Part of the process of releasing a new version of WagerMate is back testing.  This figure shows how the new Build 318 of WagerMate performs, using the default strategy.  This is based on about four year’s worth of data.

318 Back Test Report

So, if you blindly followed all of WagerMate’s suggestions, you would have won about 22% of your bets and got back 96% of the money you bet (i.e. a 4% loss).

In one sense, that’s terrible — we’d lose money!  But in another sense, this is incredibly encouraging — before we’ve even applied a bit of our handicapping skill, we’ve changed the rules of the game.  Everyone else is playing a game with a 20% takeout, but WagerMate users are playing a game with a 4% takeout.

If you can use your own experience and wisdom to sort through WagerMate’s selections, you should be able to improve on these results.  If you have enough data to do your own back testing, you should be able to develop a better strategy than the default strategy built into WagerMate.

Of course, Your Mileage May Vary.  Making money in back testing is not identical to making money with real bets.

I uploaded a new version of Wagermate today.  Most of the enhancements are minor.

Here’s something convenient: when you’re working on the back testing tab to perfect a strategy, you can make it apply to just dirt races or just sprints (for example) by using the new checkboxes.

Back test tab with new checkboxes

I’ve taken to saving my strategy files with names that indicate what surface and distance they pertain to, like “DS long shots.wmst”.