"How to easily build your own Betfair bot or trading software"

Yay! I've completed it! After a lot of researching, trial and error and banging my head against an uncompliant computer screen, I've done it. I've worked out how to create a Betfair bot or bit of trading software, for free. I've recorded all of this, so you don't have to go through the hair ripping frustration and annoyance I've been through. I've got it all down in an eBook. It's called, "How to easily build your own Betfair bot or trading software"
By the end, if you follow along, you will have:

• Your own easily modifyable spreadsheet that loads prices from Betfair.


• An extendible, .NET based (just like the pros) trading application

You can take these starting points and turn them into whatever it is you want.

In the eBook, I explain:

• What a bot is and what you'll need to get one working


• How to get odds and volumes from betfair easily


• Building on top of Excel, or in .NET


• Writing a .NET trading application

I explain some of the trickier parts of using the free API (not forgetting, what an API is and why we'd want to use it), including (for the more technical) how to use (with example code) GetMarketPricesCompressed

So, if you're technically mind, you'll be happy, but what if all that stuff is gobbledy-gook to you? Well, I also explain how to find someone else to do the work for you, at bargain basement prices. There are a lot of great programmers out there, with rock bottom prices, if you know where to look. I tell you just that, in my eBook.

Click here to find out more

First touch at football

After getting home, giving the little one his bath and dropping the missus off for her company night out, I had missed the last UK horse race. No way I was touching the US market, so I decided to take Stan's advice (Stan is a regular contributor, via insightful comments, to the blog) and give the football markets a look. I'm not a big watcher of football and I play like a 4 year old, so I don't know much about the game, teams or market. Then again, I don't know much about jockeys, horses or racing but that doesn't stop me trading the horse racing markets, as I am only interested in the movement of prices not the fundamentals (i.e. form, etc). So, feeling a little trepidation, especially because the football was in-play, I checked it out, using small stakes and the same kind of approach I use for the horses.

I came out with a small profit but I think these markets can turn on a hap'enny, if something happens, e.g. a goal is scored. So, I can see it as a risky market but also one that is fairly liquid and seemed to be trending quite clearly. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, moving forward. I don't dare to use bigger stakes on this market as I don't understand the risk levels yet. It may be an option though. I wasn't able to see the game I was working with, which I guess is pretty important, so as to use events happening as guides of what to do.

As a newbie to the football market, I am open to any advice.

I tell you what, I'm going to annoy the missus when I tell her that the weekends are now being totally put aside for horse race trading!

US Markets - ARGH!

Argh! Really annoying! I just lost a chunk of cash. I was attempting to do a couple of trades on the US markets, as I got home too late to do any UK ones (that's annoying too). I had a few minutes left, according to the posted start time and I had just entered a back which had been matched when the market suspended. Unlike the UK markets, you don't usually get to go in-play, so that was that. I had inadvertently backed a horse, which then went on to lose. So, several lessons learnt there!

The US markets are just so illiquid, that the only chance you get to use them is much closer to the off, which opens up the danger of getting caught with an open trade. I'm not sure what I'm going to be able to do, as the earliest I can trade is around 8pm during the week right now. I guess I'm going to have to look around for some other markets to trade. Any recommendations?

Build your own trading bot

Some good trades today on the old horses. I decided to quit whilst I was nicely ahead, rather than do what I normally do and keep on going until I whittle away my gains!

I am also putting the finishing touches on a eBook/Report called, "How to easily build your own Betfair bot or trading software". I'll put it up for download as soon as I'm finished. It is not just for programmers, as it has examples for use with Excel and also advice on how to find a programmer to build your bot for you (cheaply).

Using the information

When using trading software, you get a lot of potential information coming at you pretty quickly. One reason I think charts are good, is that they let you see some of that info in a picture form, that you can take in quickly. When I started to trade on horse racing, I never used to take into account anything other than the price and volume of the horse I was working with (usually the favourite). Recently I have become more interested in the relative prices between the favourite and the 2nd and 3rd favourites (if there are any) and the rest of the field. Is this something that most of you guys do? I must admit, I'm not doing any deep analysis, just yet, but I think that there may be some indicators to take account of. May be not indicators of short term price change but may be of longer term (I'm still talking last 10 minutes before the off, so by longer term I mean a few minutes rather than a few seconds) changes, e.g. price direction reversal. Just a few thoughts. Be interested to hear if any of you guys use this sort of information much.

Something else that has been on my mind is a comment that Stan left on the blog recently. He spoke about how trading/scalping on the exchanges is getting tougher and that the markets have been behaving strangely. Anyone else got any thoughts around this?

DVD

No trading yesterday as I was meeting up with my film maker buddy, Rob. We discussed some more ideas for the DVD we are putting together. The idea is really coming together and we're both pretty excited. I need to finish off the first cut script for the intro piece and then we can storyboard it and shoot it. Basically, it will cover the trading problems discussed in the special report, delving into much more depth and then going through the techniques used to resolve them. Really excited about this project (as I keep on saying).

Racing, risk and the in-play

I want to talk a little bit about risk. I'm going to go off track a bit first, but remind me and I'll get back to the point again.

So, I trade the horse racing market and during the week, sometimes the earliest I can get in front of my computer can be 8pm, which means I may only get the tail end of the racing. First a question to you knowledgable traders and punters out there, when winters comes and the racing stops earlier, what is a good market to trade? The USA racing is pretty illiquid which is really annoying, although sometimes you can get a good race, but the sums of money floating around are usually very small till around 2 minutes out. Also, the US race market may suspend earlier or later than expected. So any advice on a good alternative evening market would be much appreciated.

Last night I opened up Bet Trader Pro, which as good as Bet Angel Pro is, I seem to be using more. I found a race and had a look around, as I normally do. I saw a price that I thought would rise for a couple of minutes (it was about 12 minutes before the off) and put on a lay. I watched the price go up a tick and relaxed a bit, knowing I could release my "get-out-of-trade-now" trigger finger which was hovering over the mouse. I'm watching the prices then and nothing seemed to be happening. I looked at the countdown clock (something I really like, even though it is not always an accurate indicator, if it isn't there then I have to keep checking my watch, which is annoying) and it wasn't moving.

"What?!!", I said out loud, getting a this-guy-is-crazy look from my cat, Pete. I tried to click on my web browser but it had frozen too. My machine had died. Oh crap! I had to turn off the power (it wouldn't restart or shut down normally) and then power up again. I don't know why but when you're watching it, I'm sure windows takes longer to start up. My machine finally rebooted and then took an age to launch the firewall app and connect to the internet and finally launch the trading software. I got back into the market and I was not in a great position. The price had dropped 6 or 7 ticks and my trade was open. I could leave it open and hope it would come back but I have preached on about not doing that, so I got out, took the hit and started to try to build it back. Luckily, the price was perfect for scalping, staying between two prices with a constant influx of money at both ends, back and lay. I just kept joining the queue and gaining ticks back.

Now, here's where I took a bit of a chance. The time had nearly ran out and I was still down, but not by too much. The race suspended and went in-play. Recently, I have sometimes been waiting till in-play to green up. If I think the price has been raised artificially high by trading happening in the last 2 minutes, I may hold off greening up and watch in-play to see how the prices are moving. If they are moving down steadilly then I will let them ride for a minute, if they are fluctuating then I'll try to get out quicker but hopefully at a better price. I decided not to leave it without greening up after I left what looked like a definite winner that then got beaten in the last seconds, leaving me with nothing for my efforts. Okay, it means I will get potentially less but it means I consistantly get something. I prefer to see my bank steadily rising, day by day.

Well, that was quite long winded to get to my final point, which is about risk. I know in-play is risky and in order to get out with a small profit yesterday, I didn't just wait to green-up in-play, I also did some scalping, taking advantage of the gap between back and lay. To keep my risk low, I used a lot smaller stakes and got in and out as quickly as I could. i ended up in the green but in-play also cost me about 20% of my bank recently when I made a careless mistake a few days ago. So, is the risk worth the reward? Do many of you guys trade horse in-play? Do you use the same stakes? How do you manage risk or do you just fly by the seat of your pants?