started at £200 and it is that figure that I will use as the starting bank for this analysis. That gives me an initial stake of £6 so if I set up all the staking plans to use the same initial stake I can start to get some idea of how they compare to one another. For the fixed staking plan this means a target profit of £6 per bet as the first bet is at evens.

Here I am looking at profit, ROI and bank extremes (peak and trough) just to get an idea of how the various plans stack up.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...4&d=1210431019

This very simple analysis paints a rather stark picture as each staking plan types shows a loss, some much greater than others. Three of the plans bust the bank, the ratchet plan doing so in the extreme. Perhaps that longest losing run of 25 is proving to be a proper killer. Looking at the graph of profits against time it is the recent months that have broken this system. The last 120 or so bets are where it all starts to go wrong. Before that point it had been a standard rollercoaster type situation with peaks and troughs galore but from bet number 435 (or thereabouts) onwards there is a very noticeable downhill trend.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...5&d=1210431019

Note that the ratchet plans are not shown on this chart as TSM won’t let me display (or calculate) standard percentage plans and ratchet plans at once.

There isn’t a great deal we can conclude from this stage of the process. We need to optimize each of the plans and see where that takes us.

Step 2: Optimise with TSM

Level Stakes
TSM won’t optimize the level stakes plan as it claims that all possible stakes result in a negative profit, i.e. a loss. This is not a good sign…

Fixed Stakes
Optimisation of the fixed stakes plans also fails as TSM reports that nothing it can do can generate a profit from these selections with that staking plan. I have a bad feeling about this one.

Percentage Stakes
Once more TSM reports all combinations of percentages and starting banks result in a loss. This could be a very short staking review.

Ratchet Stakes
Same old story – everything TSM tries ends up with the system losing money. One last chance…

Square Root Stakes
As expected this also fails optimization and results in losses. If the bank doesn’t profit then this plan reverts to level stakes so if level stakes fails (as it did) then the writing was on the wall for this one.

There is no point continuing with this staking review. I have learned that the system is not profitable, based on the selections and odds I have recorded. Therefore this system will be discontinued from my betting portfolio immediately.

Conclusions: Abandon system
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]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=51 help needed http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=50 Wed, 07 May 2008 21:52:29 GMT hi everyone, my name is japgap and i have just joined this community, my main interest is horse and dog systems , iv'e purchased quite a few now, all to no avail , is there anyone out there can point me in the right direction before i go bankrupt. i would be forever grateful.:splapme ]]> robert palmer http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=50 Double Top staking review pt3 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=49 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:34:01 GMT *Summary* I think the best thing I can do now is to briefly review the analysis that has taken place thus far and to begin to shortlist the plans I will consider using for the Double Top system. I began the process by analyzing level stakes, fixed... Summary

I think the best thing I can do now is to briefly review the analysis that has taken place thus far and to begin to shortlist the plans I will consider using for the Double Top system.

I began the process by analyzing level stakes, fixed stake, percentage, ratchet and square root plans all with the same initial stake. I then optimized these plans using TSM and in doing so eliminated level and fixed stakes from further analysis. I also decided on specific input parameters for the other plans to give a list of 24 staking plans to analyse. The next phase of the review involved examining the effect of a cap on the maximum stake to see how that affected matters. After studying each of the plans with and without a £50 stake cap I reduced the list under investigation to 17 plans and confirmed that the £50 stake cap was the most appropriate value, having also considered £25 and £75. The stage was not set for the proper review work to be done.

The next two stages of the review process involved changing the order of the bets to get a better feel for how closely tied into the order of the selections the plans were. When the bet order was reversed we saw the 2.0% and 2.1% ratchet plans perform admirably displaying excellent profits balanced with acceptable risk levels while the square root plans really failed to shine, especially with low initial stakes. The low stakes ratchet plans were definitely winning out here. With the bet order randomized we saw another pretty strong performance from the lower stakes ratchet plans while the square root plans looked to offer great profits but actually bust the bank. Would I have chosen a ratchet plan at this stage? It would have been very close between those and the mid-level percentage plans, i.e. something around 3.2% or 3.3%.

Reordering the bets is somewhat artificial is time itself cannot be reordered but some bets can be missed due to time constraints, holidays etc so the random sampling of the parent population used in the next step is a more realistic test of the plans than what has gone before. Once more we saw a very strong performance from the 2.0% and 2.1% ratchet plans with both showing much greater levels of profit than the benchmark while not displaying excessive risk. The square root plans were quite frankly rubbish, displaying a loss as well as higher than average risk. A clear victory for the lower stakes ratchet plans here.

Next came three investigations into the effect of changing from the benchmark plan to each of the other plans at certain dates, the first of which was the rather arbitrary midpoint of the data. The percentage plans all showed better profits than the benchmark and did so with sufficient security built into the banks. The ratchet plans displayed even better profit levels and once more with suitable bank preservation measures although the 2.4% ratchet plan may be a little riskier than desired. The square root plans exhibited profits that outstripped the benchmark but trough figures that got worryingly low as the upped the stakes. For example, the 3.3% percentage plan shows the same sort of ROI and profit figures as the £7.00 square root plan but also retains approximately 10% more of the starting bank at the lowest ebb. Another victory for the small stakes ratchet plans I feel.

The second point at which the change of staking plan was investigated was the start of last year. The percentage plans offered up larger and larger profits and ROIs as we increased the stakes and fortunately not at a greatly increased risk with each step up in stakes. Indeed if we compare like for like as closely as we can on the risk side of things we see that 3.4% percentage plan offers £250 more profit, 0.49% greater return on our investment and just under 4% reduction in the cost of the worst losing run when compared to the 2.4% ratchet plan with both plans having similar trough values. But on the other hand comparison of the 2.2% ratchet plan and the 3% benchmark plan, both plans having approximately equal trough values of 63.5%, we find firmly in favour of the ratchet plan. If we attempt to compare the square root plans to another plan of similar standing then we have to use the profit figures, comparing the 2.4% ratchet plan with the £6.00 square root plan. And doing so shows us that the square root plan has a trough approximately 10% lower than the ratchet plan so the profits are obtained at much greater risk. A tricky one this one with the low stakes ratchet plans displaying poor profit levels so they are ruled out. The mid-level percentage staking plans offer up nice profits but balance them sufficiently well with risk, more so than the other plans so a winner for the 3.3% and 3.4% percentage plans here, probably.

The third and final date at which we considered a switch of staking plans was the start of this year. Each of the square root plans offered up lower profits than the benchmark but showed similar levels of bank security. With the ratchet plans we had to go to 2.3% before we exceeded the benchmark plan for profit and by then we were displaying more risk to the bank than seems necessary bearing in mind the other plans. So once more it seems like a victory for the mid-stakes percentage plans which show better than average profits at only a slightly increased risk.

Finally came the acid test of subjecting each plan to live staking conditions. Now everything was able to beat the benchmark in profit terms but the risk was simply excessive on some plans with the ratchet plans risking up to 34% of the bank on a single bet. Even with the 2.0% ratchet plan we could be risking 10% of the bank on a single bet in a bad run and it only takes one or two of those to go the wrong way and you’re in trouble. I would never start a new system with a 10% percentage plan so I see no reason why I should risk an established bank in the same sort of way. So for me that pretty much rules out the ratchet plans here. The square root plans offer up wonderful profit promises and with the smaller initial stakes the max stakes as a percentage of the bank are close to being acceptable I guess, and the trough figures at that level are OK.

A key question here is what percentage of the bank would I be willing to risk on a single bet? I said earlier that double figure percentages were out but would 7%, for example, be acceptable? I ran the same analysis as above on 5% to 7% percentage plans in 0.5% steps to get an idea of the trough figures, as that shows me how close the bank comes to busting if we end up staking extensively at higher than anticipated percentages.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...6&d=1210106057

With all the square root plans bar the £7.00 initial stake plan the maximum percentage of the bank staked on a single bet is between 5.5% and 6.5%, which as we can see here result in troughs of £85.62 and £72.29 respectively. Would I accept a trough of £80? Perhaps. It’s better than I thought it would be so perhaps some of the square root plans would be acceptable here.

As for the winner of this final test I would say it was a close run thing between the lower stakes square root plans, perhaps up to and including £5.50 as the base stake, and the higher stakes percentage plans (3.4% and 3.5%).

Conclusions

I think that the weighting given towards the result from each step increases as we proceed through the review, primarily because the realism increases in the same manner. We saw early victories for the low stakes ratchet plans, with the mid-stakes percentage plans not too far behind too. The percentage plans then put in a strong showing when we looked at changing plans on given dates before finally being nominated as winners with the smaller stakes square root plans in the final stages. Note that the square root plans had been rubbish up to that point so it would be wrong to conclude they were the most suitable plans to adopt going forward simply because of a strong showing at the end of the review.

So it looks as though it ought to be a percentage plan that I adopt, but which one? I use a percentage plan at present but this analysis has shown I should revise the percentage of the bank I use as each stake upwards. When looking for a suitable stake cap I saw the ROI and profit figures increased with higher stakes. Reversing the bet order reversed the trend which was restored when the bet sequences were randomized. Random sampling of the population saw the trend reversed once more but it was back in spades when we studied changing plans on certain dates and also during the most realistic test of adjusting stakes daily. With that in mind I feel I should go for the 3.5% percentage plan as it shows the best profits in each of the more realistic tests yet display suitable levels of safety and security to make me feel that the increase in stakes is unlikely to break the bank. If you recall very early on in this review I found that TSM suggested I use 3.3% of the bank as my stake and it looks like it wasn’t far out.

All that effort for a simple increase of percentage on the current plan, typical.

New Plan: 3.5% percentage
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]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=49 Double Top staking review pt2 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=48 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:30:23 GMT *Step 5: Reverse the order* Having settled on the plans I wish to examine, optimised those plans and set my maximum stakes I need to take a look at how the order of the bets affects things. Obviously when it comes to the actually betting I cannot... Step 5: Reverse the order

Having settled on the plans I wish to examine, optimised those plans and set my maximum stakes I need to take a look at how the order of the bets affects things. Obviously when it comes to the actually betting I cannot change the order in which the bets happen but by looking at the same bets in a different order I get an idea of how dependent my staking plans are on bet sequences. It may be that the set of selections I am studying here has a really good (or really bad) run at the start that affects the overall profitability on certain plans. After all, a system with a 36% strike rate won’t have the winners spread out evenly; as with any system they are likely to come in sequences of varying lengths so we should look at what happens to our staking plans when we scramble those sequences somewhat.

The first stage of this type of analysis is to simply reverse the order of the bets. Of course this doesn’t change the LLR and LWR figures but it will give us some idea of the sensitivity of each plan to the order of bets.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...9&d=1210105814

One of the main points to notice from this set of figures is the reduced profit levels for most plans. Our benchmark plan is down by approximately £500 with this deficit increasing as we up the percentage staked. For the ratchet plans the order has made little difference and these profit figures are actually very slightly above those for the bets in the normal order. The square root plans are showing massively reduced profit levels though, around £2500 for each plan in fact! Another significant point is the increased ROI for most plans. With the percentage and ratchet plans this is several points above what it was earlier; for the higher stakes square root plans it has dropped a small amount but for the lower stakes square root plans the ROI has plummeted. The trough figures are down for all plans when compared to the standard bet, and significantly lower for some plans too. There is also a much wider range of LLR cost figures now. With the bets in chronological order the range was from 16.95% to 26.89% but now we see a range of 10.91% to 54.57%. So reversing the order has had a varied impact on profits and ROI but has definitely decreased the security and safety levels in each bank.

When we examined these plans earlier with the bets in proper chronological order a number of trends were apparent. Are these trends still exhibited with the bet order reversed? With the bets in their correct order we saw increased profits and a better ROI as we upped the percentage staked with the risk factor largely unchanged. Now the profit hardly changes and the ROI decreases but once more the risk factor is roughly the same for all percentage plans with the trough decreasing but the LLR cost dropping also. A similar trend was also observed for the ratchet plans earlier. With the bet order reversed we continue to see an increase in profits as we up the percentage staked but this time the ROI decreases and the trough figures are lower than before but still drop as the stakes increase albeit at a faster rate. It is the LLR cost that provides an interesting observation here though as it starts low and decreases as we increase the stakes until we get to 2.4% ratchet where it suddenly jumps for some reason. With the square root plans we are used to see an increase in profits and ROI as the base stake is increased with the risk factor remaining fairly static thanks to a decrease in both trough and cost of LLR. When we reverse the bet order these trends are still shown but the £4.50 and £5.00 square root plans don’t fit the trend in the same way as the other plans do; there is a large discontinuity in the figures between the £5.00 and £5.50 plans for some reason I don’t yet understand.

If I were going to ditch any plans at this stage of the review then first out would be the £4.50 and £5.00 square root plans for the dreadful profit figures, poor ROI and hefty LLR costs. I would also question the wisdom of continuing with as many percentage staking plans when the profit resulting from each is basically the same. The higher stakes ratchet plans and square root plans are also likely to be eliminated due to the low trough values. Of course, so many eliminations would leave us with very few plans to take forward through the remaining stages of the review and while I am not trying to make work for myself by having as many plans as possible throughout the review process I am keen to get this right so I don’t want to eliminate too many staking plans because of their performance in an artificial situation such as this one. As I said earlier I can’t change the order of real bets - I certainly can’t reverse time – so the only conclusions I can really draw from this is that the aforementioned plans are sensitive to the order in which the bets occur and I should be aware of that. This may mean that were I to switch to such a plan that a bad run at that point could cripple the bank.

Step 6: Randomise the order

In the previous step of this staking plan review process I studied the effects of reversing the bet order on the chosen staking plans. Here I will look at what happens if the bet order is randomised. This obviously won’t affect the systems SR but will have an effect on the longest losing run and longest winning run. I have used Excel to randomise the order of my bets and the system summary stats now come out as:

Bets: 1626
Winners: 588
SR: 36.16%
LWR: 6
LLR: 12

As you can see this particular sequencing of the bets has reduced both the LLR and the LWR meaning we have a greater number of shorter sequences of winners and losers so it will be interesting to see what effect this has had on the various plans.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...0&d=1210105814

Before I examine these figures in too much detail it is important to point out the red figures, though they should stand out pretty well by themselves and not need me to highlight them any further. They indicate that the bank has bust, but not all plans that bust the bank have a negative trough figure. As well as the £5.00 to £7.00 square root plans and the 2.4% ratchet plan busting the bank the 2.3% ratchet plan busts the bank also as on bet 203 there is insufficient funds left to place the next bet. Unsurprisingly, the greater the initial stakes on these plans the sooner we bust the bank, the earliest being bet 137 with the £7.00 square root plan.

So with so many of our staking plans busting the bank is it worth examining this set of figures in much depth? Probably not, if truth be told. It is worth checking to see what trends exist and how they compare to previously observed trends though. We see that as we increase the percentage staked profits rise and ROI is basically static as is the risk factor (LLR cost and trough both decreasing). This is pretty much in line with what we saw earlier. On the ratchet plans our profit and ROI increase as we up the stakes with the trough and LLR cost both dropping, again in line with our earlier trends. The square root plans also follow this general trend and once more this matches our previous observations. So the same trends exist but the figures are very different this time round.

We can conclude from this step in the review process that were we to change staking plans we should perhaps consider increasing our stakes to 3.1% to benefit from the increase in profits with little additional risk. Above that the profit increase doesn’t really justify the extra risk. The 2.0% ratchet plan is perhaps worth considering but the trough value is concerning, and of course that value drops as we look to greater stakes on that plan. And while profits of over £4000 would be nice one has to wonder whether the bank would survive any of the square root plans with such a low figure on even the smallest stakes plan.

Step 7: Random sampling

We have seen that changing the order of the bets can have a significant effect on the suitability of a staking plan but as I said earlier I am not able to change the order in which races happen so steps that vary the order of the bets are somewhat artificial. They do indicate the dependence of a staking plan on bet sequencing but little else. One thing I am in control of though is whether or not I place the bets – not that I deliberately choose not to back some system selections as that turns the system into a method, more that for some days or some races I may be unavailable and unable to back that runner. To see the effect of this aspect of betting we randomly sample the parent population of bets (which itself is actually a sample as the selections have been taken from my own betting spreadsheets which record only the bets I have made and not selections from periods when I have been on holiday and so on).

This random sampling is again done in Excel. The selections are restored to chronological order and assigned a random number. This random number is then compared to another random number (the same number for all selections) and if the selection’s random number exceeds this other number then it is included in the sample, else it is excluded. Doing thus has given a sample with the following characteristics:

Bets: 855
Winners: 301
SR: 35.20%
LWR: 5
LLR: 12

So our sample has a slightly lower SR than the full population of bets as well as shorter losing and winning runs so it will be interesting to see what effect this has on our various staking plans.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...1&d=1210105814

I know I said the SR was a little down on the overall system figure but I honestly didn’t expect it to make such a difference. The profit and ROI figures are significantly lower than I expected, with the square root plans struggling to even turn a profit.

This time the previously observed trends are not apparent. As we increase our percentage stakes the profit and ROI both decrease while the risk factor associated with the bank increases due to a decreasing trough and increasing LLR cost. For the ratchet plans the profits increase as we up the stakes, as they did previously, but this time the ROI decreases. The trough values drop as they always have done but now the LLR cost increases, which it didn’t previously. And as the square root plans hardly make a profit I don’t think it is worth examining them too deeply for trends. However, note once more the discontinuity between the £5.00 and £5.50 square root plans. Here the profit trend reverses, the loss increased from £4.50 to £5.00 staking and then dropped with the £5.50 after which it continued to drop. There is also a significant change in ROI at this point as well as trough and LLR cost figures. I still don’t understand what is causing this discontinuity nor have I quite decided which side of it is showing the better trends but it i certainly worth being aware of.

What has this random sampling shown? Once more it has issued a kick to the square root plans which as you may recall struggled in the reordering tests too. This step also shows that there is no point increasing our percentage staking above 3% as doing so results in reduced profits. Overall it is the ratchet plans that have performed best here, especially the lower stakes plans as they provide a better profit than the benchmark while running at a comparative risk level.

I am tempted to eliminate certain staking plans here, namely the £4.50 and £5.00 square root plans as I am wary of them and the discontinuity that follows them. However, I am intrigued to see how they perform in the remaining stages of this review in an attempt to try and understand the reason for this discontinuity. As such, all plans will be carried forward to the next step of the staking plan review.

Step 8: Switching plans

When conducting a staking plan review we are looking for a better staking plan to apply to the system than the one we currently employ. Of course, we can’t actually go back and change the staking used on previous bets we have struck so changes can only apply to future bets. But the key point is that at some point we will change the staking plan in use so we should see what happens when we do that at a number of key points in our current dataset to get an idea of what effect the change of plan has overall.

To make this change of staking plans representative I had planned to model the betting to each chosen date using a 3% percentage staking plan calculated in an Excel spreadsheet then load the data from the chosen date onwards into TSM, set the starting banks for the plans to the relevant bank figure at the end of the previous day (as obtained from the 3% staking model spreadsheet) and run the analysis in TSM as normal.

That’s what I thought I would do as that is what I have done previously but in a moment of clarity on an overcast bank holiday Sunday afternoon I have spotted a flaw in my plans. The above will work fine for percentage plans but will break down for the square root plans as TSM doesn’t allow starting bank and current bank (or starting bank and profit) figures to be specified separately. Thus inputting a starting bank of £200 or £2000 will make no difference to the first bet on the square root plan system as the stakes are calculated as a given starting stake plus the square root of the profits, which will always be zero for the first bet. Thus TSM cannot be used for the square root plan analysis and I must use trusty old Excel instead.

I could potentially set the initial stake on the square root plans equal to the stake I would place on my first bet in the TSM dataset, i.e. incorporate the profit into the staking level, but this is a risky and inaccurate way forward as it means that in the event of a losing run the stakes would not decrease how the plan dictates they would had I set it up properly so it must be Excel.

I can’t analyse a switch to ratchet staking plans using TSM either. Rather than using the current bank at the point at which I analyse the change of plans I could use the maximum bank up to that point. For example, if the bank starts at £200 and climbs to £1000 before dropping down again to £800 then I would set my ratchet plan starting bank to £1000 rather than the £800 I would use for a standard percentage staking plan. But again this won’t work as TSM will calculate the profit figures etc. based on that starting bank and that won’t be the actual bank at the time I am making the switch of staking plan. So it’s Excel all the way. For the ratchet plans at the point where I change plans I will make the first stake 2% (or whatever) of the current bank and then ratchet from that bet forwards.

Unfortunately this means I cannot easily get the cost of LLR figures as I’m not 100% sure how TSM calculates them and I want to ensure that if I am to compare them I compare like with like. Ho hum. What I will do is for the longest losing run in the selection after the change of staking plan I will calculate each stake as a percentage of the bank before that bet and sum those percentages. If I do that for all the plans in Excel for this step of the review process then at least we can compare the same measurements for all plans.

The first point at which I will consider a change in staking plans is the mid-point of the data, which occurs on 23rd November 2006. At the end of the previous day the bank stands at £1182.07 (from a starting bank of £200). The data being analysed can be summarised as follows:

Bets: 813
Winners: 297
SR: 36.53%
LWR: 7
LLR: 16

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...2&d=1210105814

Rather than looking at trends I want to look at specifics here and to compare the various plans to the benchmark with a view to eventually settling on a new staking plan to use for the Double Top system. All of the percentage plans offer an increase in profits and ROI compared to the benchmark but with such increases comes a lower trough value, which I have expressed here as a percentage of the starting bank to make comparisons more meaningful and easier, but also a reduced loss in the longest losing run. So with the percentage plans it is very much a case of finding a happy medium between profit and risk.

The 2.0% ratchet plan offers a profit level significantly ahead of the benchmark, with a much better ROI too and comes with better trough value and a lower loss during the worst run. Therefore we have a reduced risk level compared to the benchmark but a greater profit. Excellent. The same is true of the 2.1% ratchet plan which offers even greater profits at the same sort of risk level once more (a slightly lower trough but also a lower LLR cost). As we increase the staking to 2.2% and beyond we show better profits but our risk levels increase. As we enjoy a trough of a tad under 40% for the benchmark it would be unwise to accept a staking plan that offers up a value significantly below this which means the 2.4% ratchet plan is probably questionable.

And if the 2.4% ratchet plan is questionable then the square root plans are all right out. They offer better profits and ROIs than the benchmark but show much lower trough values. Also, even though they are more profitable than the benchmark they are still not as profitable as the lowest stakes ratchet system, which has a much greater bank safety level. It seems that the square root plans may not be suitable for this system. Note also the comparatively slow increase in profits as we increase the stakes on the square root plans. The initial stake is not much a factor in setting the staking levels so there is little difference in profit terms between the £4.50 plan and the £7.00 version, but there is a more noticeable difference in the risk levels as we increase the stakes.

As I often perform end of year staking reviews the next point at which I will consider a change in staking plans is the start of January 2007. At the end of the previous day (31st December 2006, obviously) the bank stands at £745.02 (from a starting bank of £200) indicating a recent poor run bearing in mind the bank figure above from late November. The summary stats for the selections from the start of 2007 onwards are:

Bets: 752
Winners: 276
SR: 36.70%
LWR: 7
LLR: 16

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...3&d=1210105814

Again I want to focus on the comparison between the various plans and the benchmark. And on that basis the square root plans are potentially right out again, with all six exhibiting troughs unacceptable compared to the benchmark and to the other plans. Sure, the LLR costs are comparative to other plans and the profit and ROI figures are reasonable but are those trough figures worth the risk? The remaining plans all show a better profit and ROI than the benchmark and have acceptable risk levels, with the exception of the 2.0% ratchet plan which displays a lower profit, slightly worse ROI and a much higher LLR cost. That plan had looked promising till that point, and I even double checked those figures to confirm that seemingly anomalous value was correct.

Continuing the theme of end of year staking reviews, the third and final point at which I want to consider a change of staking plan is at the start of 2008. At the end of 2007 the bank stands at £1738.66 as calculated by my spreadsheet model, having reached a peak of £2988.86. The bets for 2008 may be summarized thusly:

Bets: 201
Winners: 70
SR: 34.83%
LWR: 5
LLR: 16

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...4&d=1210105814

The percentage plans show the best profit and ROI levels here with only the 2.4% ratchet plan able to beat the benchmark for profit and ROI for the non-percentage staking plans. The lower stakes ratchet plans show a much lower trough figure and higher LLR cost than the benchmark, but this risk level decreases as the stakes are upped. The square root plans all exhibit similar risk levels to the benchmark albeit with smaller profit levels and a smaller return on investment. I believe the percentage plans all offer acceptable risk levels so for those it is more a case of maximising profit here.

This particular scenario of changing staking plans at the start of 2008 is not as useful as expected largely due to the stake cap. The bank levels are so high from standard 3% staking to the end of 2007 that changing the staking plan really only changes how quickly we hit that £50 limit and stay at that staking level. This is why the initial stakes on the square root plans don’t make much difference and also why the overall profit range isn’t as great across the full set of plans as it has been in previous scenarios. The average stakes are all high, especially for the percentage staking plans, indicating that the majority of the bets are being struck at the maximum allowed stake.

After studying three different opportunities to change the staking plan am I any closer to narrowing down my choice of staking plans? The ratchet plans, especially the lower stakes versions, did very well in the first scenario (changing at the midway point in the data). When changing plans at the start of 2007 it was the mid-stakes percentage plans that really showed the best performance and the same is pretty much true for a change at the start of this year. I feel I should be eliminating plans at this stage but I don’t feel comfortable doing so. I don’t have an overall feel for which plan type (percentage, ratchet, square root) is currently on top so for the effort involved I will continue all plans into the next stage of the analysis process and see how it goes from there.

Step 9: Real staking conditions

Step 9 of the staking plan review process involves each of the plans being examined under what I term real staking conditions. That is each plan will be applied to the whole dataset (in proper chronological order) as I would apply the plan in real life. That means stakes are adjusted daily as I am far too busy with the day job to adjust stakes after every race. This can’t be done in TSM so once more this in a job for Excel.

For this stage of the analysis I would like to slightly change the focus and look at different figures to those I have examined previously. I will calculate profit and ROI as before but this time I also want to look at stakes in terms of percentages of the current bank and highlight the minimum and maximum values there, plus record the peaks and troughs for each bank. Each plan will use a £200 starting bank for this exercise as that’s the size of bank I would use when starting a new system.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...5&d=1210105814

This is my acid test, which system performs the best under my real staking conditions? The first point to note from the above table is that in profit terms the benchmark is the worst of the lot displaying the worst total profit and lowest ROI. So any changes we make to the staking plan I use for this system should improve things by that rationale. I think the next point to raise is the maximum stake percentage figures, i.e. what is the maximum percentage of the bank we are risking on any single bet? For the ratchet plans those figures are alarmingly high with over a third of the bank being staked on one horse in the case of the 2.3% ratchet plan. Even with the lower stakes 2.0% ratchet plan we are risking over 10% of the bank on one selection at certain points and I am not prepared to accept that sort of risk.

This analysis is complicated by the fact that at the back of my mind I feel the square root plans have done badly at various previous stages of this review but now they come shining through offering excellent profits, the likes of which the percentage plans can’t achieve, and yet do so with acceptable max stake % and trough figures, for the smaller initial stakes at least. So after being on the verge of ruling them out of further analysis at a couple of points earlier on they are now very much back in the running. And who said staking reviews were easy?
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]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=48 Double Top staking review pt1 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=47 Tue, 06 May 2008 20:21:30 GMT I know I have done this before but this time I will do it properly, methodically. *Double Top* Bets: 1626 Winners: 588 SR: 36.16% LWR: 8 LLR: 16 *Step 1: Identify candidate staking plans* I know I have done this before but this time I will do it properly, methodically.

Double Top
Bets: 1626
Winners: 588
SR: 36.16%
LWR: 8
LLR: 16

Step 1: Identify candidate staking plans

This step of the review process is made much easier by the Running for Profit review. During that particular system analysis I spent a bit of time thinking about what sort of plans suit me and which don’t. As such, I can quickly narrow down the list of candidate plans to take forwards, and they are:
  • Level
  • Fixed
  • Percentage (with and without ratcheting)
  • Square root

If truth be told, I expect to drop the fixed and level plans pretty quickly if the Running for Profit review is anything to go by.

Step 2: Initialise all candidate staking plans

As with most of the systems I follow, I am using a 3% percentage staking plan from a £200 starting bank currently and that will act as my benchmark plan for all this analysis. Thus I can set up all the staking plans under scrutiny to use a £6 initial stake in to allow for a fair comparison. For the fixed staking plan this means a target profit of £24 as the first bet is a 4/1 shot.

Here I am looking at profit, ROI and bank extremes (peak and trough) just to get an idea of how the various plans stack up.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...5&d=1210105216

You can see even from this very simple analysis that there is a wide range of values for each of the measures. Profits range from around £850 to over £4000 – I am ignoring the eleven and a half grand that the ratchet staking offers as it busts the bank to quite a significant degree. It is interesting to note that for most systems the profit figure is not too far below the point at which the bank peaks with the percentage staking plan bucking that trend . The square root plan has exactly the same trough value as the level staking plan as the two plans are identical when the bank isn’t in profit.

At this stage I am not going to eliminate any of the staking plans. This part of the analysis was designed to just give a general feel for the various systems with the initial stakes all set to the same for the first bet. But that may not be a fair test so I should take each plan in turn and attempt to optimize the staking for it.

Step 3: Optimise with TSM

This stage of the review is where TSM comes into its own and proves an invaluable tool as I don’t think I could be bothered to do this via a spreadsheet. It would be possible, of course, but would need some work in setting it up and these reviews take long enough as it is without that extra effort.

Let’s begin with the level stakes plan. As with the Running for Profit review I will use a maximum stake of £1000 during the optimization as I know that staking level will never be reached and I can use such a figure to effectively ignore the maximum stakes factor. But of course that doesn’t really work with this plan and TSM suggests I use level stakes of £1000 per bet resulting in a profit of £141680.60 and a ROI of 8.71%. Yeah, right! I can do that off a starting bank of £200 without busting it can I? Err, no. So let us now drop the stakes to a level that doesn’t bust the bank. Experimentation shows that anything much above £13 level stakes will bust the bank. With such stakes the system has a profit of £1841.79 with the same 8.71% ROI. The bank comes close to busting though with a trough of £15.83. If we wish to have as much security in this bank as we do in the 3% percentage staking plan we need to drop our stakes down to just £5 and settle for a profit of £708.63.

Next up we will study fixed staking in more detail. Optimising this plan with the usual £1000 maximum stakes gives a suggested profit target of £124 per race, a figure which busts the bank after 5 bets. In fact anything above £25 for the target profit per race busts the bank. At this figure the system profits to the tune of £1877.25 with a ROI of 7.18%. Further investigation seems to indicate that the ROI is basically static, varying by no more than a couple of hundredths of a percent from this figure whatever profit we aim to get from each race. With a target of £25 profit per race our trough is £22.83 so this is quite a risky plan and the potential is there at that level for the bank to go bust. It takes a target profit of just £10 per race to give a trough roughly equal to that of the 3% staking plan and at that time our profit is down to £750.70.

What of the standard percentage staking plan? Once more, with the £1000 maximum stake in place for optimization TSM suggests I use a starting bank of £200 and 3.3% of it on each selection. That generates a profit of [b]£1810.71/B] with a ROI of 3.10%. The bank remains pretty safe at that staking level with £122.27 the lowest it reaches. In fact the staking percentage can be increased to 7.5% without actually busting the bank. However, the profits at such stakes are poor – so poor in fact that they are in fact losses with the bank standing at a little over £80 after the last bet. Using a more realistic £50 maximum stake during the optimization process causes TSM to suggest a bank of £195 and a stake level of 2.3%. That’s a profit of £1380.76 and a ROI of 4.49%. Upping the starting bank to my favoured £200 level increases the profit to £1415.48 without changing the return on investment. The bank is perfectly safe too with a low point of £142.64.

If I now look at the ratchet percentage staking plan I see that TSM optimizes this to use a starting bank of £165 and 3.7% stakes given a maximum starting bank of £200 and a £1000 maximum stake. These optimum settings produce profits of £23575.30 with a ROI of 3.96% but unfortunately the bank goes bust after 346 bets. If I increase the bank to £200 initially then the bank busts at the same point. Hmmm. It seems that anything above 2.4% ratchet staking busts a £200 starting bank but at that 2.4% level we realize profits of £5127.90 with a ROI of 4.95%. The trough for this plan is around £80 and knocking just one tenth of a percent off the stakes increases that trough to a touch under £135. A trough approximately equal to that of the 3% standard plan I am using as the benchmark for this review is achieved with ratchet stakes around 2.34% (profit of £4720.42, ROI of 5.00%). If I reduce the maximum stakes for the optimization down to a more reasonable £50 then TSM suggests a bank of £180 and 1.9% staking, which results in £2285.31 profit and a ROI of 5.46%. I prefer to use a starting bank of £200 and doing so Increases the profit to £2538.44 without altering the ROI.

Finally we need to optimize the square root staking plan. Reverting to the standard £1000 max stake and a £200 starting bank results in TSM suggesting an initial stake of £651.09. That’s going to bust the bank, I know that much. A £50 maximum stake for the optimization ends up with a suggested initial stake of £3.20, which in turn produces a profit of £1687.94 with a ROI of 4.17%. This can be increased to £5 (profit of £3852.223, ROI of 5.67%) and still not drop the bank below the benchmark trough figure. The point at which the stakes would bust the bank seems to match that of the level stakes plan, i.e. anything much above £13.

This step of the review process should decide which plans I actually study in more detail so am I able to work out which plans to take forward? The ROI on the level stakes plan is quite nice but the bank comes close to busting at £13 stakes and gives a profit of around £1800. Reduce the risk to the benchmark levels and we reduce the profits to around £700. Similarly with the fixed stake plan we have to settle for profits of around £750 if we don’t want to exceed the risk factor of our benchmark 3% plan. I think fixed and level stakes can be eliminated at this stage of proceedings.

I will be keeping the 3% standard percentage staking plan on as the benchmark but with TSM suggesting an optimum of 3.3% should I keep more such plans on for now? I think for the next stage at least I will look at 3.00% to 3.50% in tenths of a percent, just to see if any interesting trends arise. That gives us 6 plans to look at thus far. For the ratchet percentage staking TSM offers up 1.9% as the ideal value when using a £50 maximum stake and my experimentation showed that 2.4% is the upper limit on this plan, unless we want to bust the bank. Le us widen this range a little on the lower side and take a range of 1.8% to 2.4% ratchet stakes, again in tenths of a percent, into the next stage of analysis. That’s now a total of 13 staking plans under investigation. For the square root plan TSM suggested a starting stake of £3.20 so I will round that down to £3 to get the lower end of the range of stakes I will consider for this plan. The upper end of the range will be set at a fairly arbitrary £8 for now and I will increase the stakes in 50p increments across that range giving 11 more staking plans for a total of 24. Why £8 as the upper limit? I saw in the previous step of the review that £6 was safe enough in terms of bank trough and in this step I saw that much above £13 breaks the bank so I figured I’d go a few steps above £6 to see what the trends (if any) show happens as we increase the stakes and settled on £8 as a reasonable figure to go with.

Step 4: Maximum stakes
Having run all the staking plans through TSM, with and without a maximum stake of £50 applied, I am beginning to regret not eliminating more plans before this stage as it has taken a bit of time and effort to get this far. But the rewards at the end of it all should be worth it so I shouldn’t moan too much.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...6&d=1210105216

The above table shows the results from the TSM analysis. I think the first thing to note is that all the plans bar one beat the 3% benchmark plan in profit terms which just goes to show, I am right to be considering alternatives. Looking at the plans without a maximum stake limit in place there is a range of ROIs from under 3% to over 6% too. There is a pretty wide range in troughs too, running from a low of £80 to nearly £160. The cost of the longest losing run also varies significantly, ranging from under 22% to over 53% of the bank.

Let’s quickly look at the trends within the sets of staking plans without a max stake. As we up the percentage on the standard percentage staking plan we see that profits increase to peak at 3.3% and then start to drop off again. The ROI also drops as we increase the percentage of the bank staked on each bet but the trough and cost of the LLR don’t change significantly with increasing percentage, although the both show increased risk levels compared to the benchmark. With the ratchet plans the profits increase rapidly as we up the percentage but the ROI drops and the risk level increases with a significant degree of additional risk for the 2.4% ratchet plan compared to the 1.8% ratchet version. With the square root plans the profits and ROI both increase as we increase the basic stakes. At the same time the trough value decreases indicating a greater degree of risk but interestingly the LLR cost decreases in a conflicting trend.

What happens if we now apply a £50 limit on stakes such that the stakes on any plan never exceed this figure? For the percentage plans, including the benchmark, the profits and ROI are increased significantly while the cost of the longest losing run decreases markedly with the trough values unchanged. What is interesting to note in this scenario is that the ROI now increases with the percentage staked reversing the trend observed when no stake cap was applied. With the ratchet plans the profit actually decreases for most of the plans (the two lowest stakes are a slight exception) but the ROI gets a boost, and again it increases with the percentage staked rather than decreasing as it did without the stake capping. Again, the troughs are unchanged for all plans except the 2.4% ratchet which has a massive improvement, so much so that I had to double check both sets of figures for this plan to make sure I had recorded them correctly. Note also that the LLR costs a lot less with the stake cap in place indicating greater security built in to the plan. With the square root plans the stake cap has less of an impact on the profits, increasing them slightly up to the £6.00 stake level and decreasing them above that. But in each case the ROI is increased, more so at the top end that the lower stakes. The troughs are unchanged once more but the LLR cost is reduced so the stake cap has added security to the bank.

There are in effect 48 plans under consideration here – 24 plans with and without a maximum stake. This number needs to be reduced down to a more manageable figure. Bearing in mind the benchmark figures I see no reason why I should follow a staking plan that results in the worst run costing 50% of the bank or more when under the benchmark plan I would lose less than 40% so out go the uncapped 2.3% and 2.4% ratchet plans. As the profits from the standard percentage staking plans are not much better than the benchmark but the risk levels are greater I will ditch the uncapped versions of all of those too. On the basis that the trough values are less than half the bank when the benchmark figure is 64% I will be ditching both the capped and uncapped versions of the £7.50 and £8.00 square root plans. The £3.00 square root plan will also be eliminated from further analysis due to the low profit levels, similarly the £3.50 square root plan.

On the uncapped side that leaves 1.8% to 2.2% ratchet plus £4.00 to £7.00 square root plans. For both sets of plans we sacrifice a bit of profit for an increased ROI and better bank security by applying a £50 stake cap so I see no reason to continue with the uncapped plans any further. The capped 1.8% and 1.9% ratchet plans will also be dropped due to the comparatively high cost of the LLR when viewed in the light of the other plans. I am also dropping the capped £4.00 square root plan as the profit level is lower than that of the benchmark. Now if I have worked this out right what remains is capped versions of:
  • 3% benchmark
  • 3.1% to 3.5% percentage
  • 2.0% to 2.4% ratchet
  • £4.50 to £7.00 square root
That gives me 17 plans with a range of profits from around £2300 to £4600, ROIs ranging from 4.6% to 6.6%, troughs in the range of approximately £100 to £140 and losing runs that will cost me between 17% and 27% approximately. That’ll do for me, I’m happy with that.

One question that has occurred to me is that of the maximum stake though – is £50 the right level? There is no doubt it improves the staking plans but is it the optimum figure? To find out I will take each of the 17 staking plans and comparing the results from analysis with a £25 maximum stake applied and with a £75 maximum stake limit to see how that affects things.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...7&d=1210105216

Interesting, very interesting. There are some trends in there that made me go back and check my data to confirm I had got it all right as some of those results are rather unexpected. Generally speaking the profit figures are lower for the £25 stake cap, as expected, with the 3% benchmark plan proving the exception to that particular rule. ROIs are increased by up to 2%, trough values are the same as for the £50 stake cap but the cost of the longest losing run is reduced with a lower stake limit. So reducing the maximum stake reduces the risk associated with the bank, increases the ROI and decreases the amount of profit realized.

What about increasing the maximum stake to £75? This is where things get interesting. For the benchmark and percentage plans the profit is reduced whereas it is increased for the ratchet plans and largely unchanged for the square root plans, give or take a small amount. ROIs are down across the board, by nearly 2% in some places, and the risk factor increases, largely due to the LLR cost going up but note also the change in trough figure for the 2.4% ratchet plan. So increasing the maximum stake has a mixed effect on the profit, decreases the ROI and increases the risk. That pretty much says to me we shouldn’t increase the stake cap to £75.

The profits are reduced with the £25 limit but are the figures scaled down as one would expect bearing in mind we have halved the maximum stakes? The average stake figures show that a lot of the bets have the maximum stake riding on them as they are close to the £25 and £50 limits so for this part of the analysis we could assume that all bets have the maximum stake on and so halving that stake should halve profits (if the ROI is unaffected). But the ROI is affected so the comparison of the profits at each staking limit is not as easy as one may first think.

At this stage of the game I really need to set my staking cap else the number of staking plans taken forward to the next stage will become unmanageable. I know it’s not going to be £75 so it’s a straight fight between £25 and £50. A bigger return on investment is great, no doubting that. It’s also nice to reduce the risk of the bank getting into difficulties but at the end of the day it is money that matters. Are the reduced profits with the smaller cap sufficiently offset by the other benefits offered? For the percentage staking plans we’re sacrificing around £500 in profit for a gain of about 1.7% on the ROI and a reduction in the cost of LLR of roughly 10%. For the ratchet plans we’re sacrificing up to £1300 for a gain of only 0.7% on the ROI and a drop of 7% or so in the LLR cost. With the square root plans we give up between £500 and £1500 of our profit to increase the ROI by 1.3% to 1.8% and to knock 6% to 9% off the LLR cost. At the end of the day I am happy with the LLR costs associated with the £50 cap so I don’t care too much about reducing that, unless it has other benefits on the side. I feel the potential loss of profit significantly outweighs the gains in the other areas and for that reason I will continue through this staking review with a £50 cap on the stakes.
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]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=47 How to Build a UK Horse Racing System – Strike Rates (SR) http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=46 Sun, 04 May 2008 12:02:27 GMT An important factor you must decide on before starting to build a system is what SR are you looking for? A high SR such as 50%+, means that profit margins are small, so you need to stake bigger to turn a decent profit, and so need a bigger betting... An important factor you must decide on before starting to build a system is what SR are you looking for? A high SR such as 50%+, means that profit margins are small, so you need to stake bigger to turn a decent profit, and so need a bigger betting bank to start with. Can you afford to do that?

With say a 60% SR, you may only be looking at 2% Return on Investment (ROI), that is simply, for every £100 you bet, you make £2 LONG TERM. Which is why you’d need a decent betting bank to start with, so you have high enough stakes to make the profit worth the effort.

Then you have the other extreme, if you aim for a 15% SR, a £50 betting bank would easily cover it to start with, staking at no more than 1%. At that SR you should be looking at a 20%+ ROI, in fact with low SR’s you can get 100%+ ROI. The serious downside to this is losing runs. You can expect double figure priced winners, but losing runs will happily reach 30+ (hence the low % stake).

You need to balance everything, but if you are just starting out, you really do not want low SR’s as you’ll bottle it the first long losing run, and it is this that makes the majority of punters stop following systems, and saying they don’t work, are crap, etc.....while those that are patient, and let the staking handle the losing runs, are the very folk that profit long term.

So what SR is a good starting point? Well you can’t accurately decide what the SR will be when building a system, but you should have a pretty good idea. For a starter you should be looking in the region of 40%, give or take a few points, this should produce losing runs of no more than 10 on average (I say average, as you will get the odd longer one).

So how do you aim for a SR? Well in my previous articles, just by concentrating on Forecast Favs, and non-handicaps on the flat would give you something in the region of a 40% SR to start with, as well as dropping Sellers, Claimers, 2yo Maidens and any other 3yo+ races that are NOT Maidens

So the Variables ‘Forecast Fav’ and ‘Race Type’ are what I’d call BASE variables. They are the foundations of the system as they have set the playing field for the next part, and that is adding filters which I will start covering in my next blog post.

So as you can see by the data below over the seasons 00-07, the SR bounces around the 40% mark, which is exactly what we wanted to work with.



http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...4&d=1209902541
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]]> Win2Win http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=46 System stats to 30/04/08 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=45 Sat, 03 May 2008 11:23:40 GMT BB stats for 30/04/2008 .*A+**Trades**Bet-IE**Football**Bets*724251113328*Winners*27216788160*SR*37.57%66.53%77.88%48.78%*+/- BB*-4.2358.071.28-5.91*Overlay*.....*AP McCoy**Nine Or Less**Stoute 80**Lambourn Yuck**Johnston Tracks**Michael... BB stats for 30/04/2008
.A+TradesBet-IEFootball
Bets724251113328
Winners27216788160
SR37.57%66.53%77.88%48.78%
+/- BB-4.2358.071.28-5.91
Overlay....
.AP McCoyNine Or LessStoute 80Lambourn YuckJohnston TracksMichael StouteLTO3
Bets897562331176105163
Winners203117105293048
SR22.47%41.33%27.42%31.72%16.48%28.57%29.45%
+/- BB9.66-5.08-1.84-2.1950.0256.71-0.99
Overlay30.84%6.75%7.18%10.95%26.02%24.16%8.10%
.GoodunABSFlat MonthlyRun ProfitDouble TopNH MediaNH MonthlyJump Profit
Bets32632991831098814237273
Winners1421826138830571103
SR43.75%33.33%27.42%33.33%35.34%37.47%29.96%37.73%
+/- BB-2.90-9.55-13.28-1.4696.1511.54-58.99-3.42
Overlay10.15%13.25%4.55%4.28%2.23%0.25%1.55%3.01%
.MaxLay'emNHPMLadiesCDEasy
Bets3941441634130321162
Winners3241246550110274147
SR82.23%86.47%86.75%84.62%85.36%90.74%
+/- BB-4.808.9713.520.591.805.46
Overlay11.37%12.89%9.56%11.15%5.32%4.55%
]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=45 Another month passes http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=44 Sat, 03 May 2008 11:20:47 GMT It's been a little while since I posted here but as April is finally over I figured I should let you know how it went. And in the end it didn't go as badly as I thought it might but that was largely down to cards rather than horses. Had I not missed a 6/1 SP Stoute selection on the final day of the month by being in the pub still then things would have been a little different as I would have had a pretty hefty (for me) chunk of cash on that one and it would certainly have seen me into profit for the month. But as it was a good spell at the blackjack tables brought me out of the mire and pushed me back towards the black although the month did end in a loss, albeit a much smaller one than anticipated.

I used to be a big casino bonus hunter and used to claim some decent bonuses on a regular basis. In fact they were heavy contributors to my bottom line at one stage. But those days have passed, as I suggested in an earlier blog entry actually, and few such bonuses exist these days. But there are two that I make sure I claim every month: Littlewoods and Coral, whose bonus has actually got better this year rather oddly. The Littlewoods bonus is a £25 monthly bonus with a 25B WR whereas the Coral one now has several levels but I always go for the maximum £50 with a 25B WR. My expected returns on these, based on a 0.5% house edge on blackjack (by far the best game through which to meet the WR), are £21.88 and £43.75 respectively but this month the bonuses were worth a combined total of £180.00! I won a little more than expected at Littlewoods but it was Coral were most of the damage was done. It took me three sessions and a total of two and a quarter hours to meet the WR but my returns over those sessions were 110%, 113% and 101%, i.e. I profited in all of them. At the start I transferred £50 in to the casino from the sportsbook and within an hour had doubled up so I transferred £50 back so I was playing just with profit. Later that evening I had doubled up again within an hour so I transferred another £50 back. The third session was more even but I got ahead around £30 at one stage before slipping back to only a few quid profit on the session by the time the bonus was available. But in claiming that £50 bonus I had also made another £104.50 in profit, a very welcome side-effect of bonus hunting.

So despite my April SR being down a few points on my average SR, and being below 50% for the first time in ages, that I only made a small loss thanks to unexpected luck at the blackjack tables.

It was a weird old month though, a proper rollercoaster. I only had 12 winnings days out of 30 and 6 of those came in the last 9 days of the month. 21st April was the real nadir for me but the final part of the month wiped out a lot of the previous losses.

Let's take a quick look at the highs and lows shall we. Banks hitting a new low this month were:
  • Lambourn Yuck
  • ABS
  • Flat Monthly
  • NH Monthly
  • Jumping for Profit
  • Max Lays
Of these Lambourn Yuck and the two Monthly systems are still under a bank barrier. The NH Monthly system is unlikely to ever recover I feel as it now sits so far below the bank barrier that even a 100/1 winner won't bring it out of the depths it has reached. I suspect that I may shortly abandon the two Monthly systems. The Lambourn Yuck system hovers just under the barrier and has the potential to recover in time. ABS slipped under a barrier for a brief period this month but has since risen above it although a couple of losers will see it revert to paper trading. The same is true of the Jumping for Profit bank while all other systems (back and lay) sit comfortably above barrier levels.

The following banks reached a new high in April:
  • Michael Stoute
  • Running for Profit
  • Lay'em
  • Ladies Lays
  • Easy Money Lays
Of these Stoutey is still near his maximum as is the Easy Money Lays, the Ladies Lays slipped back a little with a winner but still remain in touch with the new peak set this month, the Lay'ems are a similar story while my Running for Profit bank is showing a complete contrast to my other betting as it peaked on 20th April (around the time when everything else was suffering) and now sits a long way below it's peak at a time when everything else has recovered somewhat. Isn't gambling weird at times eh? But at the end of the day I have my staking in hand and bank protection measures in place so there's little to worry about.

And that was April, more or less. My bottom line for the year is still negative but not by much, and primarily due to a couple of really unlucky runs at the start of the year. But I have learned and now that certain revenue streams are drying up I have started to look elsewhere for sources of profit and diversifying a little. You have to keep one step ahead in this game... ]]> mathare http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=44 UK Horse Racing Statistics - Newmarket Rowley Mile http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=43 Fri, 02 May 2008 09:51:01 GMT Newmarket Rowley Mile

This track is a good example of changing trends over the years, and is one that bookies & punters have not adjusted the prices for, so you can take advantage of a few things if you know where to look.

Up until 2-3 years ago the track had a heavy bias in races depending on ground conditions, which made results a little random. They have now spent a lot of time, effort, and money sorting that out, and the track bias has gone, and this means more reliable form.

As for most of the studies here, the stats are based on Forecast Favs in the last 5 years.

Unlike other tracks that can have a good record for 2yo & 3yo non-handicaps, Newmarkets produce big losses, this is due to the fact they are much more competitive, being the racing capital. As normal handicaps show a loss, but only in the 4+ age group. This is because 3yo handicaps on the Rowley Mile tend to include horses with 'class', or have ones which have improved plenty since two, and gallop reports lead to the animal going off as Fav.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...1&d=1209721856

You won't see many Claimers/Sellers here, way too posh for that type of thing!!

The remaining races show good profits themselves, but we can usually add an extra tweak or two to save a few points profit. The one I will use is the number of runner. Most tracks go by the trend that the more runners, does not mean the race is more competitive, as they are usually topped up with donkeys, however, with Newmarket being the center of the Universe, they are always more competitive the more runners you have. Most are taken out by dropping 4+ Handicap's (usually lots of runners, hence losing Favs). In these results we have a central cluster of good results, and clusters are generally reliable. So you should only use races of 8-19 runners inclusive.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...2&d=1209721856

Now the final results after including the stats mentioned above may look a little strange, and not usually what most folk look for. A loss in the first year, pretty crap in 2-3, and then good profits in 4-5, not really consistent eh? But remember earlier what I said about the track changing? This clearly shows it, and the betting exchange will improve those results even more.

http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...3&d=1209721856
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]]> Win2Win http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=43 27/04/08 http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=42 Sun, 27 Apr 2008 21:43:11 GMT Made a small profit on the week overall but it was not without blood, sweat and tears (ok maybe there was no tears or blood but I was sweating a bit at times!) Basically had a shocking start to the week on Monday. As bad a day as I have had in a... Made a small profit on the week overall but it was not without blood, sweat and tears (ok maybe there was no tears or blood but I was sweating a bit at times!)

Basically had a shocking start to the week on Monday. As bad a day as I have had in a long time. My lay banks took a beating and the win bets did not get me out of the mire.

After that it went great. There was one day, I think it was Tuesday, where every bet I placed made a return. I ended up making 2.5% profit across the banks for the week which has cut Aprils loss down considerably.

LAY BANKS
-------------
April to Date
-------------
Flat layem = +7.95%
NHPM = (20.25%)
Lady Lays (4.57%)

Total Profit/(loss) = (5.61%)
---------------

Sept 07 - 27/04/08

Flat layem = + 103.23%
NHPM = + 46.54%
Lady Lays + 30.46%

Total Profit/(loss) = + 60.07%

---------------------------------------
WIN BANKS

APRIL TO DATE
-----------------
Stoute 80 = (0.56%)
Flat Members = (0.52%)
Quickfire Flat 2
Quickfire flat 3 - +0.58
Quickfire flat 4 (10.15)
NH Members = +3.83%
MH Jump 4 Profit/Odds On heavy (6.09%)

Total Profit/(loss) = (0.82%)

---------------------------

sept 07 - 27/04/08

Stoute 80 = + 16.32%
Flat Members = (1.77%)
Quickfire Flat 2 + 0.03%
Quickfire flat 3 + 15.89%
Quickfire flat 4 + 6.90%
NH Members (4.12%)
MH Jump 4 Profit/Odds On heavy (19.15%)

Total profit/(loss) = (1.62%) ]]> tophatter http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=42 UK Horse Racing Statistics - Ripon http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=41 Thu, 24 Apr 2008 08:42:29 GMT Ripon is not one of the worlds top tracks, but still runs decent races throughout the year. It is not a great place for blanket Favourite backing though. Only 29% of overall Favs wins, and it is even worse for F/c Favs at 27%. (All data from... Ripon is not one of the worlds top tracks, but still runs decent races throughout the year. It is not a great place for blanket Favourite backing though. Only 29% of overall Favs wins, and it is even worse for F/c Favs at 27%. (All data from 03-07).

One stat that does stand out (and it does on many tracks) is the horse sex (not doing it!!!). Fillies generally have a bad record when fancied for races, but the SR of 19% at Ripon is some way below the norm. Dumping them gives you a SR of 31%, and a 13pt profit over 5 years at SP.

Due to the low number of races at the track, even that filter then limits the 5 year record to 97 Wins from 311 Runners, just enough for accurate data. However I use a technique that I may explain in detail in the 'Systems' Blog articles, and using that another variable stands out, and that is how many rides a jockey has at the meeting.

Regardless of whether any previous filters are used or not, this variable still stands out, and so can be taken as accurate on a decent number of qualifiers. Adding the variable to the Horse Sex filter gives you a good record over the years.

So by adding the fact that jockeys having 3 rides or more at the Ripon meeting, you can get some decent results.


http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog_...0&d=1209026620

One last point that is very strange for a racetrack, is that the F/c Favs in handicaps show a profit!! The SR is only 23%, and one year 16%. I would read that data as misleading as they are influenced by the odd big priced winner in some years, although the RP would lead you to think they are a good bet!
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]]> Win2Win http://www.win2win.co.uk/forum/blog.php?b=41