How to save a huge amount of time testing loss recovery strategies
In this article, I am going to give you a step-by-step case study of how I settle markets (and bets) in Test Mode while testing my betting triggers.
About 70% of all trigger requests we receive contain a loss recovery of some sort.
We offer ready-to-use trigger templates for most popular staking plans and loss recovery plans.
The loss recovery plans in particular are known for being tricky to test and error-proof. After you’ve figured out the calculations, e.g multiplying your next bet by X or adding Y units to it, you need to make sure that the calculations are performed at the correct time, in correct markets and in a correct way.
You can (and probably should) do this on paper the first round, but then you need to take it to real betting. If you got anything wrong, you’ll watch your mistakes cost you money, right? Not necessarily so.
In MarketFeeder Pro, you have an opportunity to test your bets and strategies in Test Mode, which is completely risk-free. Well, if you don’t abuse the system and make at least a couple of real bets per day on BetFair.
In case you have heard about that already, I will explain how I use the Test Mode feature to test all my triggers. For the purposes of this case study, I will use the triggers available in the trigger example Universal Sequence Staking Plan.
So after I have loaded the triggers into my copy of MF Pro, how do I make sure that each time I lose a bet, the next one is increased by 2 units, and each time I win, it goes back 1 unit?
I start testing!
1. Load a list of markets. In my case, I will test this plan in horse racing, so I use Market Locator to load a number of today’s horse races.
2. Set the starting test balance. I tend to start with £1,000, although it’s up to you.
3. Start refreshing the first market. That’s where my first bet will be placed. I do the testing well in advance of the start of my first race, but that’s not a problem, unless the triggers are set to fire at 1 minute before the off. In that case, simply change the time to allow placing the bet earlier.
4. After the bet is placed, I don’t need to wait for 2.5 hours to get it settled. I simply right-click on Settle and choose the winner.
I need this bet to lose, so I choose Kchou Du Pecos Aa as a winner. I use drag-n-drop if necessary to drag the name of the winner to the top of the list.
5. The program settles the market and calculates the profit/loss from my bet as if the horse I laid on has won in this race. This gives the triggers an opportunity to do all the calculations need to adjust my next bet. I can stop refreshing this market at the moment.
6. Just then I start refreshing the next market in my list, watching a new bet placed in it.
If you look at the size of the bet, you will notice that it is 4.0*3, which means the triggers have correctly moved up two units following a loss.
7. I now settle this market also. I want to check how the triggers will behave after one more loss.
8. I start refreshing the third race.
But now I want my bet to win to check how the triggers will go backward one unit along the sequence.
I right-click on Settle and drag-n-drop Blazing Saddles to the top to make it the Winner.
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9. I then go on to the next race to check how this will affect my bet.
The size of the bet decreased from 5 units (4*5 = 20) to 4 units (4*4 = 16), which means that the triggers have correctly moved down the sequence.
I then proceed to the next market and do so as many times as I need to grow confident about my triggers.
10. In case I make an error and need to start it all over, I do the following:
Tick All Markets under the My Markets list.
Press Stop Markets, then Reset Markets.
Click on Clear Test Bets, then open the Active Triggers window and press Reload:
And then I go back to No. 1.
If I need to check the final result of my loss recovery, I look at the Account Statement:
Settle the markets using triggers
You can save even more time and remove manual work from the equation by letting a trigger settle your markets automatically!
It seems few people know that MarketFeeder Pro has a trigger action for settling your bets!
To let the program choose the winner automatically, I will add another trigger to my file:
It settles the market and picks the selection with the lowest last traded price as the winner. You can tell this by the option “By Last Price” I have chosen as the settlement method. The conditions of the trigger tell it to only work after the laying trigger has fired and at least one lay matched bet is in the market.
Using this trigger, I can run a series of tests where the favourite selection always wins, and to see how my bets change after each loss.
Then I can set the trigger to determine the winner randomly, so that some of my bets win and others lose.
Suppose I now want to lay on the third favourite and to settle the market in such a way that the horse I laid on always wins.
To do this, I change the fav_rank constant from 1 to 3 and edit the settling trigger so that the winner(s) is the selection(s) which were involved in the specified trigger, in my case, the trigger called “laying”.
This essentially means that whichever horse the trigger “laying” has placed a bet on, will be automatically appointed as the winner of the race! This will save me a lot of time waiting for the actual race to begin, end, have its result announced, etc.
Faster with Time Machine!
As if this is not good enough already, you can further speed up the process and remove even more of button pressing from it.
Just use Time Machine to go through the same list of markets over and over again, jumping to the next race as soon as the previous has been settled.
See this demonstration video to learn how I manage to complete up to 5 requests per day by thoroughly testing my triggers in Time Machine.