From Redundancy to a Full Time In-Running Horse Racing Trader

By James, Bet Angel and TPD Zone User.

In 2018 I took voluntary redundancy, leaving the company I’d worked at for well over a decade. In a demanding industry, my role over the years allowed me to develop quick logical thinking with an eye for data crunching and analysis. With the luxury of redundancy money behind me, I took the opportunity to dip a toe into a few other waters before I would be forced to plan my return to the daily grind.

One of these waters was betting exchange software and I plumped for Bet Angel which I’d read offered one of the best mixes of manual and automated trading tools. In my dim and distant youth, I’d worked in a bookmaker’s office and so I was exposed to a lot of horse racing. Back then I’d always felt I had a knack for picking out the likely winners whilst watching the race live on a screen, but at the time of course there was no way to profit from this skill. Remembering this I thought my best chance of successful exchange trading would be to focus on in-running rather than pre-off.

Fast forward six months and I was trading in-running horse races full time, making consistent profits and all thoughts of returning to the daily grind had gone. Obviously, quick decision making and reaction time is key and I was using simple tools on the Bet Angel ‘One-click’ screen to help me place trades as fast as possible.

Over the next few years my trading became more sophisticated, and I delved deeper into the automation side of Bet Angel to customise my trading screen with more complex data flow and trading options. Then in 2021 along came a huge shift in in-running horse trading. Bet Angel and TPD announced a tie-in which meant for the first time live GPS data could be displayed almost instantaneously along with the existing data flow on my Bet Angel ‘One-click’ screen. Suddenly I had the position, speed, distances, stride frequency and more, of every horse in the race flashing on my screen and a whole new world of data was unleashed.

At first, I used this new data only to augment my manual trading, such as checking who was jumping the most efficiently, how far back were horses off camera, and who was closing the fastest in the straight. The TPD data is powerful but should NOT solely be used with the objective of beating everyone else to 1.01 price on the winner, as it crosses the line! By enhancing the smoothing of the data using Bet Angel History Lists, highlighting value in the market became more straightforward.

I quickly realised there was also opportunity to combine the power of TPD data with Bet Angel automation, to write rules that trade automatically during the race. It won’t come as a surprise that I had to invest a significant amount of time to learn the Bet Angel software inside-out to make things work how I wanted. Don’t get me wrong this was a hard slog, but the reward is I now trade all TPD races automatically, whether I am sitting at my PC or relaxing down the pub!

Webinar Q. & A.

Webinar Q. & A.

A very successful webinar was held on Thursday 21st July, in which the TPD metrics were described and demonstrated in live markets, with questions being encouraged and answered throughout the session. The following is a transcript of the questions and answers.

Q. Can we record this session? So we will be able to watch this material several times?
A. The webinar is being recorded.
Post webinar note: A recording of the webinar can be found here; https://vimeo.com/738619878

Q. Is it possible to get these (par speed) graphs in Bet Angel?
A. It is possible, using advanced charting, to display a runners current speed against the course par speed (average speed) at its current location. This link to a thread in the Bet Angel forum provides a step-by-step guide; https://forum.betangel.com/viewtopic.php?f=67&t=26151

Q. Which is most important VF (Velocity Fluctuation), VE (Velocity Error) or CE (Cadence Error).
A. In jumps races VE and VF are the metrics on which to focus attention and in flat races the CE metric and to a lesser extent VE.

Q. Can we see if the horse is increasing stride length or stride frequency at the end of the race?
A. One way to do this in Bet Angel is to keep a moving average of stride frequency and plot this in an advanced chart or on the one click screen. Stride length is not a metric which is currently available. However we would recommend that you take a look at the CE (Cadence Error) metric. https://www.betmover.com/user-guide/#tve-jump-17e69cb8332

Q. Any chance you will be associated with the rest of the British racecourses.?
A. TPD are always looking to add to the portfolio of racecourses, but this of course depends upon the racecourse owners being willing to sell the rights, to what is their data, to TPD. We hope to be announcing the addition of Newbury very soon.

Q. Do you ever use the split times?
A. The traders at TPD do not actually use spilt times to any great extent. However, this is purely a personal preference and if you find them useful then by all means use them.

Q. Do you have the in play video on with commentary? I find it distracting.
A. Some of us like to see live pictures, particularly of the stalls being loaded or horses making their way to the start. This can sometimes give clues as to what we might expect during the race. E.g., a horse using too much energy on the way to the start. Again this is purely personal preference.

Q. Do you see anything different between handicaps and other races?
A. No, we treat each race exactly the same as regards analysing the metrics.

Q. Will this feature (replays in Bet Mover) be included in subs or an add on?
A. It is being considered that we offer replays in Bet Mover. However there are some licencing issues with Betfair, as regards re-using their Exchange prices, which are required to be resolved first.

Q. This is great session will you do this again?
A. Yes, we plan to make these webinars a regular feature.

Q. Do you not use the mph to see if a leader is slowing?
A. We tend to concentrate on how efficient, or otherwise, a horse is running using the VE, VF and CE metrics. However, we are aware of Bet Angel users who make good use of moving averages, regarding various metrics, including MPH.