Way back in March…
I’d worked on improving the analysis code and trying to pull something out of my results, then the racing stopped. So I fiddled with the bot’s code and left it quietly ticking along on the Aus gallops, just to give the VPS something to do. Results from this were pretty much breakeven for the two months or so before the UK dogs restarted. That’s not such a bad outcome when you take into account commission of upto 10% in Australian markets.
In the meantime I’ve done a bit more coding along with general tinkering. I’ve been very fortunate to be able to keep working throughout the restrictions, but have managed to do more with the kids, playing in the garden and going out for walks, which has been nice. Keeping them positive is essential.
Since the dogs restart I’ve dialled in the triggers based on the earlier analysis and progress is good, apart from when Betfair fell over last week – the following period was negative in a consistent way. I do wonder if an effect of the exchange crashing is that either a load of bots drop out of the market for some period or the manuals are acting differently, maybe overly cautious, or perhaps both? Or, something else – coincidence? Who knows? Anyway, since then it’s continued on the path of good progress.
The free data I talked about in my last post could be useful, I’m sure. I had a quick search looking at how to read it and extract data, such as pre-off prices – it doesn’t look like a simple task so I’ve not moved at all with that. I’m currently developing a method of creating my own speed ratings and am only finding industry SP in the data I’ve scraped, which is where the historical data may help. I’d prefer to work with pre-off prices than BSP, although if the method gets any sort of return, whichever price I work with should only have a minor impact (this is an assumption as I think the last pre-off price will be on average the same as BSP).
TRADER247 