The Big Bankroll Building Challenge
 

And we all can play. All you need is a strategy and a commitment to discipline and your small bankroll, which you will turn into a big bankroll. If you've got that covered, feel free to add your running story to the thread if you'd like.

We are starting small whatever that means to you - for me, just under $100 - and building it into a very large bankroll, whatever that means to you. Our primary goal is to not lose the starting bankroll. Our stretch goal is to grow our starting bankroll.

Background: I was looking back through my old posts just for fun and found this:

http://www.paceadvantage.com/forum/s...&postcount=189

The quoted post was and is generally the way I approach horse racing. I failed at that time, but I've continued to believe in my core theories. I knew that I had some critical missing pieces to the puzzle in my software due to lack of programming ability and time. I've now fixed those and tweaked a few other things, and I feel like if I am going to be successful, it's now or never.

My method: I've hacked together an excell/VBA based software package that is essentially a black box. I run my software on the tracks that are running once scratches are available, and place Win, Place and/or Show bets on the horses that it tells me to bet. I'm betting 2% of daily starting bankroll. I seek value in my approach, not in an individual horse. Been there, failed at that.

I placed my first wager using my strategy on September 18th. I am now up to 247 wagers total: 70 Place wagers for a 10cent loss, 127 Place wagers for a $33.20 win and 50 Win wagers for a $5.20 win.

Obviously, my sample is far too small to draw any conclusions. My hope is that I can grow my bankroll to a point where I can afford to place EX and TRI wagers, should the data I'm tracking on those bets prove to have promise once I reach that point.

I am adding new tracks to my software as they open. By this time next year, I should have all U.S. thoroughbred tracks in operation, or none:eek:

Off we go!

Very cool thread. Am I to understand you're doing WPS bets only, depending on the odds? For example: Win only on odds >=5/2, Place on >=6/1, & Show on >=15/1. Just picked target odds I've used in the past. Reading your initial post, discipline in sticking to a plan is paramount, and my hardness hurdle to leap.

I pay no attention to odds. My attempt was to develop a handicapping methodology that will on average select overlays, even though wagering on underlays a certain percentage of the time is unavoidable.

Currently, I'm making only WPS bets (not necessarily all three - most of my bets have been Place bets), but I hope to add EX and TRI wagers in the future.

IMO...the betting unit should fluctuate in accordance with the difficulty of the particular wager. 2% of bankroll is the right amount for win-bets, but the place-bets carry a much lesser risk...and the show-bets, even more so. If we are going to recalculate our bet after every play...then I think that 2% for win, 3% for place, and 4% for show would be a better alternative.

And, when it comes time to include exactas and trifectas in our "portfolio"...then a 2% of bankroll betting unit would be very excessive.

That's a very good point on the place and show wagers. I am recalculating on a daily basis, but those should still be good percentages. If the bankroll slips down to an uncomfortable level, I still have time to reduce the wagers.

EX and TRI definitely will be a lower percent of bankroll.

Thanks for the input!

Not a great day of wagering today, but the results on unbet races yielded a few new bet opportunities going forward. That I guess is a net long term positive. Hopefully.

To show you how inspired I have become by your undertaking here, I have set up a small bankroll of my own...to track a promising new twist of a method that I created not too long ago. If things go well...expect a "finder's fee" to come your way. :)

Great comments Thaskalos. I've never considered your percentage ideas on place and show bets, much less exotics. In my case, I'm trying to abandon(mostly) exactas which sap too much out of my bankroll. One exception for me is coupling a strong favorite with my pick as a saver. But overall, I p_xx away too much money on exactas. I'm always amazed when these odds-on favorites will all the figs get beat. I'm thinking of setting up a separate bankroll to do the same. It looks like I've found an edge on certain class of race. It's interesting to hear that the OP had similar discipline problems that plague me.

Good luck! Finding new promising opportunities is so much fun. When one of my tracking numbers turns from black to green, I feel like I just won something:lol:

Bummer! Keeneland has been very good to me, but no wagers on closing day. I don't have my minimum required sample size for dirt routes, but I sure would like a bet on the :8: in the 9th race. Next meet...

It feels like I'll be transitioning over the next couple of weeks, from betting tracks that I've barely collected minimum samples on to setting up new tracks with new meets. I look forward to having all of the new tracks set up in my little system. The setting up is not much fun, and it takes at least several weeks to collect data sufficient to pick out promising wagering opportunities.

As expected, as soon as I posted this thread I took a gigantic hit and lost 21 of my next 25 wagers, and the winners were small enough they barely matter:( Oh well, that's gambling. The losing streak brought my net down to about break-even, maybe just a little below. I have since recovered a bit to post a small $7.50 gain on 304 total bets.

I thought more about increasing the size of my place and show wagers, and decided against. On the one hand, I can increase the size of the wagers since my hit rate will obviously be higher, reducing risk of loss. On the other hand, if I stick with a lower wager, I am reducing risk of loss in a real, tangible way, while taking a lesser return as the offset. Since my main goal is to not go broke, I've opted to stick with my minimum wager size for these bets.

Related to that, I think 2% of bankroll is too much for a win bet for me. Since I am trusting my program to pick my wagers for me, I waive the right to skip races and/or wagers on horses that I would toss without even thinking about it if I looked at the form. Much of my losing streak was due to wagers on 20/1+ shots that had absolutely no chance, but they slipped through my code. I had a wave of those.

Once the dust settles and I've finished with the basics, I'll be able to go back and see if I can program these losers out of my system, but until then, I'll have to live with them as an expense of black boxing, and hope the rest of the wagers can overcome these guaranteed losses. All that said, I think I'll keep my win bets at 1% of bankroll once (and if) it grows to where I have that flexibility.

Not good!!! Change that goal right now. Defensive gambling is losing gambling, particularly at the track. And you really should reconsider the escalation clause in your risk assessment model as Thask suggested. The best way to avoid going bankrupt is to build.

Go forward young man, and don't look back. Put $0 in your rear view mirror.

I don't disagree with that strategy at all, assuming I have a profitable handicapping model. I don't know that. Step 1 is to prove the model, which I'm assuming to be 2,000 wagers. At that point, I'll know roughly what my ROI/winning percentages are, and I can size wagers appropriately. As of now, I may be losing. I have no idea. The sample sizes I'm using to even decide to start tracking each wager is actually too small by miles, but $2 a pop isn't going to kill me if I'm making bad bets.

That said, I could do all of this without even wagering since I make no decisions. I don't even look at the bets before I make them, so no emotion comes into play.

I'm in no hurry. If I'm making money after 2,000 wagers, I'll start trying to maximize my winnings. I'm 325 wagers in and up about $27.50.

Wow, been brutal since my last update. Through 370 wagers, now down about $35. I think I had maybe 3 or 4 winners in the last 45 bets.

I'm going to have to reset things over the next couple of weeks. There is what I think will be a very key factor missing in my work so far, due to sample size. I needed to build up the race numbers before I could use it. It has to do with expected race shape, and breaking out races of different shapes and treating each separately from the others. To date, all race shapes have been lumped into one bucket, which is somewhat like treating grass and dirt as if there is no difference.

So, I am doing the work of changing code and spreadsheets to account for the new data, and I'll start my 2,000 wager count over once it is done.

As for what I've done so far, I consider it a success. First, the software is working without major bugs. That's a miracle :lol:

Second, my little bankroll survived, even if smaller than I started. I pretty much expected a small loss since I am wagering on sub-optimal sample sizes across the board. I knew that I'd be making bad wagers in spots, and not making good wagers in other spots. Having less than a 5% net loss through almost 400 wagers is not bad, considering.

This update to my little system is the last major one that I have in mind at this time, so I fully expect to make the changes and wager 2,000 times to see what happens. I'll be expecting a small loss again, since I'll actually be backtracking on sample size again. But, assuming I survive the 2,000 wagers, I hope to move into positive territory from there.

I would be willing to bet that if you go back and check your wagers that you will be money ahead betting the same amount to win as you would on win/place or wps. A $6 win bet instead of $2 WPS. You won't collect as often but when you do it will usually be more. Every time I have checked this over the term of 100+ bets, the win only wager usually has the highest ROI.

I do keep track of this in a pivot table. So far, place wagers have consistently been best ROI and show wagers worst.

I should note that I am not necessarily making all three wagers on a race. I let the numbers dictate. Some races are win only, others place only, some w/s, etc.

Alrighty then, phase 1 is in the books. The basic system is tested as far as I care to take it, and I've just finished inserting my last major component.

And now, a tip for all of you who are in the midst of a brutal losing streak. I suggest a $2 WPS bet on a horse that returns about $95. works like a charm! Phase 1 finished with 395 wagers and a profit of $61.70. Special thanks to the :4: horse in the seventh at Remington Park on Friday. Couldn't have done it without ya!:ThmbUp:

So now, I'm resetting at zero and a $200 starting bankroll for 2,000 wagers using my full blown system. I'm going to stick with wagers equaling 1% of bankroll, or $2, whichever is higher. At the end of the test, if I show a profit, I'll rework the wager amounts. I have no idea how long this will take, but I'm guessing better than a year. More and more wagering opportunities should arise as sample sizes grow, but it is also possible that most are a dry hole in the end. Time will tell.

Anybody ever chart your wagers? I really like creating charts as a visual way of evaluating my work. I use them for poker and trading activities, and thought it may be interesting/useful to look at a chart of my horse playing as well. It is pretty easy for me to get caught up in where I am now, but a chart shows visually how I got here.

This is a chart of the "Phase 1" test of my black box. This test was only 397 wagers, but it is interesting how I rolled around just above break even on average until one big score.

I'd love to think this is what I can expect - break even for a while, hit a big number and break even from there, rinse and repeat. I doubt it will be that easy.:)

Can you throw in a linear regression line?

I've been utilizing graphs in handicapping since the 80s. From a glance your handicapping needs some work. I'd be more than happy to give you a few suggestions on a method that would have a more upwards possibility-- playing single win bets in New York comes to mind.

Pondman,

How about giving the rest of us a few suggestions ? :) .
I play the winter meet at Aqueduct and also play single horses. Might be a
nugget there for some of us.

Interesting suggestion. This is excel, and I haven't ever tried it, but I'll try to look into it this weekend if I have time.

2low, How large were your test bets around the 375 mark? You went from roughly -$30,000 to a plus 70,000 in a few or even one bet. That's a huge swing. The thing to consider if you're live, would you have the stomach to continue when you're 40,000 DOWN? With a half mil, or one mil bankroll, it probably wouldn't bother you. I thought you said these were flat bets or pct. of bankroll, but those wild swings look like some form of increasing bet size.

These were all $2 bets. I went from down $30 to up about $70. Most of it was one horse that paid a total of about $95 for a $2 WPS bet.

Stomach won't be a problem if this succeeds and I am able to build. If I am good at anything, it is thinking about money properly with regards to gambling. It isn't money to me while in the bankroll, it is betting units. A semi-pro poker career has taught me plenty about that. You simply can't be good at poker if you think about how much money you have to call instead of how many betting units you have to call relative to the pot and stacks. Being properly bankrolled allows proper thinking and proper action. It can't be different in horse racing.

I've got my new chart set up to track betting units instead of dollars, so I'll be comparing apples to apples if I am able to increase bet size during my 2,000 bet test.

Speaking of my 2,000 bet test, as I expected, this is off to a very slow start in terms of wagering activity. When I added my last factor, the first impact was to drive my sample size down to a point where I simply don't have enough races booked to bet at most track/surface/distance combinations. Plus, established tracks are closing up shop for the winter while new winter tracks are coming on line. It takes time to log the races necessary to identify wagering opportunities.

One reason it takes a while is that I toss out the biggest winner in each bucket, and consider it a loser. Then, with the rest I need to see a minimum net profit excluding the tossed winner. My hope is that this will cut down on the number of wagers I make on false positive opportunities.

Had I not tossed the largest winners, I would have probably 4x or 5x the number of bets available. However, if they are real opportunities, they will eventually catch up without the biggest winners.

Haha, sorry on my phone, I didn't see a decimal . Thought it was 20000. No TUMS needed.

This is an interesting thread. Thanks for including the board.

for what its worth. I think there are a lot of factors that go in to bet sizing.
and i dont think its a one size fits all thing at all. I remember one day years ago I lost 8% of my bankroll and it really bummed me out. I thought i had some really good wagers but when all was said and done losing 8% in one day was way too much for me. So the questions would be how many bets do you make on a given day. what do you perceive the likeliho0d of the horse winning and how much of an overlay you perceive it to be. I am curious how you determine your place and show strategy. There was a guy in the parlor the other day and he loved the way a horse looked on the track but the horse was over 50-1 at the time so he bet it $12 to place and $20 to show. the horse won the race at 70-1! this is a guy who sometimes bets $40 cold triples.

My strategy is strictly numbers based. My goal is to create a black box that does all the work for me. While I love watching the horses run and while I like looking at the form, what is most intriguing to me is writing a program that can beat the races by itself. I have an interest in math-based gambling games, and I have an interest in coding, even though I have no training and no programming background at all. This marries the two interests perfectly.

My first goal was to write software that actually works, and I did that. It is an on-going effort, but it clearly runs correctly when I push the button. It may be the worst programming language of all time, and a real programmer would vomit if he/she saw my code, but I don't care about any of that.

Goal two is to actually beat the races using my working program. That's what I am testing now, and I'm sure I'll keep tweaking things along the way.

Goal three is to buy an island with a PayPal transfer.

Bet sizing for me at this point is simply betting the minimum until I make money. I am in no rush to make the maximum. If the program works, the money will follow, and bet sizing will increase. At this time, I am betting win, place, and/or show at 1% of total bankroll or $2, whichever is greater. With more data, I may find that I should bet more or less than 1% on any of the three wager types. I am also tracking exacta/trifecta performance and may add those at a later date.

Deciding whether to bet Win, Place or Show is again not my choice. The numbers tell me (well, my software) what to do. If a set of conditions nets at least $12 cumulatively in the win column, I bet win when those conditions arise. For Place, it is $6, and for Show it is $3. This is after the biggest win is assumed to be a loss - just a little more buffer. If those conditions are met, the program spits our a sheet with a wager on it, and I upload it into my ADW account. I have no idea why I am betting, other than the program told me to. I do spot check to make sure my software is following the rules though.

There is no magic to those numbers by the way. I pulled them from my nether regions. But, I think they provide some insurance against bad bets.

Thanks! Hopefully it will be entertaining and good conversation.

Ug.....the hazards of unique data gathering. And using...

It turns out that the final piece of my puzzle is being used wrong. Instead of using the factor (or whatever you'd call it - it is a calculation) for the current race, my program is grabbing the factor from the previous race and using it against the current race. Obviously, this is a problem, but it is also a big problem. So big in fact, that I'll need to re-run all races for all tracks to get it right. I see no sense in wagering until I get this fixed.

Luckily, it is an easy fix, but it will take a while to get it applied to all tracks. At least there are not too terribly many tracks affected that are running now.

It had no impact on the first test by the way.

You should look into machine learning and training a model to play the way you would (or, more precisely, the way you would if you followed rules you've established, while allowing for intuition). The end result will be your model will become a better handicapper than you. Read up on AlphaGo as inspiration.

Thanks for the reading suggestion! I'll look into it. On the surface, this sounds like what I am attempting, although in a very simple form.

I knew this new calculated factor - along with tracks opening and closing - would have a big negative impact on number of plays available, and it has. While sample sizes continue to grow on the winter tracks, the playable races have yet to surface in volume. I can see lots of potential as races stack up, so hope is alive.

For now, in the 11 racing days since my first bet with my factor fix, I have placed a grand total of 10 bets, 6 of them show bets. I have a net win of 0.95 bets.

Once I get all of the closed tracks up to date with all the latest factors and formulas accounted for, I will start tracking how many bets are available as a percent of total bets being tracked. This number will hopefully grow steadily until it plateaus at a final and reliably consistent level over time.

If you are trying to solve a problem, such as making money with win bets, then your whole design needs to be focused on that. And personally if you could tell me that you made 500 bets in NY in 2017 and made a profit, then I'd be impressed. At least you would be able to increase profits by increasing the size of your bet.

We collect data for one purpose and that's to make a fortune with supers. And the way the data is stored will allow us to know how well the screens do for win bets. But We'd have to play a combo of sorts and develop other screens to make very little money with win bets, and we don't want to do it that way.

So would I. That means the guy has a time machine! :eek:

This is a big change for you...isn't it, pondman? If I recall correctly...the word "supers" hadn't been mentioned in ANY of your prior 1185 posts here. You were making your fortune with selected win bets before...NO?

I haven't change anything on the win bets.

But I now have a dynamic super game, that is continually improving on itself. It takes a strict adherence and firm believe in central limit theory. Now I talk in terms of the 3rd & 4th leg of the super. There is no reason anyone need to actually pick a horse to win. It's actually foolish to try and beat the game with a large # of win bets.

WPS was the first incarnation of my wagering strategy, but I'm beginning to add EX and TR wagers in now as well. I wanted somewhat of a decent sample size of races and data before adding the new bets. I'm not really where I'd like to be on that front, but I'm getting impatient.:p

This time of year is a slow haul. There are not many races to record on a daily basis in any case, let alone sticking each race into one of several buckets. Those buckets are not filling very fast.

I believe in what Pondman is saying relative to win bets. My WPS results so far seem to suggest that if I am profitable, the margins will be very thin and the bankroll swings very large. I feel the need to get vertical:D

Make sure you don't end up HORIZONTAL. :)

I have the belief that a profitable screen, if you have one, for win betting will not produce profitable results for exotics. I'd be careful with the 1,2,3 tri bets (betting your top 3 horses.) I really believe that it requires a healthy attitude of making A,A,6,1 bets (it's the most profitable under my play), and know how your ratings stack up, before you'll make money. You've got to have the math behind how often your top horse loses. You've got to find the right screens to do that. I make serious money with supers, but my win bets, if I used my top horse, similar to everyone else's, would be a marginal loss, with the same screen.

I see where you are coming from. My system isn't really built around finding a winner. It is built around finding contenders for the top few spots and using those to construct wagers of any kind. From there, I am gathering data that will hopefully tell me which of those contenders should be included in various slots in my vertical wagers or WPS bets on different track/surface/distance/condition races.