Automation on Football

[evertonian]

Has anybody managed to make long term profit using automation in play on the football markets ?

Thus must not include pre match trading on football, or pre match automation.

[MobiusGrey]

I answered 'no' as you've specified automation only. I did have a very good run last season using a servant on the correct score market which performed very well for over half the season. It took a bit of a battering so I stopped using it but looking back this was mainly down to appalling sense of money management. I've started it up again this season with a few adjustments here and there so as not to allow the stakes to get out of hand and have also made an excel profit/loss spreadsheet to track trades which in all honesty is essential and was a rookie error.




Going back to automated I have tried to fully automate football trading for a while and can't quite get anything. Part of the reason for me is the sheer amount of variables in a match, 22 players can influence a game, then you have the match officials. There's also weather to contend with, atmosphere of a match, injuries during a game etc. All of this is almost impossible account for when making a bot to trade say over 2.5 goals.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm sure there's many, many people out there trading football fully automated it's just extremely hard to find that elusive edge in what is essentially a chaotic environment. For me the only way to trade is on a match by match basis where I can research the game beforehand, map out how I envisage it may play out, watch the game live, if it conforms to how I have mapped it run a servant on it and let that do the hard work, or even just trade it manually using the many tools Betangel has to offer. The dutching and booking tabs really quite something when it comes to staking.

Bon chance!

[evertonian]

Yes thanks so much for your input Mobius Gray. Interested to hear others opinions on automated football trading.

[evertonian]

The two who make long term profit interested to hear from you. Are you placing your position as bets or trades ? Are you using any particular website to research games ? Or is everything you do in play purely price based depending on circumstances / minutes that have occurred in the match ?

I've automated a lot of football over the past 3 years and am finding it extremely difficult to make profits using automation. I've used lots of methods, laying the draw, laying home teams etc etc etc and have kept records on each one. It seems to me because football is so variable that maybe one season something will make a profit, but during the next season it never seems to continue. I think personally that football has to be traded while watching the game and taking into account events that are taking place during the game. Therefore automating a method for football in my opinion for long term profit is extremely difficult. Interested to hear from Dallas in particular as to what you do on football and whether the automation you have created on Soccer is making you long term profit ?

Any insights gratefully received.

[George Bets]

I have two automated value betting systems and multiple automated Betfair systems. None of my strategies are losing, some of them perform quite well, others struggle to make any significant profits.

One value betting system is based on a lot of historical football data that I have scraped from multiple websites. All of these data combined is enough to be really competitive, but there is room for improvement. I must say that it is pretty tough to find value, since the market/bookmaker predictions are becoming more efficient as well.

My trading strategies are performing better. I basically have watched many markets in the past, and I have slowly implemented automated betting strategies. They have all been written in the programming language Python, I guess it will be difficult to replicate the same performance by using the BetAngel automation tools. For example, some of these trading strategies are based on in-play market predictions (basically my own version of soccer mystic). The best part of these automated trading strategies is volume. I trade over 200 matches a month, and the high volumes help me maintain a pretty stable profit each month, although my ROI per strategy not better than 1.5% for most strategies.

In my experience automated strategies (but maybe all betting/trading strategies) should be based on facts. You need to know the risk you are exposed to with each bet, and the rewards that can be expected with each bet. I think this is fundamental.

[jimibt]

as they say, all of this is down to your own personal psychology. i'm always amazed at the two things that happen with scale; fear and risk.

the idea of staking £100 to bag £15 may not sometimes feel *worth the effort* and when it is done, there's little emotion either way (if the risk/reward is calculated correctly). However, factor that up to £1000 with a £150 reward. Immediately, the risk reward SEEMS better, however, that's when the demons of doubt will creep in and deny you the confidence to do what you would on the lesser stakes.

In short, our position can be negatively skewed when the stakes get higher, despite the risk/reard ratio being identical in both scenarios, thus making profits on football may require higher staking and lower exits in order to make sustained profits.

[Euler]

I automate stuff on football that looks for outliers. So it kicks in when I probably wouldn't spot it or wouldn't have the guts to take a position. The sort of thing where you would say, 'Well that's not going to work'. It just sits there and quietly takes positions without my knowledge losing regulary, but getting the occasional big payoff.

[evertonian]

Thanks for the input lads. Much appreciated.

[Trader Al]

Hi
I make profit on automation in football based on historical data analysis and current season data to see if it is following the historical trend. I also subscribe to Football Form labs for individual match analysis.
I trade several leagues with different strategies.
Use of Excel and pivot tables is my main tool.

I do manual trading as well but fall into the old trap of chasing losses occasionally so automation is for me.

I am in that position Jimibt posted, a bit scared of increasing stakes but thats the next bullet to bite.

[MobiusGrey]

Going back to automated I have tried to fully automate football trading for a while and can't quite get anything. Part of the reason for me is the sheer amount of variables in a match, 22 players can influence a game, then you have the match officials. There's also weather to contend with, atmosphere of a match, injuries during a game etc. All of this is almost impossible account for when making a bot to trade say over 2.5 goals.

I'm not saying it's not possible, I'm sure there's many, many people out there trading football fully automated it's just extremely hard to find that elusive edge in what is essentially a chaotic environment. For me the only way to trade is on a match by match basis where I can research the game beforehand, map out how I envisage it may play out, watch the game live, if it conforms to how I have mapped it run a servant on it and let that do the hard work, or even just trade it manually using the many tools Betangel has to offer. The dutching and booking tabs really quite something when it comes to staking.

Ignore all of that, seems the trick is find something that works manually first then convert that into automated rules. Sounds simple enough but I'd totally over looked it. Correct score market has been working well for me, hopefully can get enough data by the end of the season to really give it a go next year. So yes, I do believe that automation on football is entirely possible.