I arrived at the same result partypooper.

In the longrun, it all evens out.

And this is hardly a groundbreaking insight: Backing all favorites SP or otherwise, will lose you money.

If a program is ever invented to be able to lay them all, it's a Rolla in the garage for sure! :-))

Depends entirely what odds you get.

Try laying every favourite on Betfair.

Crash,

You can easily lay all the favs. So I am not sure what your saying - unless you are saying lay them at the SP price which would be difficult.

Regardless if you lay or bet on the favs on betfair you are going to come out at a near break even price ( possibly down a % point or 2 due to commisions) as a lot of studies have shown but you won't be down 10% or 15%. It will be around 1%-2% instead. And hence the possible approach of using a staking system that reclaims this 1%-2% and puts the overall plan in profit. The possible reason it works is because over time the 1%-2% loss actually moves in and out of profit ( 1%-2% up sometimes and and 1% - 2% down sometimes ).

Good Luck

Obviously, exactly what I'm saying [tongue in cheek].

Hi wesmip1
Are you still doing the BAT thing.

Crash reading back your posts I relise you are talking about SP price , I am backing the IAS Fav at the jump. The IAS fav and betfair are normally the same unless one gets backed in late.
I don't take to much notice of the tabs as they very greatly. eg the last at belmont today Lord Baumay 4.2 IAS opened at 4's on S/tab $5.1 at the jump equal Fav with Gamatron $5.1 on IAS Gamatron 8/1 Gamatron ended up Fav paying $5 on S/tab (you could have got $9 on betfair)

Crash you may want to google the grey horse bot

There seems to be quite a few varying ideas about what a race 'favorite' is. It's generally assumed to be the [SP] favorite. Usually the TAB favorite, as that's were the majority of punters [still] bet, for practical reasons.

How's this going?
 

Wes

At the risk of dragging up the angst again, how is this going?

AngryPixie,

I didn't want to keep posting as this just blew up to be something way too big. Since doing this

Backing Progressive : $1533 PROFIT
Laying Progressive : $218 PROFIT

The Backing bank has more than doubled (started with 1K) while the lay side has made a signicant profit (21%).

I have not lost a bank yet although been very close once but then I hit a string of winners. Seems to be the way that you getr a heap of favs up in the morning and then a dull patch with the odd win and then a run of favs win late in the day.

Interestingly both sides are still showing a profit but remember the mathematicians say that one of them has to fall over soon or later ...

Thought I would just add - THIS IS PAPER TRADED RESULTS ONLY. When I say paper traded I have written a program that works it out for me so I don't have to do anything and I just check the figures every so often. I suspect this is just going through a good time at the moment.

Good Luck.

Yes I think eventually one side will fall over but it's important to try your ideas out. In science you usually learn more from your mistakes so they are treated as being unfortunate but valuable things.

Please keep us posted now and then. I found some of what you had to say quite interesting.

For those interested this will probably be the last time I post these results as I don't want this argument to go on forever (don't want to bring it up again). But the results are below for almost a month of testing:

Backing Progressive : $4800.10 PROFIT
Laying Progressive : $-35.70 LOSS

No Banks lost yet.

Looks like this works....

With 1 day to go this month it has made a stupid amount of money. It is up 380%.

Good Luck.

Wesmip,

If your figures are valid then I advise you to take your loss-chasing (aka "progressive") plan and hurl it as far as possible off Bulli Pass - or equivalent.

Then analyse your figures to try and find a filter to get you profitable on favourites at level stakes.

Your experiment suggests that Betfair Markets have a memory about favourites. Leading to overbacking when favourites are running hot, and/or underbacking when they are in a slump.

So something like only backing favourites following n outs will probably be the optimum strategy.

Perhaps Betfair has no memory but the punters do - short term memory.

My studies show when a horror run of outs on favourites occurs, the prices get longer and longer and hence the overlays occur.
Just as when they romp home 50% of the day, they get shorter and shorter as success continues.

Why?

Because either favourite backers are cashed up and think this is the day, or they simply get frightened and back off so they have cash for another day.

Might seem all paranoia and conjecture, but looking at the prices (and I'm talking about heavily fancied horses) the pattern does emerge.

Self doubt, the conspiracy theories, the "perhaps I got it wrong today with the ratings" etc etc, all have an impact on how much is wagered.

As a wagering group, punters have the shortest memories of any group, including bookies ;)

Some of my best days have been where only one favourite gets up for the day (and I bet level stakes) and the overlay goes to 200% plus.