Comments

Hamid, I think you already noticed that I do updates to bfexplorer, so at the moment I replied to this article, you can read my comment above from 8/14/2015 1:36:18 PM, I already updated the feature you were talking about, changing tooltip (you call that “bubble”) bot description to the panel description.

Such type of updates can be done in minutes, just by changing one property in UI control and rebuilding and publishing project, what took me around 20 minutes. I always report such updates to Bfexplorer Latest Release.

Hi Hamid,

now opens window with parameter hint.

Ok Stefan, in the future I will try to be more precis. For instance if you wnat to built a Bot in "my Bot" like "PlaceBet" and you want more info about the parameter "PlaceBetOnTime", the bubble over the mouse shows a long text which disapear after fews seconds, too short time to read for me.

Thanks

This settings of the Place Bet bot - place bet at best Back price, immediatelly - without offer to take better Back price.

This is situation from my lastest post...

Hi Hamid,

1) check if you are Professional user (or Free Tial) - http://bfexplorer.net/Subscribe

Free Trial and Professional subsciption allows using bots and others variations of automated trading.

2) Create a new Place Bet bot without any your parameter (default) only your Odds (4,80 is example) and PlaceBetInAllowedPrice to False.

3) Open Market/Selection and execute this bot by Start button.

What's happened?

I think you should make some video showing your problem, because I think something is lost in translation then I can see what you set for bot parameters and how you use the Place Bet bot.

For now what you are saying make no sense for me.

Place Bet bot works and all who use could confirm that.

Stefan,

"Hamid, I still do not understand why you want to use a bot to place a bet for you."

Simply because I did use to do it with the old version of BfExplorer and it was not a problem. Maybe it was a bad habit but I still don't understand why a bot named "Place Bet " can not place a bet! Sorry to be a little rude. The possibility to place a bet 10 minutes or 2 days before the event start should stay a possibility and not an obligation. At least you should propose the option "place bet now".

"If you want to place bets immediately then do so by clicking on market grid or on a ladder. Bfexplorer is really good in finding and loading betfair markets on which you want to bet, just watch videos about Event Browser."

When I try to place bets in this way I always face the problem of "start execution time" I don't want to modify this parameter because sometime I have more that 30 bets to place.

One problem is border where bots are start/stop
Better set: start 2 ticks/ stop 6 ticks from best back/lay price...

Is the trigger complicated?
Is problem that on Selection runs 10 or more bots?

Many bets?

---------------------------------------
I think the key is parameters of action bots.
If runs without bet actions, no problem for me.

Why is wrong?

This only simulates what I do manually...

It is not universal trigger for most markets, I prefer horse racing market. You need some extra conditions?

The solution is named: Back a list of horses and green up at a % offset, and can be fully implemented by what bfexplorer offers now.

If the rest of befair api apps offer Excel solution as the only way how to automate betting or trading on betfair, then it really does not mean the best way, just example: Try to implement Be the first in queue bot in Excel VBA, you will certainly fail to do so, try to implement a staking plan to Excel betting, and so on.

Excel integration uses COM to push data just one way, to the Excel, there is some speed limitation as well. If you think that Excel actually places your bets, then it is not so, the hosting app just reads the status of some Excel cells and depending on text command the hosting app executes this command. It also means that you cannot do anything beyond those commands, if you would like to extend them then you will have to ask app provider to do so, with my bots and triggers everything is open, you can actually interact with bfexplorer through your bot or bot trigger code. 

I know that if you want to argue then you will find argument to do so for anything.

I created your bot trigger two days ago, just for education purposes, but the way you want to use it is just wrong, until you change your trigger part to be just a little bit useful, I do not release this bot for public testing.

Most people would not understand that it is just for education purposes, to learn how to make own bot triggers by programming them using Bfexplorer BOT SDK.

Hamid, I still do not understand why you want to use a bot to place a bet for you. You said:

“..how to place a bet immediately? I want to do something very basic. I want to place a bet with the bot "place bet".”

“How to manage if you have, for instance, one event starting in 20 minutes, another in 3 hours and a last one tomorow? And you want to swich off your computer in 3 minutes?”

Forgive me, but if you want to place a bet immediately then why you want to do it by bot, mainly when you say you will switch off your computer, and so your bots, in 3 minutes.

If you want to place bets immediately then do so by clicking on market grid or on a ladder. Bfexplorer is really good in finding and loading betfair markets on which you want to bet, just watch videos about Event Browser.

Betfair bots are basically used when you want to place a bet in manageable way, for instance drip feeding big bet on betfair market selection, getting a bet at better odds – be the first in queue bot (I think this type of bot is offered only by bfexplorer), managing bet position – Place bet and close position bot, in some cases you want to place a bet only when odds drops to curtain level, and so on.

In all above mentioned case you will have to leave bfexplorer running with your bots and open internet connection, as in such cases are bets managed by bfexplorer bots for you automatically.

You said, I will switch off my computer in 3 minutes, then all that make no sense.

Miro is right.

If you want to place a bet at fixed odds then you must switch off PlaceBetInAllowedOddsRange and set your fixed odds by Odds parameter.

I do not question the usefulness Bot Executor for Selections...

There are good reasons for using bot Executor for Selections (explained in your comment) but solution it's not exactly as entered. Thats all.

Miro, I think you still do not understand one big advantage of bfexplorer solution the Bot Executor for Selections offers.

If you prepare a list of your selections then you maybe use a lot of different sources: a tipster service, a timeform web site, internet blogs of enthusiastic bettors showing good results, you can find really a lot on the Internet those days. So what you do is copy & paste horse names with race start time, as the only information to associate betfair market with your selection, you can misspell names, and do a lot of other mistakes, I know it as I built quite a lot of bespoke solutions which were loading such excel or csv files and executing some strategy with my app.

Common mistakes were different horse names on betfair and tipster sites.

You can prepare your list in what suits you, but as you manually open races in bfexplorer and select your horses you cannot make any mistake when entering your selections to the Bot executor.

Hamid, please next be a little bit specific, because frankly to say I did not know about what you were talking about.

Tooltips or small popup windows are standard part of user interface you can find across all apps on Windows operation system. Tooltips appears for around 6 seconds on standard toolbars, or in parts of user interface where long text is abbreviated and a control supports tooltip feature, for instance all grid controls in my app supports this feature. In ribbon toolbars, such are called those toolbars you can see for instance in Microsoft Office apps, and through all Windows 10 apps, the tooltip behavior is a little bit different.

Just Miro’s comment helped me to realize that you are maybe talking about tooltips in Bot editor, and yes there tooltips are not good solution to show bot parameter description, I changed it to the panel view.

Every bot parameter has its description, so for those having problem what Stake parameter could mean, there is a description saying:

“Your stake amount you want to bet. When laying your liability is different, to lay with the stake liability set the parameter StakeIsMyLiability to True.”

And because all those parameters are repeated across all bfexplorer bots, I do not think a user has a problem to understand in the rest of bots what Stake means in a bot setting. Parameters are used exactly by its meaning, so there is not possible to misunderstand a bot behavior defined by a bot parameter. The same bot name parameter means the same bot behavior across all betfair bots bfeplorer uses.

I do not think people learn how to use programs by memorizing how to use any program, they learn by understanding application features and using them in different scenarios.

For instance copy & paste can be found in any program/application, right? If people are stupid, then they at least understand how to close a program, by clicking on x button, and they know how to copy and paste anything. Those are application features learnt and used across all apps.

Well in bfexplorer I did not expose Cut/Copy/Paste context menu in any control, only where it is suitable, but ctrl+c is still supported by all grid controls in my app, so you can copy and paste to a text editor selection data from grid, for instance:

Selection Name Status LPT Total Matched
Justice Law Active 3 31 199,11

Well, you would notice that copied were only those columns showed in the header, clicking on the header exposes header context menu where you can find Show Column Chooser. Some columns are hidden, but I put there all columns you could use for filtering or sorting grid rows, so if you drop Back column to the Bet Event grid and then again you repeat ctrl+c action you will get:

Selection Name Status Back LPT Total Matched
Justice Law Active 3 3 31 206,11

That is what I call an intuitive user interface or just common sense when operating program. Once learnt ctrl+c feature is applied anywhere.

Miro, you are of course free to do anything on bfexplorer forum, but for others would be helpful to read about a bot use case scenarios or scenarios where you can show how to use different bfexplorer features or tools.

I already created 3 or 4 articles with Case Study in article names, showing how easy is to use bfexplorer features on real examples users of other betfair apps have/had problems to execute. In all those articles I left links to forums I took those examples from, so anyone can check solution by bfexplorer and those by other betfair apps.

If you check those links then you will find that almost all such requests on competitor forums are not yet implemented.

The latest release fixed the problem with hidden navigation panel, thanks for letting me know about this bug.

The football live scores are updated by one request to betfair servers, so if there was any problem with the feed none of scores would be updated.

Did you check betfair web site if the matches with the score problem were updated? The professional subscribers have football bot so live score update could be checked for particular matches only, next time let me know by email about live score problem, so chance is I am online and able to check the status of the live score update.

OK.
I solved a similar problem with the bot and eventually helped me uncheck this parameter.
Probably a coincidence in my case...

Hi Mir,

Thank you for post but it does not help me because I want to place a fix odds not a range odds.