Creating your own longshots

I have to say that I like the idea of a parlay with all my selections on a saturday. When I went back and did the numbers I found out I would have made a huge amount of coin just by doubling all my selections every Saturday into each other but there are days when the losses would have been huge as well.

Thanks for the reply james.

Great reply Brosco. That will shut up the naysayers.

I am happy to provide some examples in the future as they arise.  I will post them in this thread - but when I do you now have some background as to what I'm trying to achieve.  If you have read the above, you will understand that parlays are usually on Saturday and cracking a good one only happens after a couple of months.  Hopefully the tips I give will continue on their profitable way.

Brosco wrote: Fiddlesticks wrote: How much is your computer based programme..? I assume your reply is tongue-in-cheek and not sarcasm. But to be honest - I have been working on this program for 5 years - maybe 20 hours / week   (I am semi-retired).   So that means around 5000 hours of my time.   A professional programmer wouldn't charge less than about $80 per hour - so its now 'worth' around $400,000. For some strange reason i get the feeling I wont get any offers:)   I will just sit back here with my program supplementing my retirement   :)

and jealousy, after decades of trying he has not improved his selection skills and resents anyone who has some success, eg witness his derision of Crash, one of the more successful punters on this forum

Crash wrote: Fiddlesticks wrote: I am the longshot king, you will have to go long and hard to out tip me when it comes to bolters BOSCO... 1 longshot a year doesn't make you king

I think I gave out 2 on Saturday night in the euro flat season thread...

Got to admit you are a gun on European racing, that is why you did so well in The Royal Ascot Comp 

LOL...he wishes..

Brosco wrote: Fiddlesticks wrote: I am the longshot king, you will have to go long and hard to out tip me when it comes to bolters BOSCO... I guess you misunderstood me.  I was suggesting getting 'longshot returns' by using parlays - turning shorter priced selections into a bigger return.

all good, knock yourself out..

Also I have found long shots a much less rewarding betting proposition as they are generally over bet in Australia.

Kincsem wrote: Also I have found long shots a much less rewarding betting proposition as they are generally over bet in Australia.

By definition they are long shots because they are LONG priced...can you explain what you mean they are generally over bet...?

Longshots can be a trap. Fact is they don't happen all that often and probablyaren't worth worrying about. Least l don't anymore.

Brosco I'm just working with excel and even then I started off from a pretty base level. When I started I had no idea how to go about creating a computerised betting system and really it started off as a means to automate what I would do manually. I soon learnt that assumptions I made and theories I had about racing were being challenged or reinforced by the results. The system I've created on excel has reached the point where I'm apprehensive about trying to rebuild it in a more suitable program so I think I'll continue on with excel for now. The only limitations I have are the fact that every race is on a separate spreadsheet and I have to open every spreadsheet to update what I call my the 'masterbook'. I can see that in time this method will become cumbersome as the number of races reaches the hundreds. Apart from that there is nothing I haven't been able to do using excel functions although I suspect I'm probably doing things very inefficiently.

Just another question what KPI's do you have for your system? At the moment i measure results as follows:
- average predicted finishing position vs actual finishing position of each runner.
- average predicted finishing position vs actual finishing position of first 3
- predicted finishing position vs actual finishing position of winner
I then add the 3 together and divide by 3 to come up with a figure. I'm not sure whether this is the ideal way to refine my system but it allows me to get a large sample per race while putting emphasis on the horses that pay.

I'm time poor so only look at 4-5 races a week and maybe up to 8-10 once the spring comes round. Since making significant changes to my system I've only got about 65 races through the system so a filter looking at strike rates for race types would return unreliable results. However from the small sample I have noticed that since the tracks have gotten softer in the second half of my sample my KPI's and monetary results have worsened. Because I'm doing so few races a week I'm picky and only do races with quality horses and preferably fields of less than 16 but I'm not sure whether this improves my results.

In regard to my KPI's, I find that concentrating on system accuracy is more important than profit with such a small sample. It's like a footy team purely focusing on method (key statistics that correlate with winning) as opposed to the result (win or loss).

I'll give a simplified example of my KPI:

1st Pharlap (predicted to come 1st) = 0
2nd Sunline (predicted to come 5th) = 3
3rd Northerly (predicted to come 2nd) = 1
4th Lohnro (predicted to come 3rd) = 1
5th Saintly (predicted to come 4th) = 1

So for field ave is 6/5 = 1.2 position from predicted per horse
Top 3 ave is 4/3 = 1.33
1st place = 0

So my accuracy rating for that race is (1.2 + 1.33 + 0)/3 = 0.843
This lower the number the better I've predicted the race result. I think my best result over the past 65 races was in a nine horse field where I predicted the finishing order correctly except for 8th and 9th which I both got mixed up.

I've also got a number of profit indicators but I've found I can manipulate these to create huge profits retrospectively but that creates counter-intuitive factors which are simply trying to fit past results with poor predictive qualities.

Anyway I get the feeling we are both using computers system differently which is a good thing.

I just realised I've diverted from the topic, apologies. Back to longshots....