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There are many academic research papers published on the application of AI to sports betting. One probable reason for this is that betting produces crisp, easy to identify and reasonably swift results. A horse either wins or loses and as we all know most lose. But how would AI perform when let loose in the real world against real world punters. Would it outperform the average punter ?, would it outperform a group of skilled punters ?.

I had the opportunity to put this to test back at the beginning of the 2022 flat season when a tipping competition emerged on Twitter by the name of @Handinaps. The rules were very simple, entrants had to pay to enter which is some ways strengthened the skill base of the entrants, and as far as selections were concerned they had to select 2 bets in all Heritage Handicaps that season. There are around 40 such handicaps per season. You could select each way if you chose or straight win and all bets were calculated bookmaker SP prices.

In order to test how AI might perform against these entrants I devised a Machine Learning model using MySportsAI specifically for Heritage Handicaps and set about monitoring selections each way. In selecting place terms I only used place values where more than one main bookmaker offered such places. So for example SkyBet consistently offered an extra place so if most books went 5 places they would go 6. I did not count SkyBet in such instances and would settle my bets to 5 places in this example. I also monitored Betfair SP results to get a feel for how generous the EW rules are when pitted against Betfair SP as the EW places offered are bigger than what us usually offered. Having said that it should be noted that these place rules are not offered in shops as far as I could see by bookmakers, only on line.

In order to get a better feel for how the model is doing long term I merged in the results from 2023 but only for those entrants who played in both years. This mean we had 184 participants who ran in the competition for both years.

All MySportsAI model selections were proofed on Twitter in 2022 and then on the MYSportsAI email forum in 2023. OK how did things pan out?. Here is the top 10 from the Handinaps leader board after 2022 and 2023.

weewlad1 is out in front with an impressive +254.25 points profit

The average profit/loss across all tipsters was -147.87 and only 21 tipsters out of the 184 who survived the two years made a profit of any kind.

How did AI do in the form of MySportsAI’s Machine Learning model ?

Backing EW to bookie SP showed a profit of +111.37 points putting MySportsAI in 5th place.

Backing to a straight win at bookie SP made a profit of +49.25 points

Backing win to Betfair SP made a profit of +111.65 points

It will be interesting to see how things pan out over a longer time but for the moment I leave it to you to ponder the future of AI and sports betting.

MySportsAI is a click and go software that requires no coding skill or Machine Learning knowledge. There is a link to an intro video pinned on my Twitter page @Smartersig