MONTE CARLO SIMULATIONS: Winning Predictions Made Easy In 3 Steps

Today I’m going to show you how we use Monte Carlo simulations to see a race being run, in just 60 seconds, before it’s even started. In just five races we generated £54.33 profit.

I did this despite the fact that:

• I spent zero time analysing the races
• Knew nothing about the horses in the races

In this case study we’ll go through step-by-step the tool that allowed us to do this.

Of course, not all races will pan out this well, and this case study is an example of how powerful this tool can be, but it should be included as part of your overall toolset.

WHAT IS A MONTE CARLO SIMULATION?

I’m glad you asked.

Before I explain exactly how a Monte Carlo simulation works, it’s first very important to understand a key element of any horse rating.

A horse race rating is an estimate of a horse’s performance.

The word “estimate” is the key.

It may be that the horse’s true rating is a bit higher or a bit lower than the score they’ve been given.

A Monte Carlo simulation takes the range that a horse’s rating is likely to be in and chooses a random number from that range.

It does this for every horse, and then orders them from best to worst

We count the win for the winning horse.

Then we do this thousands of times, each time counting the win for the winning horse.

At the end each horse will have a number of wins, showing us which is the most likely horse to win the race.

Taking It Up A Gear

We can super-charge this method.

The same process as above is used, but we can do it for more than one rating, maybe three or four ratings, or maybe hundreds of ratings.

It combines the results from all the ratings into one, super-powerful scoring method.

STEP# 1: Create A Race Card

Before we run then Monte Carlo simulation, we want to create a race card that has the ratings we want to use in our assessment.

We can use our Standard race card, or make a custom one.

To make a custom race card you start by going to the Settings page from your Dashboard.

From the Settings page we click the Add New Race Card button.

This will bring up the race card creator tool. From here you can filter the list of ratings by one, or more, of six categories.

Once you’ve filtered by your categories you can select the ratings you want on your race card by clicking on the + icon next to each rating. Hovering over a rating will bring up a description of that rating.

If you want to remove a rating, click on the minus symbol next to it and it will be removed.

Finally, drag the ratings on your race card into the order you want them to display in, and enter the name for your race card.

During the first step we’ve created our own custom race card by choosing the ratings we want to put on it. This has been saved and is now available to use on any race.

STEP #2: Run The Monte Carlo Simulation

Once we’ve created our custom race card we can run the Monte Carlo simulation.

This is done very easily by opening a race, and choosing the race card we want to use from the drop down menu on the top right.

Once you’ve selected the race card that you want to use in the Monte Carlo Simulation, it’s time to run the simulation.

Press the M button above the race card.

This will open up the Monte Carlo simulation screen. From here there are three steps, for now you can click okay on all of them without adjusting the settings.

That’s it!

The only thing left to do, is to sort the results in order of the best to the worst, like this…

You can see the four strongest horses in this race are Miss Milby, Aish, Soapy’s Sister and Source Of Wealth.

In the second step we’ve opened a race and loaded the custom race card we made in step #1. We’ve then started the Monte Carlo simulation, and let it run to discover which are the strongest runners in the race.

STEP #3: Placing Your Bets

Once you’ve got the strongest horses in the race, you can then place your bets.

Of course you could simply dutch bet all these horses.

That’s what I did for this example and made a 43% return on investment.

However, I recommend that you look into these runners further to confirm their strengths, and there are a number of ways you can do that here and here.

When determining how you are going to bet in a race, you should always take into account the odds available on your runners and compare this to the risk you think there is in the bet losing. The payout has to be worth the risk for you to consider placing a bet.

CONCLUSION

In this case study, we looked at Monte Carlo simulations, and how we can use them to find the strongest horses in a race in just sixty seconds.

We then dutch bet them to make a profit. Here’s an example of five races I did on the day I wrote this blog.

As you can see, in the five random races I looked at on the day I wrote this blog post, we found the winner in two of them, for a 40% strike rate. At £25 stakes we bet £125 and made a profit of £54.33. That’s a 43% return on investment.

Of course, it won’t always work quite like that, which is why I recommend you take these runners and look into their strengths and weaknesses to assess which ones are worth you betting on.

When you do this you can find bet structures that may be better suited, such as win, place and 80/20 bets.

When you’re practicing this approach you should use Aldermist, our LikeReal Racing platform, where you can practice in a zero-risk environment, in the world’s first every horse racing simulator designed for bettors. This behaves like real racing, and when you’re comfortable with the method you can use it on live racing.

Please let me know if you’re going to try using the Monte Carlo simulation by leaving me a comment below.