Early Prices

  • I thought that I would say something about this. I’m restricted on B365 but decided that I wanted to be in the BOG+ game and also thinking that I can still hit the loyalty bonuses they have which are usually pretty good.

    My restriction seems to mean that I cannot win more than €12.50 on a horse.

    My strategy is that I simply scan all the races on bet365 and smarkets the night before. If there is a small arb or the exchange lay is the same as the bookie back then I bet max. I’ll go e/w sometimes on longer odds especially if it look like it will be a bad e/w race.

    I don’t see how you can lose as either the price goes down and you are on an arb, or it goes up and you get bog plus so you beat SP anyway. Only 10% of prices didn’t change at all.

    The results are in.

    I backed 200 horses since Dec 20-ish. Total stakes €800. Profit is €200. That’s a €200 profit on average stakes of just €4. (Amounts posted are not exact to protect my account from being identified but they are consistent with the exact profits).

    No loyalty bonus yet! Do bet365 stop with the loyalty bonus after you are restricted?

    Because my stakes were small I didn’t lay but of course you can lay when the price swings in your favour to cash out on the value that you created, or lay just before the off if the price has drifted to break about even as you will still be getting BOG+. Might actually work out more profitable to lay as a few of my horses came in during the morning for a big arb and then drifted back out before the race for BOG+ too.

    I checked my price against the SP. If I had taken SP I still would have made a profit of €50 which I suppose shows that I got a bit of luck in the horses that I picked, or there is some mechanics going on that when a horse steams in that his SP price is still value. Its not a significant amount of luck anyway €50 profit from €800 stakes. Even if €50 of the profit was due to luck that still leave €150 profit from changes in price and bog+.

    My average boost was that I was getting 1.4 times SP. So typically I would back at 5/2 the night before and the price would dropped to 6/5, my edge would be something like that. I got double odds or better on 20 horses for example I backed at 8/1 and the horse went off at 4/1. The best I had was a 4 times boosts with horse at 12/1 the night before and 3/1 at the off.

    Comments from other forum users is that when they tried this that they got gubbed very quickly. I’ve had no further restrictions yet but its only early days. I think with small stakes you can go under the radar.

    Yes its a lot of work as with small stakes I am looking to get a big volume of bets on the night before, usually find 10-20 horses.

    The Christmas period with Limerick and Leopardstown 4 day festivals were great for races and may have exaggerated my profits. Irish races seem famous for huge fluctuations in odds.

    Anyway its been two week and over 100 horses so I think its almost enough to prove that there is value in this. The only warning is that you will probably lose your account. And its quite time consuming work finding enough horses to make it worth while on restricted stakes, but I find that these days most strategies are quite time consuming now that all the low hanging fruit is gone. I’ve been trying it out on b365 which gives BOG+ but honestly that has hardly kicked in because most of the time the price shortens but on other bookies or where you are gubbed from BOG then the profits might not be quite as significant.

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    Mr Crispy 30

    Very interesting. I’m restricted already too, so might try this for a bit of fun.
    Thanks for sharing.

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    betman 41

    Sounds good
    Another bookie gubbing email I got still had BOG applied, but forget which. Not BOG + though

    With BOG+ I think you can be lazier in picking horses and possibly stay under radar longer. As long as you will watch the markets near the off to lay on the SP (as you say you do) then your initial price doesn’t matter so much. You back a bet365 horse at 3-1 when the other bookies and exchanges are at 4-1 then you are actually sat on a 5-1 bet even if the price holds. Obviously you don’t make anything if it comes into 3-1, but you don’t really lose and wouldn’t backed it anyway

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    Lucida 0

    Interesting read Fog. I’ve been using morning price boosts to take a price close to the exchange odds looking for BOG but they rarely came. I compared the SP to the odds I got and the majority of times it was lower which has got me thinking about doing something along the lines as what you have detailed.

    What I’m interested to know is how much of your edge is coming from BOG or your ability to pick horses which steam?

    If you can pick steamers with a good success rate why not back on the exchange and either lay or leave as a value bet. Admittedly you will lose some value from BOG but still have a profitable strategy. It’s currently something I’m working on as I’m getting tired with bookmakers having lost most of my accounts.

    I too have similar restrictions on bet365 and I’m not sure whether I’m eligible for the loyalty bonus.

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    ccmd0001 0

    I’m afraid you can forget the loyalty bonus.
    When I was restricted with 365 last year I was getting a tenner loyalty bonus each week. when the gubbing came there was an email in my inbox at about 4pm saying the bonus had been awared and a code to redeem it, then there was another email in my inbox at about 4.30 the same day saying I had been gubbed. I tried the code to redeem it anyway but alas it didnt work.
    Your stats seem interesting however, may have a go myself….Im restricted to the same as you fog so I may as well try to get a little bit more before they restrict me to pennies

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    Burger Me 1

    How late do you have to wait until they’re no longer ante-post prices?

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    beesty2016 3

    Very interesting FOG. How long do you find yourself spending a night finding all of these?
    Have you had any BOG + winners?
    Also is the market pretty similar?

    I only ask these 3 questions as if it does not take that long, and you do not find any BOG winners with the market being the same. Other sites such as Sky and Paddy who have 16 and 20 limits for me could work.

    Well done with it and good luck.

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    FoG_BLoG 47

    The markets can be different. For example there was a horse something like 20/1 on b365 last night although it was 11/1 on sky. His SP ended up 8/1 so the early price is a boost either way.

    I’m not having a lot of BOG winners, if they have drifted in the market they are less likely to win anyway, so you’re not likely to get a lot of BOG. I have a feeling its more like identifying horses that have been mispriced on the early market. To see £200 available to lay on the exchange at 8.0 when you can back it at B365 for 8.0 for no commission you have to wonder. And what I think is happening is that this person is barred from the bookies but still likes the price and exchange never refuses a bet. To be barred he must be pretty good and if he likes the price on the exchange then I like the price at the bookie even more because i have no comm to pay and i have the safety net of BOG.

    The bet history in b365 updates with the price they pay out at so I’ve lost a record of the prices that I took so can’t analyse how much I got BOG on. But checking for today 15 horses I picked all but 1 shortened. I think in all during the trial period I have had two bog+ winners and a couple places that were boosted from bog. So maybe 4 or 5 times from 200 horses I have benefited from bog+, that’s going off memory though, no stats to back it up.

    I have the feeling that I will try this on Paddy soon myself as I will be able to up my stakes a bit from what I am allowed on 365.

    How long does it take? Well I have a little automated program that I kick off after the last race of the evening. I check it every half hour or so and usually it spits out a couple of picks. Its something any oddsmatcher should be able to do (oddsmonkey maybe?) but really there are not that many races to scan so could even do it manually and the odds don’t move very much so you have lots of time.

    It’s not a huge earner really but its a little top up for me since I’ve lost so many accounts. It feels good as well to still be able to bleed a few more pennies out of them despite all the obstacles, gubbings and restrictions that they throw at us.

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    jimmyjames 0

    Forgive the newbie question here but is this not simply a function of (a) a ‘perfect’ market adjusting itself to developing knowledge and risk management and (b) the over-round?

    Surely all bookies operate an at least semi-automated system that dynamically adjusts for market changes to stop loss? What bookies sell is outwith all the normal material goods economic models as although the ‘goods’ they sell are to an extent perishable, they are not tangible. They put a price on opinion.

    Let’s be frank – they have a brilliant business model which equates to “we have strong market knowledge, which we adjust on a second by second basis according to the ‘wisdom of crowds’ and risk balance to ensure that we are always ahead of you … and if you invest the time and effort to beat us, we will stop you playing the game”.

    Free bets and bonuses are the only chink in their armour, so well done FoG for getting that little bit more. My only hope is that since they seem to make all their money off the FOBS these days they may take their attention off the sports book, or see it as a loss leader / gateway, or use it as anti-legislation argumentation, which may help our cause.

    Bit rambling, apologies. To be fair I’ve made thousands off this but it’s not been without cost. The scales always balance so FoG is it now worth, it as by your own admission it’s about double or single figures now and from what you say above it seems like FLoGing a dead horse over the principle of extracting an every smaller volume of blood from the bookie stone?

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    FoG_BLoG 47

    Good post jimmy. Agree mostly with you. But bookies don’t necessarily need to be the perfect fine tuned machine to make money. They don’t need to adjust their odds by the second. There are mugs willing to throw tons of money at them.

    It’s a huge industry and they are making truck loads of cash. I’m just picking up the odd hundred or thousand that falls off the back of their over filled money trucks…

    It’s still worth it. Even if it’s just for the challenge! Couple hundred in early prices/bog, a few hundred on acca’s, a hundred of so on boosts, a bit more on other offers. It’s still adding up to 3 figure sums most months.

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    Johnbo 14

    Fog, i have tuned into the same sort of thing and like your results show, there is value to any selection that has shorter lay odds than a bookmaker’s back odds, especially if liquidity is decent.

    I reckon a high % of these are people ‘in the know’, perhaps connections who can only bet on the exchange. If they are willing to back at a lower price, plus pay commission, the bookmakers odds are overpriced.

    Any time this is seen, say 20 mins before a race+, there is value, hence most selections are heavily backed in. You could even trade these on the exchange, i am paper testing at the moment but it seems well over half get backed in a lot.

    Seeing decent liquidity is the indicator to look for imo…

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    Dave_Jones 7

    Very interesting post Foggy thanks for sharing. Your theory as to why this works seems both reasonably and quite likely. I think its good to see guys coming up with ideas to take a few quid off the bookies.

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    betman 41

    Just remember BOG kick in at different times if you look into other bookies. Some are 9am on raceday

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    anondeplume 0

    Everyone else get an email from B365 that they’ll no longer be offering BOG+ or is it just me?

    Shame as I find they’re the best for getting a few arbs the night before then hope the price rises and horse has a stormer. I’ve made hundreds from this on a couple of occasions.

    They’re also safest on the rule 4 as it seems they deduct less than Smarkets do.

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    betman 41

    Yes anond got the email.
    Don’t all bookies deduct the standard rule 4? Whilst smarkets do a % reduction factor which always seems to be more favourable

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    Tony S 7

    I’ve been doin this for quite a while tbh (as part of a syndicate I’m currently in)… the only real issue you’ll encounter is if a non runner is announced in the morning you’ll be hit with a rule 4… however the exchanges don’t always adjust accordingly…

    For example I backed a horse @ 10’s last night… was sitting at 8.8 on the exchange first thing (expecting to come in atleast another point)… however after a withdrawal my effective BACK odds are now 8.6… and the horse is still sitting at 8.8… any value gone and now waiting for it to shorten or close out my position at break even

    It is profitable mind… if not a bit frustrating

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