Article

Case Study 8 - Automation for Scalping Front Runners

From Bet Angel forum:

Basically they give you a list of frontrunners every day, you place a back bet just before the off and then hopefully get a lay bet, for around 20 ticks lower during the first part of the race.

I have successfully been successful (thanks Dallas) in setting up a rule that can place a back bet and then place a lay bet if the horse successfully gets near the front and the price lowers, but I want to add a rule that cuts my losses when in play, so it greens (or reds up I guess) if the price goes the wrong way and therefore guards against losing all the stake.

I am quite willing to pay someone (because I don't want to waste anymore time trying to hunt down the right video or waiting until something manages to get through my thick skull) to write a small automation rule, that they can export and send to me.

I want a rule that:

Places a £10 back bet (it can be for the favourite, I can change this to a specific horse for each race).

Back bet to be placed at around 2 minutes before off.

Need a lay bet that would get a profit of around 15%...not sure how many ticks this would be, this would need to carry on into in play of course.

Would need a rule that greens/reds up if price goes wrong way, ie 15% the other way.

Bfexplorer Solution:

I prepared a short video tutorial showing how to execute a similar trading strategy using bfexplorer tools. For presentations purposes I used a simple OLBG script to import all favourite NAP selections for today’s UK/IE races. What you can see on my video:

1)

Using “Event Browser” I opened events (horse racing win markets) I wanted to be imported by my OLBG script.

2)

Using “Bfexplorer Console” tool I executed my OLBG script. The script opened OLBG web pages for today’s races and imported NAP selections, automatically opened 10 markets and adding my selections to “Watched Selections” view and to “Bot Executor for Selections” tool.

3)

I reviewed all my selections opening side by side “Bet Event” and “Bot Executor for Selections” views, removing selections/horses I did not want to trade on.

4)

I wanted to execute back/lay trading on my selections, so I added my trading bot to “Bots to Execute” view. I used the bot: “Place bet and close selection bet position” setting to back 100 Euro at current offered best back price (odds), and closing bet position (hedging) when profit reaches 5% of my liability or loss reaches 20%. I did not set the parameter ExecuteOnSelection (leaving the value for this parameter to 0), so this trading bot is a general trading bot that can be executed on any market selection. In this case the “Bot Executor for Selections” tool will execute this bot automatically.

5)

Having created my trading bot I was ready to use it. If you are no so familiar with betfair bots, it is good idea to test any bot settings before its execution, mainly when using it in “Bot Executor” tools. Switching to “Bot Executor for Selections” view I added my bot to all selections and set the execution time to 2 minutes before official race start time.

6)

I already reviewed my selections so I closed all open markets using “Bfexplorer Console” and typing the command: bfexplorer.CloseAllMarkets() and clicking on Execute button. That is the quicker way how to close all open markets. You can close each market manually, or bet event by clicking on Close button in the “Bet Event” view. If you left markets opened bfexplorer would monitor them, and that could be a lot of data loaded from betfair servers, depending on set update period time and time you left these market to monitor.

Clicking on the Start button in the “Bot Executor for Selections” view, bfexplorer will start its trading session automatically opening market at preset time and executing my bot. Bfexplorer does not open such markets to Bet Event view automatically, this allows you to execute different strategies, and at the same time manually trade on ladders if you prefer. If you want to open a market to “Bet Event” or “Bet Event Trader” (ladders) view, then double click on a market in the “Bot Executor” view, but do so only when you bot is already running on such market, because double clicking on the market will remove such market from “Bot Executor” as well.

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If you are already Professional bfexplorer user and you want to automate your betting or trading strategy, by automating market or market selections process loading data from other web pages or API’s then leave a comment to this article or contact me through support web page.

At the moment I have got data providers for OLBG, Racingingpost, Sportinglife, and Bettingexpert API.