Life in Bots-ville

Wow! I've not posted for a while. I've also not done much trading, in fact, the last trades I did were in February for the grand gain of about £6! I havn't been completely quiet though, I've been playing around with some laying systems, for a bit of a change. I'll write up the results in a forthcoming post. I know, I'm normally all about the trading, but as I've not felt like trading, why not explore other options?

Anyway, the main thrust of this post is about the world of Betfair bots, or rather, what recent events have happened to affect them. First up are the new changes that Betfair are making if you want to use data from their site or API. They've decided to apply extra data charges if you make more than 20 calls a second to their API or web site. Now, that doesn't sound too bad, but if you are trying to access multiple markets at once then it can happen.

I usually use the free API and only track one market at a time, so I'm okay, but its something to bear in mind when you're planning what you want to do at the start.

And finally... We see the death of a site/forum that has been a centre piece to bot builders for quite a while now. That site is http://www.fred77.co.uk/. It's gone! If you want a new forum, then I've set one up. Whether it'll take off, will depend if people use it. If it doesn't get used I might take it down again, but if you want a look, its at: http://thebreakthroughpartnership.com/simplemachinesforum/index.php

And finally, finally, if you are interested in building your own Betfair bot, please have a look at my eBook on the subject (hey, nothing like a self plug!). Go to: http://www.thebreakthroughpartnership.com/tradingbot/tradingbot.html

My eBook is ready for release, yay!

Well, I've finally finished the last set of changes to my eBook about building your own betting/trading software/bot. I plan to keep adding more examples and expanding it further, but for now, I'll release what I have. So far, I have added 9 new different examples, showing how to do the following.

1. Log on to your account using the Betfair free API
   
2. Getting a list of events
   
3. Getting a list of markets and runners
   
4. Displaying market prices in a "ladder" style.
   
5. Matched price and Bollinger band graphs
   
6. Volume graphs


7. Weight of money graphs
   
8. Placing a bet
   
9. Placing a below minimum stake bet, updating bets, cancelling bets.
   

At the top of this post, there is a screen shot.

Is this a blatant ad? Yeah, I suppose so, but I'm really excited that I've got this far. It's been hard to find time to work on this and seems to have taken me bloody ages.

Betfair Bot and Software Forum

I've just set up a forum for people interested in building bots or trading software. So far not a lot is there, as I've just set it up, but feel free to register and make it your own. If it gets used I'll keep it up, if not then I'll close it down. It can be found at:

Bot forum

"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

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).

Some Bot Work

A bit of a bad day on the trading front. I made a mistake whilst in-play and put on a back I didn't intend and lost. Very careless.

I also got started on my graphing application. I used the Betfair API sample code that you can get from the Betfair web site as a starting point and am changing it to be compatible with the GetMarketPricesCompressed function as this can be called 60 times a minute from the Free API. I have also found an open source graphing component that does all that I require. All I now need is time to get it written. I might post it up when it is done, if anyone is interested.

Bots without the Betfair API

If you want to write your own Betfair bot or an application that is driven from Betfair data and you don't want to use the API, then you could try screen scraping. The API is the fastest and safest way to go, but it is a bit pricey (£100-£200 per month). You could, of course, use the heavily throttled free version (60 updates a minute of prices from one market and then having to decode the information sent to you) but it is quite hobbled. Screen scraping is a free option but if the web page layout changes, you may need to revisit your code.

So, what is screen scraping? Well, basically, it is just automated web site reading. You tell your computer to go to a web site and look for specific bits of information and then return them to your program, every second or so. The Betfair web site is quite "busy" (it has lots of tables, images, etc on it), but there is another web site provided by Betfair that just has the essentials and this is much easier to screen scrape. The site is http://lite.betfair.com/ and is intended for mobile users. The nice people at Betfair have also provided some sample code, in the form of an Excel spreadsheet, which contains all the code you need to get started. Have a look at the Excel Tracking worksheet at: http://labs.betfair.com/labs.aspx

Good luck!