Free Daily Oddsline
Download the daily files from Noon each day at:
https://www.betwise.co.uk/member_downloads/oddsline/
We've been automatically generating oddslines for a while at Betwise - in fact, betting using an oddsline was the central premise of the book Automatic Exchange Betting, published way back in 2007.
So, what do we mean by an oddsline and how do you use it?
An oddsline is simply a set of prices or odds for every contender in any given race, just as you find from a bookmaker or a betting exchange. The difference is that the prices do not come from a bookmaker or exchange but instead are an attempt to represent every horse's fair chance of winning the race, where the probability of all horses in the race add up to 100%, so with no overround. The odds offered by a bookmaker reflect the bookmaker's attempts to balance their book and extract as much money as possible from the market, ideally with each price being offered representing less than the "true" chance each horse has of winning the race. In the case of an exchange the actual weight of money for each contender within the market will have more bearing on the prices, so the price or probability of each horse winning is determined ultimately by "the crowd" - the prices on offer are usually close to 100% probabilty across the board, but of course there is a commission to be deducted.
So we are attempting to beat both the bookmaker and the crowd in terms of predicting each horse's probability.
Of course, this is not as easy as it sounds. If it were, we would be looking at unlimited profit potential. However, generating a rival set of prices to the bookmaker or exchange, offers an alternative view to the market that may inform better betting decisions. The theory is that in the age of Artificial Intelligence, we can attempt to represent each horse's quantitative chance in the race based on data alone. The Betwise Oddsline is automated in this way every day, taking into account the fundamental data available on each horse, using past form from the Smartform database.
What is different about the Betwise oddsline?
We produce and then filter about 800 variables (and counting!) - using a feature selection process - and then select about 100 of these in the final machine learning model. To get an idea of the type of data that is used, have a look at this table of variables from the Smartform database, which was created for bettors who value the ability to gain an edge by using data.
How you use the oddsline is up to you, but a simple concept is that if a any horse’s odds are higher than what the "fair" odds are predicted to be then that may be worth consideration for a bet, if the horse's odds are lower, conversely, then the horse may be worth laying. At least that is the theory. In practice, there are a million things that can go wrong. Moreover, oddslines tends to be less reliable for horses outside the top ranked contenders, and it's important to understand there is no perfect oddsline either - this pretty much ties in with the well coined expression that all models are wrong but some are useful
There are a number of features you can use in the daily download spreadsheet to easily spot differences in the predictions from the oddsline compared to the market, particularly market rank versus betwise rank, as well as potential value prices.
When is the oddsline made available?
At the moment, you can fiinid a link (at the top of this page) to our member oddsline for all racing which is published every day just after Noon. Sometimes we publish this as an "advance" oddsline the day before racing (with the caveat that the odds may change for each horse based on updated results data) and then update the oddsline on the day itself. Feel free to download any of these to inform your own betting decisions - bearing in mind there are no promises of any nature, as discussed above, and that you do so entirely at your own risk.
We welcome comments and questions, so ask away if you have any.