If you're testing a Betfair trading strategy, one of the first questions is obvious: does it actually work? The less obvious question is: how will you know? Backtesting can be incredibly useful. It lets you examine historical data quickly, test ideas cheaply and reject obviously poor hypotheses before risking money. But when I started building what eventually became the Trade Carefully Research Framework, I wanted something else as well. I wanted real bets in real markets. So