Definition
What is a backtest in sports betting?
Last updated
Definition
A backtest runs a strategy against historical odds + outcomes to estimate how it would have performed in the past. A clean backtest produces P/L, CLV, drawdown, and bet-distribution statistics matching what the strategy would have done if it had run live.
Backtesting in sports betting is harder than in equities because historical odds data is often messy, in-play timestamps are imprecise, and survivorship-style biases creep in easily. A backtest that doesn't account for closing-line slippage, vig, and execution latency systematically overstates strategy performance. Glitch Edge's harness runs backtest through the same execution path as live placement so the numbers are directly comparable.
The traps in backtest
- Survivorship bias: only events you remembered to record
- Lookahead bias: using info that wasn’t available at decision time
- Vig-free P/L: forgetting the bookmaker’s margin
- Latency-free execution: assuming you got the price you saw
What clean backtest requires
Time-stamped odds snapshots, settled outcomes, vig stripped explicitly, and execution assumed at the price visible to the strategy at decision time. Glitch Edge ships a harness with all four; rolling your own is a project.