Setting your risk limits

Why risk limits matter

Risk limits are not a restriction on how you trade — they are a structural protection you set for yourself, in advance, when you are thinking clearly. The most common source of significant trading losses is not poor strategy; it is behaviour during bad sessions — escalating stakes to recover losses, continuing to trade after a daily cap should have stopped you, or placing oversized lay orders in markets you have not properly assessed.

The settings in Settings → Risk Limits give Race Guardian the data it needs to enforce the protections you have chosen. These limits apply only to your HRT session — they do not affect your Betfair account directly.

Maximum stake

Set the highest stake you want to be able to enter in a single order. The stake input in the trading terminal will not accept a value above this limit. This prevents both accidental large stakes and impulsive oversized entries in the heat of the moment.

If you use a range of stake sizes and do not want a hard cap, leave this unset.

Maximum liability per market

For lay orders, your liability grows with the price. A £50 lay at 10.0 carries a £450 liability. The maximum liability per market setting prevents you from accumulating more than a specified total liability on any single market across all your open lay orders.

This is particularly valuable if you tend to add to positions in losing markets — a liability cap enforces a hard stop before the exposure grows beyond what you planned.

Daily loss cap

The daily loss cap sets the maximum net loss (realised P&L) you are willing to accept in a single day. Once your cumulative realised losses for the day reach this amount, Race Guardian blocks all new order submissions until the next calendar day.

Set this to an amount that represents a bad day you can absorb without significant financial impact. If you are not sure what number to use, start conservatively — you can always raise it later once you have a better sense of your normal loss variance.

Streak protection

Streak protection triggers after a specified number of consecutive losing trades. Rather than blocking trading entirely, it prompts a mandatory 10-minute pause. This is designed to break the automatic negative feedback loop that often drives impulsive recovery trading.

You can configure the number of consecutive losses that triggers the pause (default: 5).

Tilt detection

Tilt detection monitors for the behavioural signature of trading under emotional stress: rapidly escalating stake sizes, unusually short time between trades, and placing orders within seconds of a loss. When these patterns are detected, Race Guardian issues a warning and can trigger a mandatory pause.

Tilt detection is enabled by default. It can be adjusted in sensitivity (Low / Medium / High) but cannot be fully disabled — it is a core safety feature of the platform.

Race Guardian enforces all active risk limits. Some limits issue warnings you can override; others are hard blocks. See the **Race Guardian** article for the full list.