User Comments

There are quite a lot of examples of using bot trigger script, for instance here in this post: Double or Bust - Betfair Trading Bot for Horse Racing

You can see (from 15 seconds of the video), how bot trigger is setup with bot: “Execute Trigger Bot”.

Download bot trigger script to you computer, and repeat bot setup seeing in this video.

Keep in mind that it wise to test any script in practice mode, as bot script really just place bets without any strategy, just hoping that bets will be matched making zero risk profit per selection, which is hedged at set time.

You need to test it on more races to estimate your Profit/Loss percentage, or just try to introduce parameters which could work for you better. It is more an introduction to bot trigger programming than presentation of 100% profitable strategy.

Betfair historic data are in json format, so you must know how to process them. I do not know what betfair has been thinking when releasing data in that format as most people are not programmers.

What does it mean for you?

As many others like you who may bought that data, after opening them have no fuck idea what they just bought from betfair, so such people end on freelancer web sites hiring someone to export from those data what they want.

So my hint for you google for instance:

"betfair data json" site:www.freelancer.com

And from that web site, when data are still available you can download some PRO data for free, of course you must be registered on web site to download data.

Keep in mind that to your valid betfair api activation there are three services, so three different types of problems could occur. You can check your subscription status by login on bfexplorer web site and clicking on menu item User / My Subscription Details.

My authorization service registers your details only, activation of betfair api access to your betfair account is done on betfairs servers, and in some cases this procedure could take more time, that is the way how betfair does this procedure.

When first attempt to activate your betfair api access fails, white for a while and repeat login procedure again. In this process there could be two problems: your new subscription code is not generated from betfair servers, or your generated subscription code is not activated on betfair servers.

Yes, from the nature of betfair api activation there could be a short time when your betfair api activation is not activated, mainly when you use bfexplorer in fully automatic mode, as the activation process requires re-login procedure, so closing bfexplorer and login again. If you use bfexplorer this way them better solution for you is to buy 1 year subscription, but again when subscription expires you need to re-login, that is actually betfair requirements to activate betfair api.

For common users there are no such problems as he/she runs bfexplorer on daily bases, so reactivation of api access is no problem, as times of login differs.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

Mir, you do not understand it. It is not about your betting or trading activity, or better to say how much money you earn from this activity.

It is about misuse of betfair api data. So if your paid fees on won bets are bigger than amount of data you get from betfair api, as betfair can simply count how much your activity costs them:

your fees minus cost of betfair resources you took, if that is positive value, you are profitable for betfair, if minus then you are not, you are commercial user who utilize betfair data for his own profit only.

Mir, you have no subscription with bfexplorer, your api access expired 31.8.2017 21:20:52, so I do not understand why are you spaming this forum?

Betfair closes accounts with no money, or no betting activity on accounts. Betfair api access is restricted to delay api data for accounts with no betting activity in last 3 months, or for accounts as mentioned in your post, where data usage pattern shows similarity of commercial user who just take data from betfair without any betting on these markets.

I think betfair closed developers and apps site due to this misuse of their api by Indy guppies.

What you see on the video is not bot script, but as said: “…This simple betfair bot shows possibilities you have got when utilizing Bfexplorer BOT SDK …”

I created simplified version of the bot as the bot trigger script, only favourite changes are reported, bot trigger script does not load betfair SP prices:

FavouriteChangedBotTrigger.fsx

Betfair owns your api access, so you must fulfill their T&C for accessing betfair data trough api.

Did you check my free web app to learn whether api data are available for your account?

https://www.cashoutall.com/

From which country are you from? Is betfair legal in your country? If not but you still can have betfair account, I mean if betfair did not close your account, then your ISP may block access to betfair servers.

Bfexplorer app uses two types of api access for market data, rest api, and streaming api, did you check both types of api access to learn if there are some differences?

Software cannot stop working suddenly, it cannot broke like that so it means that problems are really or your side. No other subscriber reported such problems.

If you are able to run some kind of remote access app, like teamviewer or similar app then email me access information, and I will check your problems on your computer.

It is called trigger bot script, as it triggers some action, mainly bet placing or action bot execution.

In “Bots to Execute” view, click on Add button, the “Add a new order/bot” dialog appears. Focus to Search input box, and type there: trigger.

Select bot named: “Execute Trigger Bot”, well yes as the bot name suggests it is the bot which executes your trigger script files, or assemblies.

Focus to TriggerFilePathName parameter input box, on the right side of the input box appears “…” button, click on and Open dialog appears. By default there is set bot trigger assembly file filter: “Bo trigger assemblies (*.dll)”, changing it to: “Script files (*fs; *.fsx)” and select you bot trigger file, click on Open button.

If required, enter another bot trigger parameters through TriggerParameters input, name your “Execute Trigger Bot” settings and click on Save button.

Now you are ready to execute your bot settings on selected markets, or using the bot in tools: “Bot Executor” or “Bot Executor for Selection”.

What is a difference in bot script file, and bot assembly file?

The bot script is source code of your bot trigger, the bot assembly is complied version of your bot trigger. When bot script is used, bfexplorer first compile the script and then loads bot assembly to execute it, therefore first bot script execution takes more time, when using bot assembly, the bot execution is instant.

Why there are those two options?

The script file is used when you test you bot trigger, when you develop it using Bfexplorer Bot SDK. When you are finished with trigger development, and bot trigger works, so it is profitable you can build its compiled version, and maybe distribute to your friends, or sell to other people.

Betfair disables live betfair api access for accounts having no money on, placing no bets or breaking their T&C.

Yes, you have got professional subscription, so it means something went wrong when authorizing your subscription status.

Close bfexplorer and re-login again, let me know if you have got still wrong subscription status.

Check your antivirus software. Maybe requests to my authorization server are blocked.