User Comments

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.

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.

You say, example situation:

Handy trading -> I clicked on:

3,80 Back

3,70 Back

3,60 Back

3,50 Lay

Your bot will check bots to execute in odds range, on your picture, conditions are fulfilled for rows with odds: 3.8, 3.7, 3.6, 3.5 and what about when odds moves, on your picture is 3.5 offered to back, but what if 3.5 will be offered to lay? Once was bot executed in 3.5 back offering position but now will be offered in 3.5 lay position.

So you are using Bot Executor this way, select one market in Bet Event Browser and click on Open In Bot executor, and this procedure you repeat for x markets.

You can select 100 markets and click Open In Bot Executor, then your bot is executed on all those selected markets.

Bot Executor opens and monitors markets in its own, so all you have got from bot activity are just messages in the Output view, and market report status in Bot Executor: Profit Balance.

If a bot is executed on the market by Bot Executor, and you double click selected market then this market is reopen in bfexplorer with all running bots, so you can see bot activity on Bet Event / Bet Event Trader view.

I made some videos and already wrote about Bot Executor and Bot Executor for Selections, on this forum.

The other alternative for executing the same action bot on open markets is offered by Open Markets view, just click Start Bot, and make your choice.

If I understand it correctly then you will prepare CSV file describing which bot to execute depending on current (last) traded price, that is your trigger now and not click on a ladder column row as it was in your previous bot trigger.

It means that BetType, and MinimumOdds or MaximumOdds parameters must be moved to additional parameters section of your CSV file, your previous bot has been overridden those 2 parameters.

You want the bot to check last traded price every 5 seconds, that is not a problem, but I think a new bot can be triggered only when triggered price changes, otherwise you can execute the same action bot on the same entry point.

You want to stop previous running bots which are “out of action”, so which placed bets but their bets are not yet fully matched. That could solve the above problem when the action bot is triggered at the same entry point/at the same triggered price (last price traded price), but it is better what I suggest so to trigger action bot only when is triggered at a different price.

There is another problem you maybe did not notice. There is no status saying a bot have partially matched opening bet, is status is BetPositionOpening and BetPositionOpened, at BetPositionOpened status the opening bet is fully matched.

It means that stopping out of action bot could leave you with unbalanced bet position if a bet was partially matched. That is bearable if you will manage your position, what I think you do, as this bot has no end condition as well.

I will add cleanup feature for running bot, if you stop a bot execution and the bot has unmatched bets these bets will be canceled.

Saving a ladder status is not yet implemented. I am still working on it and it is not so easy because grid control does not support loading and saving custom formatting in the use case I have got in my ladder implementation.

Be aware of the fact that bfexplorer by default creates some conditional formatting, so if you clear some of this rules you will lost settings for instance for to back/to lay data bar, as those two rules are set to share maximal offered volume to show realistic WOM.

You can see that on Miro’s image above that data bar has different maximal values for to back and lay columns, because Miro cleared bfexplorer ladder formatting, but it is really up to you what and how you want to use.

Eduardo, I always listen to user’s requests, and if such request is useable for others, or just I like the idea then I implement such feature in couple days. Did you forget that I implement Multiple Market Dutching tool, and that was your request.

Bfexplorer offer 3 feature levels, for free users, basic features (for bettors), and for professionals all features.

What you actually requests are professional features, I mean any feature which can be implemented by bot, and from what you named, those are 4 features of your 7 requests. In professional version you can add any bot to My Ladders Bots, so execute them from a ladder context menu.

I prefer to implement features which allows simply extend bfexplorer features, by tools, or custom bots, bot triggers. This approach allows me to build a lot of features, but avoids to actually adds something to base bfexplorer code base.

I will never implement reversed ladder, with such ladder your offered/unmatched bets are actually hidden, as should be shown on that side where you offers such bet. So how solved that these betfair apps with reversed ladder? They either added additional columns for unmatched bets, or shows unmatched bets in Odds column.

Bet in the queue feature, such feature is not support by betfair api, so those who implemented this feature just shows not relevant numbers.

I will add notification for bets placed at in-play if in-play delay is more than 1 second.
Betfair graphs, are just for information, and are not refreshed in the popup window.

I made a video showing how you can change application layout. I do not know what screen resolution you are using, but as a basic subscriber only, close all views you actually cannot use, Navigator view can be hidden, so you will get more space for ladders, and when navigator is needed you just hover mouse over Navigator caption and it will popups automatically.

I believe you trade only on horse racing maybe, in such case you actually do not need Navigator, just open horse racing win markets for UK and IE (you can add such setting to your favourite events), and now you open to Bet Event Traders first market on which you want to trade, do you trading and to open next market in the list, just click on Close context menu: Close Market and Open Next.

I implemented this feature for free users, as these users can open just one market, and free users are just those who starts trading again on horse racing mainly.

Not to confuse others, you must append OpenBetPosition to all parameters which influence Place Bet bot functionality (in this trading bot: Place bet and close selection bet position), and CloseBetPosition to parameters which influence Close selection bet position bot behavior.

Sometimes, all you really need is just to use common sense. In our countries we say you should use zdravý sedliacky rozum, zdravý selský rozum.

Any bot offers some parameters, and those parameters are grouped to quickly find them or organize them, so you can find named groups in bot parameters: Bet Attribute, Bet, Stake, Time, Selection and so on.

Place Bet and Close Selection Bot Position bot is made from two bots, as the name of this bot could suggest. It means that bot offers quite a lot of parameters.

You can actually see it in the bot editor that Bet Attribute group is actually made by two bot setting data: PlaceBetParametersData and ClosePositionParametersData, and so to access Place bet bot parameters in bot parameter setting you must append OpenBetPosition name.

I already mention such fact in my article: Case Study 1 - Back a list of horses and green up at a % offset

http://bfexplorer.net/Articles/Content/74

So in your CSV additional parameters, you must add:

CloseBetPosition.Profit
CloseBetPosition.Loss

Bot Trigger caches csv file, so you must restart bfexplorer.

I said: For now there are supported BetType, Boolean and Float values for additional bot parameters.

10 is the full number, the interger.

10.0 is the floating point number (float).

It is quite clear that when you do not use Use Ladder parameter, then default action bot is not overridden by what you clicked on the ladder. On the other hand your bot trigger base feature is react on what was clicked on the ladder, so entry parameters are delegated to your bot script.

Actually when you open the bot script file you can see how it is done and so you can use such type of ladder click processing in similar bot triggers.

You bot trigger base logic consists from 9 lines of code.
Actually I already showed how to use additional parameters:

5.0;Back;Place bet;Stake;55.55
2.0;Back;Trade 2 ticks

The first line have one additional parameter Stake, the second line has no additional parameters. You add additional parameters in pairs, first the name, and then value:

Stake;55.55

Yes, I know about it, therefor I named this feature Stop/Cancel All, it is available only when there are some unmatched bets on the market selections. It is about implementation details, I do not have seperate container for market selection bots, therefor it is hard to implement it, for now I leave as it is, later maybe I will do something.

Betfair chart is not refreshed, and actually there is no reason to do so as it always displayed the latest chart image when popup window appears.

Profit column does not offer Stop and cancel all feature, you must click on the ladder button to explicitly activate this action. Click into a row in the Profit column places a hedge bet only.

I hope I have fixed problem with currency symbol, 1.6.5692 is released.

I do want to start a series of articles about Bot Trigger programming or about using them, and I actually did and do a lot in bfexplorer infrastructure to extend Bot Trigger features.

For instance I added two new triggers OpenAssociatedMarket and WatchMarketSelections that allows you orchestrate your trading markets or just to add market selections to Watched Selections view, so help you done what you have to do manually in couple step, done by Bot Trigger in one click.

You posted a couple ideas for Bot Trigger, so selected the one you want to implement first.