Dobs Horse Racing Strategy - Betfair Trading Software Tutorial

Want to learn how to use the Dobs strategy inside the software?

In this video, I’ll walk you through the Dobs Strategy step by step and show you how to use the software to find selections, analyse the results, and understand how the strategy works in practice.

This tutorial is designed to help you get up and running quickly, so instead of feeling overwhelmed, you can start using the tool properly and make better decisions with more confidence.

Inside this video, you’ll see:

• What the Dobs strategy is
• How to use the software to find Dobs selections
• How to review the data and results
• What to look for when analysing performance
• How to use the tool to save time and stay organised

If you’ve been unsure how to use the Dobs strategy in the software, this video will make it simple.

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 https://lightspeedstats.com/signup/

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Transcript

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Hello and welcome to another podcast from lightspeedstats.com, the home of horse racing trading on Betfair, the home of backtesting your strategies to see if you can create something great for horse racing trading and give yourself a leg up on the market. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, please do. I'm doing individual podcasts now. I used to kind of combine videos and podcasts, but I realized do you know what? I feel like the podcast audience is a little bit different at times, and also you want something a little bit different, perhaps a little more detailed and in-depth, and that is sure what you're gonna get in this podcast today. I'm gonna talk about half dubs, dubs, trobs, and more. Okay, because I did a video that's gonna come out a similar time to this about dobbing and explaining the dub rule on the software. Um so I wanted to talk a little bit about the background of half dubs, dubs, and trobs and talk about why these strategies are so popular, why they're so successful, and why I think they're actually really, really good for newer horse racing traders. So if you don't know, DOBS basically is a is kind of an acronym for double or bust, and essentially what it means is that you are backing a horse at higher odds, and you are hoping the price halves, and that you make either double your money or you lose your money. So let's say you bet£10, you either make£10 profit because the odds came in so much, you could trade up for green up for£10 profit on each side, or you take a£10 loss because it didn't hit your target price, and hell, I'm not having a stop loss. That's kind of the dub explain, it's a double or bust strategy. Um, and I really like it because I think as someone who, in general, although I do trade a fair bit, I do like letting things run a lot of the time, and often when I'm trading out things, it's usually because it just doesn't make any sense not to, say, like I've locked in at 89% stake profit. Um, but in this scenario, it's clever because you don't you know that well, if I double or my lose my money, I need to win 50% of the time to break even. Let's say commission maybe around 51%, right? But if I can beat that, if I can do better than that, which come on, 50% is not that high, then I can make some money trading the horses here. And I think that is the the general logic of why the strategy is as popular as it is. It's essentially just a back to lay strategy. You are backing and then laying, you are backing at high odds, hoping to lay at lower odds. So you know, the basis of every um or most kind of trading strategies, you know, you've got the the reverse of that lay to back, but essentially everything is either a back to lay or a lay-to-back, and if you're trading out, that is. So I do like the idea of this strategy, and I like the fact there's that old school gambling kind of element to it of hey, this is a double or bust, like we're either gonna make 100% profit or we're gonna lose our stake. Now, again, like with anything to do with something where you could lose your stake, you have to be staking very sensibly. You want to you're not gonna be using a large chunk of your bankroll on a dub, you're probably gonna be using one to two percent at the most. But what's interesting here is that there's actually a lot of other ways you can use this strategy. So dubbing is kind of the classic, it's like the you know, it's the refined strategy that you can use for this. But people then start to migrate the strategy a bit and they start to manipulate it and work out well, hang on. Well, I would actually prefer to have a strategy that only finds horses that come in 50% rather than a hundred percent profit. So I'm not gonna make 100% profit, but I'm gonna make 50% profit instead. The odds will come in a little bit less, but they'll hit that target price more of the time, okay? And that's a half dub essentially. Now I don't know if there's a special name for a half dub, I've I've just always seen it called a half dub. I kind of think of it as a half dub, um, but you know, there's some clever people out there that have probably made some good names for it. But the reality is, all you're doing there is you're trying to win 50% of your stake instead of 100%. So you're not doubling or nothing, you're kind of halving the profit or nothing, and then if you make that half profit, obviously you need to win twice to make a full Dobbs worth of profit. So I'll make this a bit easier to understand because I realize I've just explained that horrifically. Um, but yeah, let's say you're betting£10, and it's a back to lay, so you're backing a horse at higher odds at£10. You want the odds to come in for a£50 profit. So you're wanting the odds to come in enough that you can make five pound profit on either side because five is half of ten, that's£50 profit. So that's what you're doing. You are targeting a 50% profit with a half dog, and the reason people like that is it will win more often. Obviously, the odds don't have to come in as far. Um, and it feels a bit less risky in a lot of ways, like you're not wanting the horse to come in a ton to make a profit, it only needs to come in you know, enough that you can make half your stakes worth of profit. Um, so again, a good idea. Now, just bear in mind, like I say, you're gonna need to win two out of every three trades to break even with that. Let's up that to around 67-68% of the time. So, you're gonna want to look for something that hits that target price a high percentage of the time. You're probably gonna be looking around 75-80%. Okay, so there will be horses out there that do that, but obviously just be aware like when you change the rules of a strategy, when you change the odds required and all that stuff, you have to match up with the percentages. There's no point looking for a half dob and going, well, I'm looking for horses that have been dobbing 60% of the time. Okay, but you need to win 67-68% of the time. So, what use is it if if a horse only dobs 6% of the time? You're gonna lose money in the long run, aren't you? Because you're not gonna strike high enough. Um, assuming that obviously the research you're doing, the strategy you've created, those stats are accurate, right? And then you've got trods, which are really interesting. Um, I mean, I actually don't think I was particularly um introduced to these until a guy named John, you might know him or not for him, legend of Betfair Trading Community, the sister site to lightspeed stats.com. Um, but great horse racing trader, really followed his journey over the years, and uh yeah, great guy as well, if you ever get the chance to talk to him. But he used to do trobbs, he liked daubing and trobbing, and trobbing basically means treble or bust or triple or bust, however you want to say it. What you're doing is you're trying to make three times your money and then clear off. So it's instead of a double or bust, you're trying to make let's say you bet£10, you're trying to make£20 profit this time, so you can walk away with the original£10 plus the£20, 30, and that's kind of trebling your money, treble or bust kind of mentality. Um and you're tripling your money, aren't you? So it's quite good, it's quite a nice idea. I think it's that kind of thing of again, you don't need to win as many. So look, if you're winning twice as much every time you hit, you only need to win half as much as you do on DOBS. So um the key thing there is to go, okay, what percentage do I need here? And again, you've got to match your percentages up with your odds, and that's really important here. So for a treble or bust, you need to be winning around 34-35% of the time to break even. So ideally, you want to find horses that hit the trod price around 40% of the time or more. Okay, that's kind of the base I would be using. Again, I mean, the thing with these percentages, it's it's up to you what you use. You could use different ones. Um, you could obviously go higher if you want. I'd be wary of going much lower. I mean, what's the point of looking for horses that only trod 25% of the time? Going, yeah, but you need to win at least a third of your trades. There's no good if you're losing two. Uh if you're losing three out of four, you'll lose money in the long run. So again, always look at that stuff. It's really important because you might go, well, I want to do a quab. I've just named that by the way, because I've never known anyone to do a quab. I assume, yeah, it would be quadruple, wouldn't it, or bust? Maybe a quib. Is that one? Quib? Quintuple? Is it quintuple the fifth one? I'm sure they've had like when they have, you know, like triplets and stuff, they have like quintuplets. Can you imagine having five kids? That's nuts, isn't that? Imagine having five kids at once. How would you even like do the night feeds or anything? You would not sleep. They must give help. Surely, if that happens, you get help from some, like the government or something. They just literally go, right, we're gonna send nurse. Because you cannot look after five kids, can you? Right, who are born at the same time. But anyway, that's good enough for new horse racing. Um, but yeah, say you wanted a horse to come in, you know, five times the price. Obviously, it's gonna have to be a pretty big price horse to start with. That's the other thing I'd say about this actually, I didn't get time to mention when I did the video. Um, and obviously the video is a tutorial on the software, so we haven't talked about anything really that we've talked about here very much. But when you go too high odds on DOBs, one problem you'll find, especially when you scale your bets, is that there's not enough money on those horses. So it's all well and good going, oh, I've got an idea for a DOB. I'll back a horse at 100 and trade out. I'm not sure what the exact trade out is, but let's say 50, right? So, nice idea. Problem is, you know, let's say you get to the point where you're putting 50 quid on a time, right? Your bankroll gets to that point. Well, try getting 50 quid matched and laid off in running that quickly when prices are moving on a horse that's 150 in odds, because you'll find you'll soon find how difficult that is. Um, I mean, even in the bigger meetings, that's going to be difficult. And I tell you what, in the smaller meetings, in the everyday meetings, I don't say you got no chance because you should never say that, but let's put it this way, you're taking a massive risk, and the and it'll be frustrating, you know. Say you put£50 on a horse at£100, and then it comes into£50, and you get to your target price, but you can only get five of that out, and then it loses the race. Because remember, it's still only 50 shots to win, still a massive chance it doesn't win. So, yeah, I mean, generally the odds I look at are between three and twenty-five. I don't really like going below three, but you can because in theory, of course, like you could daub at 2.0 because if you back a horse at 2.0, you're not gonna be able to trade out, but obviously, if it wins the race, you're gonna double your money, so you can double enough at 2.0. I've always used 3.0 as kind of my minimum price. Um, I just don't like the idea of needing a horse that's that's 2.7 to go pretty much all the way in to actually make a profit. It's much easier when you've got a horse that's 10. Well, I think anyway, when it's 10, get into kind of like 5 or don't know what the exact price you need is. Um, and again, the nice thing is you don't actually need to. So, one of the things is that even if you're not using any trading software on Betfair, when you set your bet up, you just click the odds you need because you just look at well, what will give me£10 profit for this£10 stake? What odds will do that? Okay, I'll go in, place a lay on that price, and then let it run in play. Um, so you know that's another nice thing about these bets, they're very easy to set up in Betfair. You can kind of do it all before the off and then just let it run in play. And as long as you keep your bet in play, um, you'll be laughing because you'll you'll be making the trade you want to make, and well, hopefully you're laughing at the end because you're making some profit at the end of it. Um, but yeah, there's a lot of options you can use for half dubs, dubs, trops. You can you can do a lot of different things, um, but I wouldn't get yourself too confused with it early on, you know. Work out what works for you. So someone said to me the other day, they said, Well, how do I choose? Right, there's all these different options, and I think often this is what horse racing traders in particular struggle with. So I think with football, and obviously I've done a lot of work with both sports, they're the two sports that I trade are the two sports that I produce this content on. But people will say to me, Well, there's so much choice, you know. What do I do with Dobbs? How do I choose what to do? Do I do a half dob, a dob, a trob? The thing is, do what suits your you as a trader. So do you like the idea of winning quite often? Okay, but smaller amounts, so you need to win more often. That's half Dobbs. Do you like the idea of winning around half the time? Are you okay with that? Perhaps going on runs where you don't win for a while? That's Dobbs. Amplify that further for Trobs. You know, do you like the idea of you know making three times your money here? Um, you know, including your stake, by the way, because you're not making 30 quid, you're making 20 quid profit for a 10 pound stake. But you're trebling your money, in effect, but you're probably only gonna win around if you're really good at it, you might win 36% of the time, 37% of the time. And that's really good, right? Let's say you're you're amazing at trops and you win 40% plus. You're still gonna go on runs where you don't win for a while. You're still gonna go on runs where you could lose quite a few races in a row. I mean, is that something you're happy with? Because I always think that's one of the key things with Betfair traders, is that a lot of them aren't happy when they have to wait for a winner. It's a bit like me with uh Inter Milan at the moment, if you are a football fan, and they've just like not won in about four or five games. I mean by the time this goes out, they probably well, I'd say probably, let's hope they've won. Um, but when you're used to winning a lot, it's very frustrating when you're not winning. And it can be the same with bet fair trading. Um, and like I say, these are all or nothing because ultimately you will lose your stake if it doesn't hit your target price. Again, that's something you have to be comfortable with as a trader, but it's a very good starting strategy, and you can start with anything. I mean, you know, as we say, a couple of things you can do straight off the bat. You could note down the odds on a bit of pen and paper, old school, or you could use a Google Doc. You could note down the odds and test it, see how it goes. In fact, if you set up a strategy in LightspeedSats.com software, you back test it, see how good it is, you might go, right? Well, I want to see how it performs next three months. You can literally just leave that strategy alone, as long as you've saved it. Remember to click save. You could leave that strategy alone for three months, come back and oh, it's done all the results for me. Brilliant. It's forward tested for me. Okay, so that strategy I've created the last three months. Oh, look, it's done well or it hasn't done well, or might be something I can tweak. It's not something you can do. Obviously, you might want to come back in a month. I'd probably come back in a month and look at it monthly. Um, but that's amazing, right? Because you don't have to then go and do the pen and paper stuff, you don't then have to go and write it all in Google, have to spend hours doing how many hours of my life I've spent doing betting spreadsheets. Um, you know, that's all going to come to an end fairly soon, and thank God for that. Because what you really want to be focusing on is focusing your mind so that you can create good strategies. Um, but yeah, don't feel like overwhelmed by it. Just think about what trade suits your style of trading. Because that is nearly always the answer. When someone asks me, you know, what market should I trade? What, and it's like, well, what suits you? Because it's no good me telling you, well, I think you should go for Dobbs, and then you come back to me and go, Oh, I just lost five in a row. And I go, Yeah, that's fairly normal. Um, you know, if you've got something that only wins 50 odd percent of the time, you will get runs like that, no matter how good you are. And they're like, Yeah, but I don't like losing five in a row, and then I went on till I got angry, then I bet more than I should have, and oh no, I just blew my bank roll because I was cheaper with my money, and it's like, oh okay, maybe half dubs will be well, well, a discipline course would be better for you if that's the case. Um, but yeah, half dubs might suit you more because you're gonna win more often. Um, but as ever, bank roll management really important. Uh on a dub, I'd never be using more than one or two percent of my bank role, and that's on a strategy I was really confident with. So test it a bit first. Go and you know, let the software do the forward testing for you if you must, but at least test it for a bit. Half dubs. I mean, again, the problem is you are losing your stake, so you don't want to go too much higher. You might because you're wimmer often, you might want to go three percent to four percent. I feel that even that would be a feel a bit higher to me. And for Trobs, I'm probably going 0.5% to 1% of my bank roll per bet because again, you can lose the stake, um, and the rewards there on Troubs because you will win two times your money. So, you know, if you're putting a point on, well, you'll still make two points profit. So it's not exactly the end of the world when you win. Um, and I do kind of think you in general you should scale your betting and your bankroll according to what your trade is and how much risk there is, whether like you're likely to lose your full stake, and if not, you can use a little bit more. Um, but this is a scenario where you can lose your full stake, and there will be a lot of trading strategies where you cannot lose your full stake. So you can up the amount you trade a bit because you know, well, worst case scenario I'm losing 50% of my stake. That's not the case with these. Um, but there's a reason they're so popular. So if there's something that's interested you, why not go get into the lightspeedstats.com software now. Go and watch the video I did on YouTube about on the Lightspeed Stats channel on YouTube. Why not go and sign up there? Sign up, subscribe there because um it's a new channel. So we'd love your support, guys, if you're if you're fans of that, and you know, maybe you're someone who's like, Oh, I really want to become a member, but I'm not quite there yet. Well, if you want to help us out and sort of give a bit of a thank you for all the hundreds and thousands of hours of Betfair trading training we're doing for you, um yeah, just go to YouTube and subscribe because it helps us out, but also help you because you'll get wind of these videos, you'll get to see them. And uh, like I say, if you're not subscribed to the podcast, do that as well. Because, like I say, you're gonna hear that a lot from me in these podcasts. I'm not gonna apologize for that because we're starting out with the lightspeed stats.com and we're growing it. And obviously, Betfair trading community has been a huge success. That's the football side of things, but we really want the horse racing side of things to keep growing the way it is, and it's it's been doing really well. And obviously, those of you love Lightspeed Stats, and those of you have signed up, and we're really grateful for that. We're really enjoying having you as part of it. And I know you love the back testing, you love the fact you can just test your horse racing strategy straight away. So many success stories, and uh yeah, I'd like to thank you guys as well for being such fantastic people. So, yeah, thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope you have a great week trading, and I hope you make some money trading the horses on Betfair.