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

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!

Betfair API

As I've got a background in software development, I was immediately interested in doing a bit of bot writing. After a look around the Betfair site I was pleasently surprised to discover that the lovely Betfair people had already put an API together.

If you're not an IT geek like me, then this may well be double dutch to you. What it basically means is that instead of having to write some clever code that effectively logs into Betfair via the web and then decodes the web site pages, clicking robotically on buttons and links, there is a ready built set of commands provided that can be used. So, instead of having to mess about working out how to put a bet on by sending a click on this and send that, we can just send a "I want to bet £20 on XYZ, please" message and voila, it's done.

It's a bit sad, but I got quite excited, especially when I found out that there was a developer version (just for guys like me!). Then the bad news. The cost. Usually API (application programming interface) are available for free but here they want £100 a month. Eek! Now, if a bit of software I write is making me £101+ a month consistently, then fine, but right now it's not. Thankfully, they also provide a free version, but it is somewhat hobbled (ever see the film misery, where the crazy woman smashed the writers legs with a big lump hammer? Well think of the equivalent thing being done to some software).

I'm going to have a look and see what I can do with the free version. My initial thought is to do some fancy graphing of price/volume information, i.e. get some bollinger bands, etc going. I'll report back when I have (may take a little while, mind). If there's anyone out there that have already done some Betfair free API work and fancy a chat and to swap some ideas, drop me a note.

The initial £100 bank

My starting bank, a couple of weeks ago, when I first discovered Bet Exchanges and Bet Fair, was £100.
I discovered bet exchanges pretty recently. My Dad, who died a couple of years ago, came across them in about 2004 and got hold of a report called something like, "How to make bets that never lose". He showed me the advert for it and I read it but racing and gambling were'nt really my thing and so I pretty much forgot about it.

About a month ago I was rooting around in the garage and I came across some of Dad's old papers and things and there amongst them was the report. Out of curiosity, I picked it up and skimmed through. Although I didn't fully get how Betfair worked from the screenshots, I picked up the idea behind backing and laying the same thing and making money on the difference in price. I took the report inside and read it cover to cover right there and then, much to the chagrin of my girlfriend, who had a list of jobs for me to do (he he!).

The report didn't give any real "how-to" details but it did introduce me to bet exchanges and the idea of trading, especially the concept of the free bet and "greening up".

The next step was to sign in to Betfair and have a look round. I did this and was pretty confused. Lots of boxes with rapidly changing numbers. Nope. I didn't have a clue and thought it was going to be a pretty steep learning curve. I was wrong.

I went on-line and a-googling. I searched for whatever I could about bet exchanges, bet exchange trading, betfair, etc. Eventually I found a couple of sites that were selling various systems. Being a bit of a newbie and with the information not costing much and having what looked like quite a lot of info and video clips, etc, I bought it.

What did I get for my money? Well, after reading through a few times, I finally understood how betfair worked and also learnt of the existance of "bots". I have a strong IT background and my instant reaction to the idea of bet exchanges was to write some code to help with it, but it looked like there were a few out there already, which was cool.
The system mentioned didn't seem to work very well on the markets I had available to test on (around 9pm-12pm UK time, USA Horse racing markets), but I was now hooked.

My plan was to try and work out my own system to use and to do this I was going to make minimal stakes of £2 per trade, whilst reading whatever I could. That was 2 weeks ago.

I slid down to about £70 and have since come back up again to about £90 and am now ready to start. So £90 is in the bank and it begins.