Hi all, it's often said that Betfair SP is the closest thing to a horse's true chances of winning and you can't make money backing or laying at SP because of commission.
I've been on a long journey of machine learning, data scraping and coding.
Built a custom bot which backs horses when the true chance is overestimated by Betfair users. The wisdom of the crowd is quite wrong by 14.20% POT over 394,388 horses bet on.
The plan is to now put $2,000 into my Betfair account, betting $2.00 per horse that my bot suggests on UK, IRE, AUS, USA and RSA races.
When my bank reaches $3,000, I'll bet $3.00 per horse and so on.
I'll take out any extra to pay myself for the software and VPS.
So, if my bank reaches $4,040.00 for example, I'll withdraw the $40.00 leaving $4,000 and betting $4.00 per horse.
Note: I will sometimes be betting on multiple horses in a race, therefore the low stakes as I need variance to play out.
The bot and my strategy will not be shared nor sold for any amount of money, I've worked too hard on this.
With that being said, I'm going to see just how much money I can pull out of the betting exchange, backing these anomalies at Betfair SP.
I'll be starting next week and will try to post daily profit and losses. 14.20% POT fully automated is not to be sneezed at I'll try and post screenshots of the profit when I can.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 417,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 30/04/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg

Hi Chrome, I respect your ideas, but what I'm confused about is : as I understand it the minimum bet on Betfair is $5, how do you get around that?

Yes, my weary mistake, I'll be betting $5.00 with a $2,000 bank and not increasing stakes until I hit above $5,000.
So for $5,400, I'll take out the $400 for myself and leave it until it hits $6,000.
Probably optimistic, but I'm very confident in my back testing, as I used actual Betfair SP prices rather than the one's supplied. I've also included commission deductions in the above post.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 417,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 30/04/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg

Thanks Chrome, I thought I was missing something as several other posters have eluded to lay bets which as I understand it are not possible because of minimum bet rules?

I hope to be proved wrong, as if I am laying a 1000-1 shot, I'm OK with like say 10cents, but definitely not with $5??

PP,

You can lay at liability on the exchange. So you can lay aq $1000 shot at $30.00 minimum. This means you can only lose $30 and you would win 3c.

Hope that helps.

Good Luck CP. Keeps us updated.

BSP is very efficient overall but inefficient race to race. There are definitely spots to pick and make money.

If you are doing this in an automated way reach out to automation@betfair.com.au and check out their website: https://betfair-datascientists.github.io/

This is the betfair automation team and they can help you with things such as minimum bet sizes, automation of bets and data. Ask for access (its free) into the discord group as that is where the real gold is.

good Luck and keep us posted.

Thanks UB, I didn't know that, I don't use BF (Lay) very much, in fact I probably would have done if I'd known that.

I just presumed the $5 minimum applied either way.

Thanks UB,
Don't know how to do discord, and don't really have the time, but I have used the github to build my bot. Currently in testing mode, and ironing out any bugs. There are actually more spots to pick inefficiencies than "they" would have you believe!
e.g if a horse's true chances are $2.00, the bookies might be only offering $1.80 or $1.75, but Betfair SP can be $2.20 or $2.10, that's where the market has overestimated the horse's chances. It doesn't happen every time but often enough to make a healthy profit after commission. And I can find anomalies in every single race with my software.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 417,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 30/04/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg

Really looking forward to the results here, seems like a real go-er

A good example was Bathurst Harness R7 Winner Mac Bon.
Best tote was $1.50, Betfair SP was $1.92, so 28% better odds than Best Tote.

__________________
RaceCensus - powerful system testing software.
Now with over 417,000 Metropolitan, Provincial and Country races!
http://www.propun.com.au/horse_raci...ng_systems.html
*RaceCensus now updated to 30/04/2025
Video overview of RaceCensus here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W821YP_b0Pg