Bfexplorer Forum | Bfexplorer Products | Solving Problems
where is the auto-trader bot?
Posted in Solving Problems by jarees
Text sizing problem
Posted in Solving Problems by StefanBelo
If you change default text size in your windows operating system then Bfexplorer PRO have problems to layout control size correctly.
Please use default text size in your Windows settings.
Little Bug
Posted in Solving Problems by Jansen
I think I've found a little bug in the new version of bfexplorer PRO 2 (version 4.0.23).
I was running "Place bet and close position" with BetType = Back, and Profit = 1 tick.
The bot placed an opening (back) bet at odds 10, and this bet was matched. But then I noticed that the closing (lay) bet never came. This closing bet should have been placed, of course, at odds 9,8. Instead, however, the bot tried to place it (repeatedly) at odds 9,5 - which is not a possible odds value. This resulted in the following error message: "Placebet betfair message: the price is not in allowable increments."
So I think the bot mistakenly thinks that the odds value one tick below 10 is 9,5. In reality, as I said, it is 9,8.
Non-runners and the mystery of the stopping bots
Posted in Solving Problems by Jansen
When using "Place bet and close position" with trading cycle repeated indefinitely (RepeatTrading = True), and applying this to all selections of a horse race, I found to my surprise that, for some horses, the bot stopped for apparently no reason. More precisely, the bot stopped immediately after the end of a trading cycle, and this last trading cycle always resulted in a loss (which should of course be impossible). By checking the betting history, specifically the odds of the opening bets, I found a possible explanation of this phenomenon (it’s only a hypothesis of course, but a plausible one).
What was the case? In each case of a mysteriously stopped bot, a 'non-runner' was announced between the opening bet and the closing bet. In other words, after the matching of the opening bet but before the matching of the closing bet. A non-runner is a horse that gets withdrawn from the race after betting has already started. Naturally, the non-runner increases the chance of winning for each of the remaining horses. Therefore, for bets that have already been matched before the non-runner was announced, Betfair retroactively lowers the odds for each of these remaining horses by a certain factor (the "reduction factor"). This is then announced on the Betfair site under the "Rules" tab of the market.
So it looks like the bot could not deal with the fact that the odds for the opening bet had been retroactively decreased after this bet was matched. For some reason, this caused the bot to stop as soon as the closing bet was matched. (I could send you the betting history if needed; just let me know.)
There are in fact two issues (probably related) here:
(1) The fact that the bot stops after the matching of the closing bet.
(2) The fact that profit is lost because the odds of the closing bet were not changed after the announcement of the non-runner. [In my case, the opening bet was a back bet.]
Clearly, (1) is not acceptable. If I set RepeatTrading to True, then the bot should not stop at the end of a trading cycle just because of a non-runner. And I note that non-runners are very very common (I think most horse races have them).
As for (2), the most obvious, and quite possibly also the best, solution would be to simply take the changed odds of the opening bet to re-calculate the odds required for the closing bet, as soon as the non-runner is announced. As I said, at present the bot does not do this, and instead continues to use the original odds for the closing bet, meaning that the trading cycle is usually closed at a loss if a non-runner appears between the matching of the opening bet and the matching of the closing bet.
Well, this is it for now. See you later!
Bfexplorer on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008
Posted in Solving Problems by StefanBelo
If you run your bfexplorer on Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 set in the application file property: Compatibility/Run this program as administrator, otherwise the betfair api counter will not work correctly.
I investigate what causes this issue for betfair api counter.