Article

From Bet Angel forum: Can Bet Angel do this?

I read a betfair post from 2010 about a 'trigger' file for software. The aim was to dutch-lay three horses based on their book percentage dropping.

Breakdown of the trigger:

 max_liab - liability of the dutching bets

 green_perc - minimum profit percentage for the green-up

 min_gap - minimum price gap between the first and second favourites, in ticks

 drop_prc - how much the cumulative odds must drop (in per cent)

 min_runners - minimum number of runners in the race

 min_rank - minimum rank of the favourite to lay on

 max_rank - maximum rank of the favourite to lay on

 min_fav_price - favourite's minimum price at which loss distribution kicks in (at In-Play)

 mins_before_start - when to start betting (the number of minutes before the off)

Anyway, it got me thinking. I have tried my best to replicate the idea in Guardian, but have failed. Is it even possible to automate?

Bfexplorer Solution:

This trading strategy requires horse data retrieval, evaluating race entry criteria, storing dedicated selections/horses, monitoring traded prices for these horses, and triggering lay dutch bets when set parameters are met, then monitoring bet position profit/loss and green up (close market bet position) when profit/loss parameters are reached.

In this post I will show how to retrieve horse data and evaluate required parameters: number of horses in the race, book value of two favourites, odds difference between first and second favourite.

You can use my bot trigger code to build your own horse racing strategy with required parameters like in this ditching strategy. Here is the bot trigger code:

ShowHorseData.fsx

In lines 30 – 31, we can see how to evaluate odds difference between two selections, the function getOddsDifference.

In lines 33 – 36, we retrieve book value for selections, the function getBookValue.

In the lines 40 – 42, we can see how to retrieve horse meta data provided by betfair api, in our case we need horse rating.

In my next post I will create trigger code implementing all required features to execute this lay trading dutching strategy.