Article

Looking for someone to help with some horse racing data analytics

From betfair bdp forum:

I am looking for someone to help me with some horse data extraction, presented in Excel to allow me to do some data analytics on. I am not tech savvy like a lot of the contributors here from reading through the forum so would like to engage with someone on this, obviously for a fair fee.

I like to run data and strategies on trainer and jockeys (as a hobby only) and as such I wanted to try and get a 2+ year report with the following information (Jan 2018 to present);

- Race ID

- Racecourse

- Country (UK and Ire, Australia, USA if possible)

- Date

- Horse Name

- Trainer

- Jockey

- BSP

- Position (or win / lose)

Is this even possible?

Bfexplorer Solution:

Yes, it is possible either to build bespoke app using Bfexplorer BOT SDK, or built just bot to retrieve required data for horse racing markets on live data. Using betfair historical data is not possible as those data does not offer trainer or jockey names.

Comments ( 4 )


  • owencoll
    31.3.2020 11:18:18

    Many thanks for feedback, I am actively learning the software to get used to how bfexplorer works. 

  • Betfair Bot
    1.4.2020 17:22:30

    The question is what is your own experience in required skills?

    From your specification: “data extraction” and “data analytics”.

    If you already have this historical data then you need to create your model, where from your data you are able to take some conclusions.

    For instance by entering parameters like Horse Name, Trainer, Jockey and so on, your model can return probability values for each horse (trainer, jockey) to win a race. This probability is then taken by bfexplorer bot as trigger to initiate bet placing or not.

    So from this point of view all you need to learn in bfexplorer are those two features:

    My Strategies / Bots to Execute

    Strategy / Bot Executor

  • owencoll
    2.4.2020 7:33:00

    Thanks for the response again.

    Since we last spoke, I have taken your advice on board and learned a lot about bfexplorer, I have played with the workspace and set something up to look at horse racing by country and familiarised myself with the horse racing markets, watched selections etc. I then went on to apply Place SP Bet bot on a couple of selections, eventually closing out for a profit under Practice Mode. I have learned a lot in the past few days.

    I have also now subscribed to professional as I am clear of the benefits of bfexplorer, and to show the intent I have.

    To answer your question, at this stage is the data recording I need. The original request I made (the post copied over from bdp), well I can extract that information from the various UK/Ire resources we have, but I can't get that information for other countries, namely Australia and USA. Based on your feedback, my aim therefore is to build bespoke app using Bfexplorer BOT SDK, or build just bot to retrieve required data for horse racing markets on live data, but this is certainly above my levels of programming and something I would pay for your time to help me with if you have the desire?

    From our discussion on bdp, jockey historic information is not available, therefore it seems we cannot get 2 years of historic data for what I want, but we can set it up to start recording it now through one of the 2 ways mentioned above.

    So I guess my goal is redefined to this;

    Record and save the below information for each race from UK/Ire, USA and Australia going forward;

    - Race ID

    - Racecourse

    - Country

    - Date

    - Horse Name

    - Trainer

    - Jockey

    - BSP

    - Position (or win / lose)

     

    From here, I can then start to work on the bot process to identify what matches my criteria to set this up in bfexplorer.

    Thanks.

  • Betfair Bot
    2.4.2020 19:55:39

    I will summarize it shortly for others looking for any betfair strategy development.

    None of betfair apps can offer pre-built strategies where you just set parameters and all is done magically for you.  Such simple strategies are built exactly only for preset features, and if you need any changes or additions to these features, it is not possible to do so without changing application code.

    Some of betfair apps offer Excel integration where your strategy can be built just on betfair odds and traded volume formulas, anything else must be programmed in Visual Basic code.

    Bfexplorer offers all base bots for placing bets (back/lay bets, back/lay dutching bets) or executing trading session for required profit or loss target.  All these base bots can be used itself and you can create simple strategies just by setting bot parameters, or entry criteria.

    Anything else can be programmed using Bfexplorer BOT SDK, and such bot is automatically integrated into bfexplorer, and so can be used by all other tools bfexplorer offers, mainly by Bot Executor tools, or by Bfexplorer Console. In all these cases, bfexplorer acts like development environment, to retrieve betfair data, or any other required data for particular market.    

    Your custom built bot is available only for you it is not available publicly to all bfexplorer users.

    On the forum you can find a lot of examples, and on github you can download source code for a lot simple bot scripts.

    Contact me through support web page, or by info email, so we can discuss specification to your bot that will gather required data from live markets. I have added short video showing some data Bfexplorer BOT SDK can offer for developers, but in your case, we will use mainly meta data betfair offers (trainer and jockey names), and of course BSP on markets which are turned at in-play, and the winner of the race.

    Custom built bot code can save data in any required format, most used is plain text format of CSV file that can be open by Excel, and by other tools you will use data analyzing or building your machine learning model.