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My journey applying AI to horse racing

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Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#31

Post by retsibsi »

Animats wrote: post #5

He has this completely wrong. The idea in pare-mutuel betting is not to pick the winner. The favorite usually wins, but the house cut makes betting the favorite a net lose. The goal is to find underpriced bets, where the collective estimate of the odds is far from the prediction systems's estimate.

> The idea in pare-mutuel betting is not to pick the winner. The favorite usually wins, but the house cut makes betting the favorite a net lose.

Isn't this a misstatement in the other direction? Favourites can be underrated too.

They're probably not, or at least not enough for you to beat the house cut, but that's true of every bet -- they're all likely to be net losers unless you have special information, or a special way of using it.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#32

Post by sago »

ElevenLathe wrote: post #28
LiamPa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closer to the off the more accurate the price is (wisdom of the crowd) thus less value, you need to know something others don’t to win long term from taking the starting price! I assume you are American as everyone in the UK has a personal betting machine and it’s in their pocket.

Not sure how it works elsewhere but horse betting in the US is almost always parimutuel, meaning that everybody gets the post odds, regardless of when they bought their ticket. In other words, betting early doesn't give any advantage and in fact the later you can wait, the more accurate an idea you have of the actual payout odds of your bet. Thus, having access to a private betting machine, and not having to elbow ot…

If you bet at 10-1 here, your bet is 10-1 on your receipt, and your odds are 10-1. Your bet at that price may change the odds for everyone who comes later, but that doesn't affect yours. It is quite possible to arbitrage odds between bookmakers. Or it would be, if they didn't do such a good job of conferring and mutually underwriting their risk themselves.

It must be crazy having the odds change on you after your bet.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#33

Post by surfsvammel »

sago wrote: post #32
ElevenLathe wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how it works elsewhere but horse betting in the US is almost always parimutuel, meaning that everybody gets the post odds, regardless of when they bought their ticket. In other words, betting early doesn't give any advantage and in fact the later you can wait, the more accurate an idea you have of the actual payout odds of your bet. Thus, having access to a private betting machine, and not having to elbow ot…

If you bet at 10-1 here, your bet is 10-1 on your receipt, and your odds are 10-1. Your bet at that price may change the odds for everyone who comes later, but that doesn't affect yours. It is quite possible to arbitrage odds between bookmakers. Or it would be, if they didn't do such a good job of conferring and mutually underwriting their risk themselves. It must be crazy having the odds change on you after your bet…

For Swedish harness racing there is only one bookie. The state has had monopoly on betting in general for a long time and is very strictly regulated also today. So, there won't be any arbitrage across bookies for these races at least.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#34

Post by gorkish »

Using computers to beat masses of the general public at horseracing in this fashion has been going on for well over 30 years. I first read articles about the gambling teams and data scientists behind them in Hong Kong in the mid 90's. The teams had data capture people entering realtime odds from the tracks at Sha Tin and Happy Valley and hired private tellers to enter thousands of computed bets moments before a race began from their offtrack locations in downtown HK highrises.

The thing that makes it easy to simulate but impractical to execute is that getting enough bets in fast enough and late enough to tip the odds to your favor to give you an edge while limiting losses is difficult to do. It's even harder to do without this wagering itself affecting the odds. For one there often just isn't enough money wagered on a race. In the heyday of the HK races you'd often have 100 million+ HKD wagered on every single race, much of that coming from the general population -- individuals going to the track. There are only a few big event races in the US or Europe that will attract that kind of betting pool. Even HK is no longer like that.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#35

Post by rlucas »

surfsvammel wrote: post #23
scottlocklin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure these races are pari-mutuel where the house takes a vigorish. The sentence you give is basically the definition of pari-mutuel without the vig. FWIIW the author is wrong that this problem is unstudied. There are actual hedge funds which do nothing but this and a quick google search provides numerous academic examples; even a github repo. "Deep learning" is probably the worst approach I can think of to…

It doesn’t say that horse racing is understudied. It is saying that harness racing is understudied. Normal horse racing is very different to harness racing. Also. The simulated betting on on the favourite on those 26000 races was with one dollar per race. If the favourite win, the balance increases with 1$*the odds. If the favourite does not win, the balance decreases with 1$. Nothing strange about it, and as I tried…

In the Anglosphere at least (US, AU and others?) harness and jockey racing are both bet in the same way. Harness is shown alongside other racing in Off Track Betting and sportsbooks.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#36

Post by rlucas »

michaelscott wrote: post #21
LiamPa wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Value is value, doesn’t matter if it wins, its all a numbers game.

There's no payout if the horse doesn't win. It doesn't operate like the stock market.

In fairness, the stock market doesn't operate "like the stock market," if by that you mean reliably reward a value pick, either.

The first order of business in these things is certainly to spot the overlay/value pick/+EV situation. The second order of business is to manage bankroll/vol to be able to realize the EV over time -- but that is generally speaking much easier and more mechanical than the core insight of (repeatably) finding the EV...

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#37

Post by scottlocklin »

surfsvammel wrote: post #23
scottlocklin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure these races are pari-mutuel where the house takes a vigorish. The sentence you give is basically the definition of pari-mutuel without the vig. FWIIW the author is wrong that this problem is unstudied. There are actual hedge funds which do nothing but this and a quick google search provides numerous academic examples; even a github repo. "Deep learning" is probably the worst approach I can think of to…

It doesn’t say that horse racing is understudied. It is saying that harness racing is understudied. Normal horse racing is very different to harness racing. Also. The simulated betting on on the favourite on those 26000 races was with one dollar per race. If the favourite win, the balance increases with 1$*the odds. If the favourite does not win, the balance decreases with 1$. Nothing strange about it, and as I tried…

Both those links are on harness racing specifically not horse racing in general; and I found them in 2 seconds of obvious google search.

Like the guy beneath me: I've seen those curves before -they're always a mistake.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#38

Post by emmanuel_1234 »

EGreg wrote: post #10

I found this nugget to be the most valuable: Simulated flat betting 1$ on 26 000 races over 15 years shows a hefty return on investment If this is true, why don’t we all just go and hire people in Sweden to put in bets for us at the last minute, based on the favorite horse, and pay them out of the profits? We pay them to do it and we collect the winnings. If this strategy works it may work elsewhere too. Why not just…

I also think there is a misunderstanding here. In this kind of bet, the track takes a cut. In other word, your 10-1 odds are calculated on what's left after the track took a cut.

I simulated this myself on the HK tracks: if you bet randomly _and_ don't ignore track take, your expected return on the long run is precisely $BET - $TRACK_TAKE, which was about 80% in HK. ie: you lose 20% of your money on average on each bet.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#39

Post by slm_HN »

He was unlucky in picking harness racing. Standard horse racing is already corrupt, but harness racing takes it to the next level. The rules and the addition of the harness make cheating much more prevalent.

I'd rather bet on Professional Wrastling than harness racing.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#40

Post by chucksmash »

stefs wrote: post #19
EGreg wrote: post #10

I found this nugget to be the most valuable: Simulated flat betting 1$ on 26 000 races over 15 years shows a hefty return on investment If this is true, why don’t we all just go and hire people in Sweden to put in bets for us at the last minute, based on the favorite horse, and pay them out of the profits? We pay them to do it and we collect the winnings. If this strategy works it may work elsewhere too. Why not just…

well, for once, just because it works it doesn't mean it's worth it. a couple of years ago i read a story about a man who cracked a scratch-off lottery ticket code (the serial numbers were biased). he could have earned more than with his day job if he devoted his time fully to gaming the system, but ... it decided it wasn't good enough - a mindless, robotic task, ending in misery soon. the take away of the story was…

I remember a very similar story, it stuck with me from a couple of years ago:

> His next thought was utterly predictable: "I remember thinking, I'm gonna be rich! I'm gonna plunder the lottery!" he says. However, these grandiose dreams soon gave way to more practical concerns. "Once I worked out how much money I could make if this was my full-time job, I got a lot less excited," Srivastava says. "I'd have to travel from store to store and spend 45 seconds cracking each card. I estimated that I could expect to make about $600 a day. That's not bad. But to be honest, I make more as a consultant, and I find consulting to be a lot more interesting than scratch lottery tickets."[1]

[1]: https://www.wired.com/2011/01/ff-lottery/

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