Million Dollar Question

Question

OK, not sure if I'll get much information or answers but thought I'd ask the question anyway.

So how many people here make a profit using systems etc with information from the Smtform database ?

I've been at it over a year now and despite a number of promising looking methods etc I've really yet to find anything that I can call a reliable ongoing system. I'm not saying that its impossible, just interested in other peoples views.

I have good programming knowledge and write all my systems in Java, maybe I'd be better investigating R ?

Thanks in advance for any replies.

Answer 1

Hi - a big question, but a few general comments: 1. Building any profitable system has to start with data. How you use the data is another matter. Generally the creation of derived variables - eg. calculating mean draw bias for each stall at each course - that you can then use as inputs along with other derived and raw variables is one key aspect, rather than just the raw data alone. 2. Once you have your data prepared - derived variables and raw data - what sort of system are you going to create? Is it rule based (ie. your own query type rules) or is it a machine learning prediction model? Or are you going to try and create your own handicapping system that you apply daily based on an automated historic assessment? They are very different exercises, of course. What subset of racing are you going to concentrate on? 3. Programming languages - as you're probably aware you can do anything in any programming language, so no one is better than another, just more efficient for different tasks. But that said, R is "better" for prototyping systems than Java, since it's a scripting language with high level functions for easy data manipulation and applying algorithms. However, there is of course a big overhead in learning the language in the first place. Very few people make consistent profits from horseracing (apart from bookies, of course), but it is done - hope that helps.

Answer 2

For what it's worth, I developed an exchange system (essentially rule based) using the Smartform database that turned a £200 starting bank at November 2012 into a peak balance of around £3,500 by August 2013. And I'd probably withdrawn about £700 (from memory) in smallish blocks over the months leading up to that point.

Depressingly, hubris then set in. A longish bad run of results combined with some over-aggressive staking saw me down to around £1,000 by November 2013, at which point my car's clutch went (repair bill £1,500)! I took that as a trigger to pull the plug and go and do something else for a few months.

I've gone back to the drawing board, though, and will be reactivating my subscription soon with an oddsline-based system, which I've been wanting to do for a long while.

My perspective is that racing systems design is one of my hobbies. The research and programming is the "fun" part, and I've learned a lot while doing it (trying to work with the Betfair NG-API right now, for example), but my enthusiasm waxes and wanes depending on what else I've got on. And as I've got a 2-year-old son that's normally quite a lot ...

Short answer to your question is that it profitable systems are possible, and I think my experience illustrates this, but they are not easy to find and you have to explore creative, unusual angles. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it!