The most profitable bots

[Trade 500]

Hi all,

I’m turning to automation more as I don’t have time to trade horse races for good profit.
I wonder what everyone’s most profitable and favourite automation bots are for any sports.
I especially like the Lay The Scorer for football as the risk is low and the potential profit could be high, I’m not a fan of greyhound bots as I find the market volatility means I need to be watching it which goes against my primary purpose for using automation, I wonder what others experiences have been and which bots seem most lucrative.

Carlos

[spreadbetting]

I've always found volatile markets the most profitable for botting but I suppose it depends on how your mindset can handle lthe inevitable run of losing bets they bring. Aiming to get a green market each time when botting will severely limit your opportunities and profits imo.

[sionascaig]

Whats your expectations on "profitable"?

[Dallas]

The best ones are usually the simplest ones

[Trade 500]

Whats your expectations on "profitable"?

I guess profitable is relative to each of us but I am hoping to use some bots to profit more than I lose, obvious I know, then in time see if it is scalable but reasonable, so nothing extravagant but between £20 to £60 a day.
I wonder which are the simplest bots and why they work. As I mentioned I like the Lay The Scorer one as it’s low risk, I’m patient enough to wait for the profit to come in and I certainly like low risk, and with the big football matches there is a lot of liquidity which can help with scaling up.
Any positive automation experiences I would be interested in reading about.

[northbound]

Come up with hundreds of strategy ideas.

Test each one of them on 500+ markets and judge their profitability only after at least 500+ markets. If you’re not willing to put in the massive amount of time required to create, execute, track strategies: you will fail.

Please note that on average 9 out of 10 of your strategy ideas will fail. You’ll probably find something that works completely by accident, while you were testing a different idea.

Do not set daily targets. A strategy must be deployed in a specific situation. Not every day/week you’ll encounter that specific situation.

Do not set daily targets. Every long term profitable strategy will have frequent losing runs. You must learn to accept them as part of the game.

Do not over stake, test your stuff for months using the minimum £2 stake.

[Trade 500]

Come up with hundreds of strategy ideas.

Test each one of them on 500+ markets and judge their profitability only after at least 500+ markets. If you’re not willing to put in the massive amount of time required to create, execute, track strategies: you will fail.

Please note that on average 9 out of 10 of your strategy ideas will fail. You’ll probably find something that works completely by accident, while you were testing a different idea.

Do not set daily targets. A strategy must be deployed in a specific situation. Not every day/week you’ll encounter that specific situation.

Do not set daily targets. Every long term profitable strategy will have frequent losing runs. You must learn to accept them as part of the game.

Do not over stake, test your stuff for months using the minimum £2 stake.

I’m not interested in daily targets, I was just answering their question.

I’m interested in what bots are working for some of you, so far I haven’t heard any and am even more curious now.

A top 3 of the ones on this site would be interesting. My guess is Lay The Draw is one.

[jimibt]

Come up with hundreds of strategy ideas.

Test each one of them on 500+ markets and judge their profitability only after at least 500+ markets. If you’re not willing to put in the massive amount of time required to create, execute, track strategies: you will fail.

Please note that on average 9 out of 10 of your strategy ideas will fail. You’ll probably find something that works completely by accident, while you were testing a different idea.

Do not set daily targets. A strategy must be deployed in a specific situation. Not every day/week you’ll encounter that specific situation.

Do not set daily targets. Every long term profitable strategy will have frequent losing runs. You must learn to accept them as part of the game.

Do not over stake, test your stuff for months using the minimum £2 stake.

I’m not interested in daily targets, I was just answering their question.

I’m interested in what bots are working for some of you, so far I haven’t heard any and am even more curious now.

at best, i think you may only get anecdotal evidence of succesful bots, you certainly won't get a detailed account of how they operate. as northbound says, it really is down to each individual to perform their own DUE-DIL on any ideas that they think may translate to an effective strategy. testing is alas the currency of success and altho you may stumble upon a premade rule that works for a period of time, once it starts to wane, you'll have very little clue as to how best fix it if you've not invested in knowledge acquisition.

i've been doing this for the best part of 3-4 years and had initial great success (i.e. luck) before a long period of realisation that i needed to understand how the working parts of each market interacted and related. in terms of cheap advice that's in the public domain, look at autoamtion on football matches and tailor your experience to your understanding of how to select matches that marry up to the objective of your rule(s). beyond that, keep good records of what works where, how and (potentially), WHY!!

I wish there had been the wealth of knowledge and willing assitance as their is now when i 1st started, tho in some ways, having to pick it up as you go has been my saving grace and why i'm still here.

[poklius]

I've found greyhound markets most fascinating to automate, precisely because of their volatility and speed. It's great challange and most profitable for me so far...

[Trade 500]

I've found greyhound markets most fascinating to automate, precisely because of their volatility and speed. It's great challange and most profitable for me so far...

That’s interesting, I tried the scalping bot in a few greyhound races yesterday and found even with just a one tick offset the back or lay side would be taken but then it would move rapidly away before the offset amount could be taken. Maybe I will need to try this again and instead of 2 minutes have it arm and start it at 1 when the market has settled a little.

[northbound]

I’m interested in what bots are working for some of you, so far I haven’t heard any and am even more curious now.

Personally, I so far invested 1.5 years into trading, collecting unique data, testing ideas, etc. So far, I came up with only a couple of profitable bots. Here's a very remote hint of what they do:

Horses pre-off trade
Based on certain market metrics, it lays a horse X minutes before the off, then closes the trade at scheduled off time. It does around 10 trades per month: some win, some lose. Given a trading stake of £100, it makes a profit of £20-60 every month. Here's the thing: I tested this for 12 months with £2 stakes. It performed really well every month with the exception of Jun-Aug. Only last month, after a year of testing, I was confident enough to raise stakes. Going well so far.

Greyhound value betting
Based on certain market metrics, it backs a greyhound to win the race. It places 200+ bets every month. If you bet £1 per dog, you can expect at the end of the month to be up £10-20. Bear in mind that almost every month at some point this strategy finds itself down £10+ because of losing streaks. What matters is the bottom line after hundreds of bets at the end of the month. Again, this has been profitable every single month since May (when my data recording began) but only in the last couple of months I felt confident enough to raise the stakes.

[northbound]

I forgot to mention a tennis inplay bot which worked really well during the clay season, but stopped being profitable after that.

Looking forward to unleash it again next April-May to see if it worked due to pure luck or because of clay courts.

[jimibt]

I forgot to mention a tennis inplay bot which worked really well during the clay season, but stopped being profitable after that.

Looking forward to unleash it again next April-May to see if it worked due to pure luck or because of clay courts.

singing from the same sheet on this one. i had a rule that worked great fromJune-October (with a blip in Aug). However, that simply does notwork now -probably due to the fact that it was geared twds the Flat season.

To make a go at it, you need to be constantly evolving and looking at stuff that no-one else is covering and/or being a bit contrarian.

[northbound]

To make a go at it, you need to be constantly evolving and looking at stuff that no-one else is covering and/or being a bit contrarian.

Indeed, recently I read the Betfair Pro Trader blog and he mentions something about strategy angles: the more weird, the better.

Weird doesn't mean complicated. Dallas is right that simple is the best.

Weird means an angle that no-one talks about.

Stupid example which probably doesn't work: find a Flat horse who never placed when the temperature was above 25C. To do this, you would probably have to build your own database by cross matching race start times with historical weather data.

[Dallas]

I always remember a comment from PeterLe on here (for those who don't know he's solely an automated trader who has consistently made very good money year after year on in-running horse racing markets)

He once posted if he were to sell his most profitable bot for £20, buyers would ask for there money back as it was so simple