Comments

Subscription renewed overnight, no need to worry.

One question I have is that going forward, will there be a blackout period between each month or no? 

Thanks

In-play horse racing markets are very volatile. I made short video showing situation on such in-play horse racing win market, you can see that in many cases back book value goes from 101 up to 135% what means there is big gap between best offered back/lay prices.

On in-play markets there is applied bet placement delay (1 second for horse racing markets), therefore placed bet calculated at current best offer price can be unmatched, when it appears on the market after bet placement delay expires. Close selection bet position offers the parameter: BetMatchingTimeout, so when you bet is not fully matched bot waits for set bet matching timeout, so for chance the unmatched bet be matched, and when bet is not fully matched it is cancelled and bot tries again to close your bet position at set parameters.

Keep in mind that betfair applies so called best execution rule when bet is placed, it means when there is better bet price then price you asked for in your offer, your bet is matched at this better price. This rule can introduced some problems when closing your bet position, or when hedging, as the hedging bet stake is calculated to exact priced.

When this best execution rule is applied your bet position is not equally hedged, therefore is such in-play scenarios is a good idea to use “Close Market Bet Position”, this bot closes bet position on all selections where is possible to close bet position, and checks if position evenly closed, if not bot tries again to close bet position trying to level profit/loss on all applicable selections.

This bot (“Close Market Bet Position”) offers the parameter: ClosePositionAtTime, when set to unrealist value, for instance to -1.00:00:00 (minus one day), bot immediately closes bet position on market, not checking whether Profit/Loss were reached.

In your trading scenario is better to use trading bot: “Place Bet and Close Selection Bet Position” setting the parameter: CloseBetPosition/ClosePositionImmediately what means that after your opening bet is fully matched bet to close your trading position in Profit is calculated and immediately placed on market offering it.

If you want to execute your strategy with two bots: “Place Bet” and “Close Selection Bet Position” then first evaluate all offered parameters to get the best execution of your bot, switch off parameter: CheckingLastPriceTraded, try different values for BetMatchingTimeout, OfferMyBet.

You can program your own Close Bet Position bot of course, for instance checking gap between bets offered back/lay prices, you can place your bet in the middle of the offered prices, or just calculating latest price trend you can place your bet at most probable matched price.

The last possibility is to change your trading strategy to place dutch bets on potential winners.

I would suggest to rephrase “… uncontrolled bet placement …”, as bot place bet/s the way you instruct to place them.

So you want to say that you do not understand how bets are placed by your bots?

Ok, I'll have to test it out. Nevertheless, it shall be an important upgrade that with some adjustements may help prevent uncontrolled bet placement. Thanks alot Stefan   

I have just added "Limit Action Bot Execution" bot to bfexplorer, install the latest version of bfexplorer and setup this bot to execute your action bot.

Keep in mind that bot limits number of executed action bots not number of bets, as depending on your action bot settings, such action bot can place more than one bet, mainly when bot is allowed to place bet in odds range, or when you use bots like: "Be The First In Queue".

In such cases you should revise market refresh rate setting, ChaseOddsTimeout, BetMatchingTimeout and similar bot parameters of bfexplorer bots.

Yes, that would be most usefull to prevent and control BF charges. Sometimes it seems a lot of bets are placed and there's no charges. Other times so few bets seem to be placed and the next day they debit hundreds of euros without even stating how many bets were placed and at what time. Thank you so much for being always available to help and improve your software.   

If you place your bets by bots, then yes I can create a bot that executes action bots (bots placing bets) and records number of such action bots execution per hour, so limiting further bet placement if set limit per hour is reached.

Thanks Stefan, these new features are trully awsome ! Is it possible to have a security feature to limit number of bets to less than 1000 per hour so when that maximum number of bets per hour is reached, it doesn't allow any more bet placement until number of bets per hour decreases ? Thank you once again for all your priceless help !

IntelliSense in action:

Mike, this is not a joke, but I wanted to start with something you, and I believe everyone working with computer knows.

So in text editor app, the spellchecker checks your grammar underlying misspelled or wrong words by red line. If there are more options to correct wrong word a list of options is presented.

It is the same when you write code in IDE, any wrong construction of your code is underlined by red line, and error icon with possible solutions is presented. In IDE it is called Intelisense, and option to present properties or methods available for object types your code interacts with.

In trigger code, you can interact only with objects offered by bfexplorer app when trigger is instantiated, so that is your world of objects the intelisense offers properties and methods to you, so there is no need to make a list of offered objects your trigger can interact with, you already have this option in your IDE (Visual Studio, Visual Code, Atom, or whatever you use).

That is answer to your last question! Do we understand each other?

Watch video in my article: Betfair Bot Programming for Non-Developers

Where you can see what I am talking about, intelisense support, method description, for instance when hovering over code, or functions descriptions, like for Execute method there is description: unit -> TriggerResult, so you know that function takes no arguments (unit) and returns TriggerResult

What is TriggerResult and what options it offers is again offered to you by intelisense, when typing TriggerResult following . intelisense offers you list of all options you can use.

So basically any written code is checked against any error, and options are offered like spellchecker offers you correcting your bad spelling.

Keep in mind that using bfexplorer you agreed with T&C and I suggest to read it again if you did not do so.

Traders likes volatility and unexpected big moves in markets.

There is enough opportunities to analyze... not only favorites and early first runners wins. Thumbs up for this example and idea!

 Yes I do know what a spellchecker is, I'm starting to wonder if you know what customer service is , I'm paying £30 a month for this product on which you offer support but seem only to find the time to write sarcastic messages 

I see!

-----------------
I will point to the right, I have no problem with it or with Bfexplorer.

I have used another piece of software on another account. This account restricted because I still monitored markets and there was not any betting history (no matched bets, no charges,...)
Please, follow the rules of the Betfair, use common sense if it possible.
Enjoy.

Mir, back to the point, as I said in my first reply you have no subscription for bfexplorer, so your posts here are just spam. I did not want to delete your article as it could have some value for bfexplorer subscribers as well, so I replied with relevant answers.

I just want you to understand one thing. People mostly read just titles, so ones could have such impression that using bfexplorer app could lead to restricting or closing betfair account because of misusing betfair api data.  

You used another betfair app, and betfair restricted your api access, but you did not mentioned that.

Where you mentioned not so true arguments, I replied with my opinion, and I know something about it as myself programming for betfair users from 2007.

Last hint: ask betfair for software vendor license, then you can use betfair api as you want to. From my position I monitored data, or tested bespoke bots for days without placing a bet, and have never been restricted in betfair api usage, but that of course makes sense.

I admire your ability to detect the weaknesses of the participants in this forum.
Especially for me... [feel encouraged ;)]

--------------------
Sorry, I don't feel responsible for software developers.
Yes, their software may contain procedures which are not good to inspire.

If you have the best well-known solution is the great that you can serve it to wide community of BF traders.

Mir, your problem is that you do not understand what you read about your software in a manual. In market feeder manual it is said that you can globally set two values for market refresh rate: idle refresh rate and in-play refresh rate (page 175). You can change trigger value evaluation interval in your triggers, but that does not change market refresh rate we talk about.

Just common sense, if you want at the moment, to monitor all football matches for 2 days (match odds markets) with more than 500 Euro traded, then you can open 177 markets now.

If you would like to really monitor each of them at different refresh rate (as you mentioned) then it would mean to call market data refresh for each market so 177 calls at different time intervals, that is of course nonsense.

Using rest api I can refresh up to 25-50 markets per one api call, or using streaming api I can just open stream for all 177 markets changes and get at set refresh rate only updated values from betfair servers.

Market feeder maps market data values to mapped variables, so in your triggers you can use such variables in condition formulas, and when evaluated conditions are met it is triggered preprogrammed action, mostly bet placing, or bet cancelling. You construct evaluation formulas, not parts of code, bots which could be executed and add new features to market feeder app. You cannot add new features to market feeder app, only evaluate values which are offered.

Bfexplorer app approach is different, as what we call a bot is real part of execution code which adds new features to bfexplorer app.

For instance in this article: Betfair Tennis Trading Automation, in my tennis bot code I implemented loading and evaluating match results and statistic, tipster selections, and common user votes on who will win the match from 3 different web sites.

Yes, it is a code, a program executing specific operation, so in this context I could use it only in bfexplorer for the specific purpose, but the code implementation allows me to reuse data provider assemblies in different apps when I would like to use it.

You cannot do that in betfair apps where automation is done just by evaluation of mapped values in trigger or in excel cell formula.

Mike, shortly to your last question, do you know what spellchecker is?

Stefan, thanks for your last reaction! You are right.

This must be written by "golden ink":
I repeated it many times when you were my subscriber to use common sense in whatever you do on betfair.

But what then awaits traders who are under permanent pressure from failure?
It's easy to lose barriers, sacrifice resources that you may lack at the moment. Maybe I'm a lucky man, I have no devastating losses and I have a positive P/L

--------------------------

The post on the forum Bet for another two goals precisely describes problem with BF account (outside the main topic). Just as you said!

btw: let's be reputable, in this specific software you can orchestrate parts of bots, switch on/off or change the rate at which the market is refreshed... but you must know how and why to do it. It is not built-in feature.

Mir, no one likes parasites. Your betfair account is not closed but is switched to delay mode, what is basically useless for your automated betting/trading, but if it is true what you say, then you can simply place your bets manually to proof that you make fees/commission for betfair.

Later you can write them again asking to switch your api status to the normal one.

I repeated it many times when you were my subscriber to use common sense in whatever you do on betfair.

Unfortunately, other betfair vendors, with lack of features in their software promote such parasite behavior on betfair api data usage. Have a look at here on market feeder forum:

Bet for another two goals

User asked for simple football strategy, and what was advice? Well monitor all under/over markets of a football match just to place at 90 minute of the match on corresponding Over selection, depending on the current match score a back bet when odds are >= 150.

Using bfexplorer bots, you need to monitor match odds market only, starting from reasonable time, so football bot would be able to monitor match time and score, and at 90 minute of the match the football bot will execute trigger which would find out Under/Over market to open and place a bet on.

When using Bot Executor tool, market data are monitored only for markets on which bots are still running, so when football bot triggers its action bot it finishes its execution, so market monitoring is stopped for match odds market as well.

I share my fail and my inexperienced behavior with BF account.
I feel like it everybody pays for foolishly bets. Last time I bet more than some betfair fees...

-----------------

btw: the trigger of this situation was the inability to divide activities into racing, soccer or greyhounds. Would you believe that?