It's time for some good news regarding RDB Dutch, but also a reality check on where we are today with this fixed liability lay betting system.
The Facts
Let's start with an ice bath, and the fact RDB Dutch year to date is just at break even with 0.02 points.
This is depending on when you started of course, and if you've used different stake amounts, but from the 12/1/20 we've basically gone full circle.
The predicted growth based on development phase and initial progress over a 12 month timeline was +100 points, and considering the early success this looked achievable.
Lots of bets placed, and a strong recovery rate on losses to push the balance the right way. You can see this in January's numbers available on site.
After a difficult month from 17th Feb to 16th March, which basically started bad but recovered very well to break even, things looked promising showing resilience to bounce back, but then lockdown happened!
Restarting the service with the new race card has taken a lot more adjustment than the other two automated services JV MK2 and RDB Straight.
Being a fixed liability lay betting strategy requires a high strike rate, and this needs to be ideally be above 90% considering the current average lay odds of 7.57.
At the moment we're 85.29%, which is enough as we know to just about break even so far, but we're not running this to just make enough to get our money back we want to make a profit.
The impact of a run of bad days can quickly reduce the balance with fixed liability lay betting, given the returns are a percentage of stake.
I do operate a stop down of 3 points for safety which will remain in place, but if we had for example a few days dropping 3 points, or spread over a week, things could look bleak fast.
This revealed itself in July over a terrible week with a run of consecutive losing bets, bringing us to where we are today (9/8/20).
After this RDB Dutch required me to step in with some emergency measures, and throttle the run of bets for the sake of taking control, and to take stock of what's required adjusting this bet type to the new post lockdown race card.
As stated above, we've been through this with RDB Straight and JV MK2, still tuning them now to perform at a higher level as the racing itself settles back in after the enforced break.
The progress foe these two is going a lot smoother, and easier to work with given they are both backing systems, and return very well on the win, also operate within their target percentages consistently, with JV MK2 recently settling down very well to previous form.
I digress, as with RDB Dutch this has been more difficult to judge, as the recovery time takes longer, and with the filter in place (pre throttling) we had the bet volume correct, but found too many times a loss would push back any profits gained, to the point when the poor run in July occurred immediate action was needed.
The only recent loss since I tightened all the selection filters was I hate to admit, a Cloud Bet Bot mistake, and should not have been a bet to begin with. That's the bet on the 1/8/20, which fired at the end of the evenings racing.
This was corrected the next day ahead of the new race card by Nige, and we now as a result of this weird glitch have a more stable consistent set up for all automated services. As it identified a universal potential issue that up until that point had never happened, but could have affected all services.
These things often seem like a total disaster at the time, but can also be blessings in disguise.
In this case it helped us identify a situation when horse matches at the exact time of selection across our criteria, causing the system to think it has to bet, and it doesn't.
It presented a solution to logically manage this and make sure no bets are placed, which should have been the case with the only losing bet since the service had the tightened measures applied.
Today we had a winning RDB Dutch bet at decent odds, and I'm hopeful this will now be the start of a new trend for this service with the plans I'll explain below.
Now The Good News
I did promise positive news for RDB Dutch, and I do have some important info that I'll now share.
Firstly, the service from the 17th August will receive its foundation setting update.
RDB Dutch originated from a back dutch system to a single bet fixed liability lay betting service, as the change occurred to ensure everyone was getting the same returns on the bet.
The problem with Dutch betting when backing is you can get very uneven bets, whereas lay betting to a fixed liability levels this.
It required a different approach to the selections obviously, but still with the original thread as the foundation.
Some might say that a single fixed liability lay bet is not a Dutch bet, and they would be correct so why is this still called RDB Dutch.
The reason is because when the switch was made I had scheduled an introduction of more lay bets to create a Dutch at fixed liability bet exposure.
Okay, that may read like double dutch to some members so let me simplify.
The service was originally created with a view to have multiple lay bets possible in each race, for a set target liability covering all horses, ie a lay Dutch bet.
This means we're now officially about to become a Dutch betting service again, and it makes explaining it a lot simpler for me at last.
Later this month on the 17th this will be introduced to the service, and you will begin seeing a significant increase in betting activity. We should have multiple bets each day.
Today for example we've had one Dutch bet so far under the current parameters which won returning 0.14 points, but under the new settings you would have had two winning bets returning 0.23 points.
Under the existing settings I introduced late July to throttle the bet volume as explained above, if running these filters from the 1/7/20 to today 9/8/20 (excluding the bot bug explained above as it's been programmed out) we'd see 3.30 points.
BTW, all results shown are recorded to Betfair Starting Price, BSP.
You can see a nice steady controlled balance growth using these filters, taking 28 winning bets to reach this target amount of 3.30 points over the 40 betting days.
The bet volume is about right for fixed liability lay betting, but the number of days to hit this target causes a problem.
This compared to how we resumed post lockdown is night and day, as I'll demonstrate.
The numbers speak for themselves with this selection filter set up, taking the bot error loss in to account that's included here, it's been a run of losses that have damaged the balance since restart to betting on the 1st July for RDB Dutch.
Running the system directly on the new race card, even with a slight adjustment to accommodate just was not running anywhere near expectation.
These are trend based systems, and set up to gradually adjust over a longer period, but from restart in June the racing has been a challenge to adapt, and if you consider these systems at inception were never designed to take a global pandemic into account. No excuses or drama, but that's a fair comment in my opinion.
You can see why I intervened with the tighter settings late July. All bar the bot error the adapted filters have done what I wanted, controlled the betting until I could finish the foundation upgrade I'd scheduled pre lockdown. Had the race break not occurred we'd have had this ready for April / May.
The same upgrade currently in dev test for JV MK2, which without going off topic I'll cover in another blog post, will be available as an optional extra alongside the current JV MK2 settings for members who run that strategy.
RDB Dutch however will be a full settings upgrade, because we need to adapt this now to begin operating at a higher level, both for volume, rate of recovery, and expected profits over time. Also, you can see from the results to date their is no point hanging on to the original filters, whereas JV MK2 has shown to reset back to original performance.
You can see below that the recent downturn would have done nothing more than peeved you if following this from the initial dev test and member release earlier this year, as we returned back to our original starting balance.
However, if starting to bet following RDB Dutch from the 1st July you're now minus 10.32 points down, and if following the currently operational settings this could take about 3 to 4 months to recover. That level of recovery rate on losses is not where we want to be.
With the foundation update I'll explain below, we now have a fighting chance to get this recouped in reasonable time, and begin pushing on to a new profit high.
If you're an older member who's back to square one, this is good news as your balance will start benefiting from a more robust RDB Dutch service.
If you're one of the members who started in July looking at a loss, this is great news as you now have a solid chance to get back on the horse a lot faster to recover and bring in profits.
In the screenshot above you can see a big difference with the bet volume, points growth of 12.46, and an acceptable drawdown at 1.70.
Even showing you the recent losses running this strategy with updated settings, the most recent was on the 7th August and is already 50% recovered with winning bets placed.
In comparison to the 28 bets under the current settings for this time period, which do without doubt tighten everything up, but the new filters have placed 110 bets, with 106 wins, just 4 losses, a strike rate of 96.36%, and 1.70 points drawdown.
I'd expect the drawdown to reach 5 points at some stage over a year, and hit the stop down point at least once, but this update runs in the same way as the current settings, just allowing for multiple applicable selections in each race.
Which means there will be more bets, but the strictness of the selection criteria running at the moment is still the main operating system.
The benefit of having more than one bet in some of the races is on the losing bets the loss is less than a point, as the winning lay bet reduces exposure.
This set up gives us an estimated predicted growth somewhere between 50 to 100 points annually.
Which considering we're in fall out after lockdown trying to adjust to the impact, and the main point we're actually just at break even after approx 5 months racing in total, this target adjustment for fixed liability is very welcome.
If we return 50 points over the year without deviating from the selection process, and simply updating trends over time naturally as the system is set up for, then it's job done for me.
I'd rather we reach a 100 points obviously, but to add 50 points to my bet portfolio instead of the current break even on the investment, will be good news.
FYI I've put in a lot of man hours with all services and adjustments since the break in racing, and I'm not writing this looking for credit or a pat on the back, but just to let you know these upgrades are all part of a foundation update planned and worked on pre lockdown.
They are not a knee jerk reaction as they were already in the pipeline, and given we're only in month two betting since restarting this is just natural timing to get these things perpared.
The affect of the no race period on racing has been dramatic to say the least, and the fact I've now got JV MK2 running as close to how it was pre lockdown, and RDB Straight showing a profit since betting restart is an achievement considering these are pre programmed full automated betting services.
The work Nigel has put in over the past few months has been prolific, to adapt the platform to acknowledge and act upon the data at specific time intervals, while collating it all and allowing such a deep ongoing assessment is truly mind boggling.
I say to him from time to time, there is a fine line between genius and madness, haha...
Credit where credit is due though, it's been a team effort to get to this point and the updates scheduled for all services will be done right.
We've taken our time, and put in the effort to make sure they are introduced either as a positive upgrade explained in this post for RDB Dutch, and to advance the service to actually become a lay Dutch betting system.
The same applies to add some diversity to an already successful strategy such as JV MK2, by adding a more aggressive uncapped option with caveats obviously I need to cover, but this why it's presently still in dev test, and I will cover this in my next post.
RDB Straight is next on the list, as I can certainly add more control to the selection process, and improve the drawdown for this service while maintaining a solid long term growth. As the main point of concern is the volatility, but it's also part of the excitement given it returns at average odds over 6 with scope to have some amazing win runs, so a lot of work to complete for this one, also exciting for me to get the final foundation update in place.
You can subscribe to the RDB Dutch service here: https://www.exponentialbet.co.uk/dutch-betting
That's it for the RDB Dutch update today as I need to give the eyes a rest, but I'll be in touch with members ahead of the crossover to the Foundation Update scheduled for the 17th August.
Thanks for reading.
Ryan
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