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My journey applying AI to horse racing

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Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#41

Post by CamTin »

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…

Yeah the whole idea of parimutuel betting is that there is no "bookie" and that you are betting against the other gamblers. No central entity is taking a side in the bets. This makes sense when you realize that the central entity is, for example, the State of Kentucky. Do you want a bureaucrat making millions of dollars in bets on behalf of taxpayers? Probably not. Instead, let's just collect all the bets from race fans, take out say 5% for the state, and then pay out to the fans holding tickets for the winning horse (forget about exotics like exactas and trifectas to keep things simple, but the idea is the same). That way, we don't need to have handicapping experts set odds in order to ensure the state makes money. Instead, it's all simple math that can easily be audited and still guarantees a profit. The side-effect of this is obviously that you can't know the final odds until the last ticket has been sold at post time.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#42

Post by Scoundreller »

surfsvammel wrote: post #33
sago wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What if... bear with me... somebody outside of Sweden took bets on Swedish harness racing?

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#43

Post by shaunray »

Actually the most successful parimutuel syndicates and HNWI bet programmatically through API’s. They consistently win and they do not make their money from picking a single winner. They bet on exotic bets that have much higher odds and are easier to box. For instance picking two winners or order of the first three horses.

Source: I worked on those APIs to integrate with 20+ exchanges over three companies and 10 years. The syndicates and HNWIs were always the same people over that decade.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#44

Post by brisance »

gorkish wrote: post #34

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…

Bloomberg had an article on this, last year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambl...

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#45

Post by beezle »

soVeryTired wrote: post #26
surfsvammel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't mean to sound rude, but I don't believe the results in your $1 * 26000 races graph. I spent a few years in a hedge fund building algorithmic trading strategies, and whenever I saw a graph (we called them 'account curves') like that, it inevitably meant that there was a bug somewhere. Usually the strategy is somehow non-tradable, either because the market is closed or the system is borrowing data from the futu…

Betting $1 on 26,000 races:

Stated win rate betting on the post time favorite is 37%

This equates to a loss of 16,380 of original 26,000. Earnings must then come from the 9,620 bet on favorites that won.

Assuming the 55,000 is winnings (and not a total including original 9,620), this would equate to an average odds of better than 11/2. If reduced by the 9,620 then odds come down to a bit over 9/2

My experience in horse racing (regular and harness) is that odds on the favorite of 11/2 (or even 9/2) are extremely rare and certainly not the average. A realistic figure is 3/2 over the various field sizes (smaller fields tend to go close to even money, larger to 2/1 or so).

So yeah, the data as presented appear flawed.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#46

Post by gricardo99 »

shaunray wrote: post #43

Actually the most successful parimutuel syndicates and HNWI bet programmatically through API’s. They consistently win and they do not make their money from picking a single winner. They bet on exotic bets that have much higher odds and are easier to box. For instance picking two winners or order of the first three horses. Source: I worked on those APIs to integrate with 20+ exchanges over three companies and 10 years…

That sounds fascinating. I don’t suppose you have a blog, or any other write up about that world? Even perhaps a link to one of these betting APIs, if they’re generally available to the public?

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#47

Post by LiamPa »

retsibsi wrote: post #30
michaelscott wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He/she just means that if a bet is genuinely underpriced, the expected value of taking it will be positive. (So if you can reliably find these bets, you'll profit in the long run.) The odds reflect the horse's supposed chance of winning or placing (or whatever else it takes to get a payout), not its expected position -- so this isn't a case where you can be aware that the horse is underrated, but have no way to make…

Exactly, for example yesterday I placed over 5000 bets, not all of them won but as far as my strategies were concerned they were value and should therefore be in profit over the long term.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#48

Post by [deleted] »

gricardo99 wrote: post #46
shaunray wrote: post #43

Actually the most successful parimutuel syndicates and HNWI bet programmatically through API’s. They consistently win and they do not make their money from picking a single winner. They bet on exotic bets that have much higher odds and are easier to box. For instance picking two winners or order of the first three horses. Source: I worked on those APIs to integrate with 20+ exchanges over three companies and 10 years…

That sounds fascinating. I don’t suppose you have a blog, or any other write up about that world? Even perhaps a link to one of these betting APIs, if they’re generally available to the public?

[deleted]

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#49

Post by michaelscott »

retsibsi wrote: post #30
michaelscott wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

He/she just means that if a bet is genuinely underpriced, the expected value of taking it will be positive. (So if you can reliably find these bets, you'll profit in the long run.) The odds reflect the horse's supposed chance of winning or placing (or whatever else it takes to get a payout), not its expected position -- so this isn't a case where you can be aware that the horse is underrated, but have no way to make…

Yeah over the long term, but I thought this was already implied. All I'm saying is that "beating" other bettors is not enough to ensure success because of the means by which payouts are made. I suspect you feel this is also implied though, so I think we're probably on the same page.

Re: My journey applying AI to horse racing

#50

Post by shaunray »

gricardo99 wrote: post #46
shaunray wrote: post #43

Actually the most successful parimutuel syndicates and HNWI bet programmatically through API’s. They consistently win and they do not make their money from picking a single winner. They bet on exotic bets that have much higher odds and are easier to box. For instance picking two winners or order of the first three horses. Source: I worked on those APIs to integrate with 20+ exchanges over three companies and 10 years…

That sounds fascinating. I don’t suppose you have a blog, or any other write up about that world? Even perhaps a link to one of these betting APIs, if they’re generally available to the public?

Betfair has a public API, but they are not parimutuel: https://docs.developer.betfair.com/display/1smk3cen4v3lu3yom...

Tabcorp is an Australian Wagering Company that offers real-time horse racing APIs: https://studio.tab.com.au/

Others are a little less public and you need to sign up with an account and prove you are a syndicate. Hong Kong Jockey Club, UniBet, Amtote.

I don't normally talk about this history as I was active in this industry until four years ago. There are however people who have come out in public:

Bill Benter: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-03/the-gambl...

Jelko: https://www.smh.com.au/national/meet-the-joker-the-australia...

Most of the other families and players are extremely private or are of Eastern European I wont talk about them publicly.

This is a list of common bet types that are targets for these types of players: - Trifecta - Big Six - Quadrella - First 4

Here is a blog on working the combinations of the Big Six: https://practicalpunting.com.au/pp-online/a-z-of-betting/exo...

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