User Comments

Ilya, actually I am a trader, or better to say a bot operator. Eduardo and Miro know me for years, we never met but we know each other through bfexplorer. Back in 2007 I discovered betfair as a bettor, and like many others at start it was maybe a good luck but I won a good amount of money, with a novice luck it all turned wrong way couple months later.

At that time I made a good decision and did not deposit money but started to analyze what went wrong, and then I discovered there are some apps for trading and betfair offers web service to access their data.

I started to develop a program which would make me to be a trader. Betfair offered free api, with limited speed and full transactional api for which I had to pay 200 GBP per month. To cover those 200 GBP per month I released bfexplorer 6 months later after my first running app at the end of 2007.

With a new api, betfair released last year, I do not have to pay those 200 GBP for now, we will see in near future if betfair will change that. On the other hand there is a decline on betfair in every aspect.
I think you already noticed that my web site is quite different, it is more my blog, than a web site trying to sell product, therefore I have no problems, to make fun of my app, or just to discus other products, and give them a credit, if they earned it.

As I said I listen to what my users say sometimes, mainly when there are some good ideas to implement.

Miro, “Trailing Stop Loss” bot had been operating correctly in my video. Maybe the name of the bot or just its parameter name: Loss is a little bit misleading. This bot actually never closes your bet position in loss, but only when your bet position can be closed in a profit, and when the biggest reached profit is reverted to lose its profit by set amount of ticks (the Loss parameter).

On my video you could see that when I executed this bot it set the target odds two ticks above the open odds, what were 3.05. Now when odds moved down the target odds was set x ticks lower depending on for how many ticks odds went down.

The Loss parameter was set to 2 ticks; those 2 ticks make a buffer zone for closing bet position. It is pity that I switched from ladders to grid view at the moment when “Trailing Stop Loss” had been triggered.

I wanted to show that bfexplorer in that moment operated with matched orders/bets and with automated orders/bots, so I showed Market Bets and Market Bots views side by side, and similar like you cancel unmatched orders/bets, you can stop automated orders/bots.

In my video I created special type of bot which used to close bet position by trailing stop loss in profit, and close selection bet position at odds. I hope you understand how this bot was constructed, and how the ladder entry was used to set odds at which the bot should close bet position in loss, it was set to 3.35.

Miro, I did not ask you to compare ladders but automation functionality of Bfexplorer and Market Feeder. It is clear that automation is built on base logic/algorithmic blocks which operate on different entry parameters/rules.

I asked you if Market Feeder offers similar type of betting operation like “Be the first in queue” and if not, if such functionality can be implemented by triggers, what I think cannot be done by Market Feeder.

If we compare what type of strategies can be built by bfexplorer bots, and what type of strategies can be built by Market Feeder trigger rules, then Market Feeder base blocks are:

Placing bets, cancelling bets, placing offset bets (hedge bets) on selection, hedging market, and set rules triggers those actions.

With bfexplorer the base blocks are bots with specific functionality, and triggering is made by programming bot trigger, or by using those 8 construct bots…

Never mind, we can end this discussion now.

Eduardo, open bfexplorer home page, at the end of the page you can find Bfexplorer Statistics with real number of current users.

On the forum there are at the moment 3 active users, all of them free Professional users, two of them Basic subscribers, and one non subscriber who donated and were willing to post on bfexplorer forum so I gave him free Professional access as well.

The most of bfexplorer users do not even bother to post anything on forum, so I believe they found bfexplorer features useful and have no interest on any changes.

There are 3 features levels for bfexplorer. You can use free version for years the only requirement is to post on bfexplorer forum, no one uses this option.

Basic subscriber is bettor on betfair. Professional subscriber is trader, or bot operator running his/her automated betting or trading solutions. I have got 3 or 4 active professional subscribers for whom I built bespoke solutions, so applications according to their requirements.

Your problem is that you want some features which are implemented by bots, what is the feature offered only for Professional subscribers.

I work from 5 to 10 hours daily on bfexplorer or on support, so I am not able to offer anything more for free. Well, of course I use my app for my own bot strategies, so most of that time is time I spend on my own betfair research activities.

Starting from bfexplorer  1.7.5743, all “bot triggers” will be released as compiled assemblies as well.

After downloading .zip file from bfexplorer web site, do not forget to Unblock it.

I knew you would not be offended. I always listen what users say and take what I think could be a good addition to bfexplorer features, such features are added in hours and not in weeks like other betfair software vendors do.

I added CancelAllBets, as an experiment some users could use, and that was your suggestion. From my point of view I would implement the heartbeat feature as I mentioned and if such feature will be required by some users.

Thanks Miro for your video, and what about Market Feeder settings that would execute a bet placing procedure like bfexplorer bot: “Be the first in queue” does?

Bfexplorer for now offers 8 bots to allow constructing bot strategies:

“Execute on Selections"
"Execute Bots
"Execute On Associated Market"
"Execute Till Target Profit"
"If Then Else"
"Chain Execution"
"Repeat Until"
"Execute Trigger Bot”

In Ilya strategy the missing part was a bot which would cancel bets on other selections and executes further action bot, in this case bot closing a bet position at odds.

I would need more examples of different strategies to develop a general purpose bots.
From this example I can think about extending "If Then Else" bot features.

Ilya forgive me I was wrong giving you credibility to be an expert in any aspect of this meaning :-) We are both Slavs (I am Slovak, and you are Russian) so I hope you will not take my words too seriously to be offended.

The base feature any starting trader needs is a trading ladder where he can place his/her bets, update them or cancel. The ladder offers Profit column where if a bet is matched it shows your current bet position you can close by hedging when clicking on a profit value. Those are essential features for any trading software to place a bet and take a profit or loss.

The ladder interface is set to be default view when you open bfexplorer. Of course you can create many different workspaces with different layouts and switch off ladders totally if you do not need them.

When betfair trader manages these base features for trading he can go further, and setup one click bet orders which automatically trades out at a target profit or loss, those are betfair bots.

On youtube you can watch many videos with people clicking on ladders. If you have got a strategy you can do what many do manually by using betfair bots, and then you actually do not need a ladder, well maybe only for reading a situation on a market if your trading strategy is executed manually.
Yesterday you posted a comment with user interface (UI) mockup: http://i.imgur.com/AqtWvrJ.png

Showing how UI presenting bets should look like. This is quite funny because bfexplorer is able to present any grid data in tree like structure, and I showed it in my article Cancel Bets on All Markets.
Presenting data in grids is a common UI practice, using grouping, filtering, sorting or searching as well. Actually such features are so commonly used, also by operating system like Windows (just have a look at File Explorer and its grouping features) that I think it is not necessary to explain users how to group, filter or search.

Well, of course all that depends on a software developer if he uses such features in his programs or not. In my video you can see that I used and use such features in my programs.

You mentioned Cymatic and Geek Toy, but these apps offers 2 – 3 features for automated bet placing like placing stop loss bet or tick offset, therefore in their user interface you can find panels to setup such features.

If I did the same for bfexplorer, there would not be enough screen estate to accommodate setup panels for all those features, therefore I added My Bots view where you can add your required setting for different functions.

Ilya, what makes you think that bfexplorer does not offer such essential trading functionality you talk about?

Click on Add a new bot, setup your OCO settings (using Place Bet and Close Selection Bet Position), click on Use Ladder, and clicking on ladder you will place your OCO order with set profit and/or loss target. In Market Bots you can cancel/stop such order, or you can do so by clicking on Stop/Cancel All.

Ilya, I will wait till Miro show us Market Feeder running your simple solution, or your video of Cymatic.

I want to continue constructive discussion, if someone claims that something can be done better, then I want to see a video showing the fact, otherwise anything is just unverified claim.

Ilya, I would like to ask you to do the same what I asked Miro. Please, make a short video showing your semi-automated strategy running by Bet Angel.

Did you actually read what suggested Miro to you in the first comments to this article?

You could/can use Place bet and close selection bet position, to setup your strategy for one horse, so lay at 1.1 and place back bet immediately after a lay bet is matched. To execute this on all horses/ on all field you need to use Execute on Selections bot, so then you can execute your strategy on a horse racing win market just by one mouse click on the Start bot button.

Of course, your bot trigger is ready, tell me how could I make a video without this bot trigger? In my video I show how you will setup and use this bot trigger.

I had to extend features for Execute Trigger Bot, bet cancelling was not yet implemented for bot triggers, so I had to add it to bfexplorer back end infrastructure. Unfortunately, I did not yet release bfexplorer with this new features, I will do so tomorrow, as I have got other updates in my list.

I will wait for your videos (your and Miro’s ones) and will release bfexplorer after watching them, maybe your videos will be inspirations to make further changes to bfexplorer infrastructure.

Miro, I asked you three times to make a video and you did not do it. You claim something what I cannot understand or do myself to test, so I want to see it on my own eyes.

You told many things about bfexplorer when you were not able to understand something or do something. I patiently explained it and when it was necessary I made a video to help you understand. For now there is 63 videos showing all bfexplorer features.

The strategy is quite simple, and you can watch my 3 minutes video showing how to execute this strategy with bfexplorer.

You told us that Market Feeder is easy to use, like a Lego cubes, so I believe you show us even shorter video presenting this Ilya horse racing strategy as I did in my video.

Place lay bets on all horse, when a lay bet is matched (I simulated this action by updating a lay bet to be matched at current offered lay price/odds), place a back offset bet. That is all what I ask you to show us I your video with Market Feeder.

Miro, I want to see what you say about Lego cubes. I have no intention to install that product or read manual.  I really have no spare time for such things.

You already read the manual and have Market Feeder installed. Just make that strategy and show us video, I believe it will be interested for those who never used this app, and for me to see what I can do better with further bfexplorer feature development.

Miro, what I said about wanting to see some examples of features, user interface and so on, was meant to you as well. In many cases we discussed here a lot of stuff, and in many cases I did not know what you had been talking about.

I do not know if you watched the issue with Execute Trigger Bot problems Eduardo had. I said about a common sense many times. Well, in this case bot trigger compilation issue is a problem with missing assemblies, bfexplorer cannot find when compiling bot trigger file, used F# compiler requires installed Visual Studio, and it is clear that it makes sense. Bfexplorer users, who will want to use this option, will have to install Visual Studio, to develop bot triggers, debug them or just use them. It is the same like users of other betfair automation software are required to install Microsoft Excel.

The second problem can be really assigned to a common sense. Well, I am familiar that Windows (operating system) blocks files downloaded from the Internet. I download a lot project files from the Internet, and of course I unblock such files. I simply assumed that this common sense is used by all computer users. So I tested what Eduardo downloaded and unzipped to his folders, the problem was as well that Eduardo uses Spanish version of Windows, so for me who is used to read a screen when operating with programs, was difficult to understand, otherwise I would solve this issue a lot of sooner, and not after almost a week of testing my code and looking for a problem in places where I could not find any.

You used/use Market Feeder, so just for comparison or just to see what I can improve, it would be a god idea if you show me a video with horse racing strategy Ilya want to implement using bfexplorer platform. I actually made such video already, will download bot trigger assembly soon.

Ilya, I need to see a best feature you talk about, because I think a lot of features is already in bfexplorer, and I am not able to understand why you cannot find them. Therefore I need a comparison with a tool you are familiar with, for instance Cymatic, I hound your comments on their forum, so it should not be a problem for you to show us how your horse racing strategy is automated with Cymatic or Bet Angel, or by a tool of your choice, as you tested a lot of betfair apps.

Miro, your killer improvement is already implemented with tool called Bot Executor. You can run different strategies on the same market. To analyze results you can use Bfexplorer Console to process data, and save data in a suitable format.

I did not test Market Feeder yet, therefore I have no idea if what you claim is true, for instance show me on some video how easy you can setup and execute your horse racing strategy for laying the field and trading out (back offsetting) the first matched lay bet. Miro, you have got Market Feeder as well, so for two experts it should not be any problem.

Cancel all unmatched bets on all open markets. Well the question is why you would like to cancel them all without checking exact market situation first?

I think is better to open such market and decide. Yes, I can understand an emergency situation, for instance you need to cancel all bets because you do want to leave your bets unmanaged, for such situations betfair offers hearbeat api method which cancels unmatched bets when losing the Internet connection to betfair servers as well. I tested this api method and it works fine, well I did not see any betfair app which would offer this functionality.

You said that Market Feeder and Bet Angel are the best trading platforms, but what make them the best platform for betfair trading. I maybe miss something important for common betfair app user, would you like to describe the best feature for each of those apps?

For any betfair app you can find a lot of videos on youtube, so maybe just show us the video presenting the best feature of Market Feeder and Bet Angel.

Thanks Ilya, your last comments shed more light on areas where you are an expert in.

I am sorry for forgetting other betair apps you had might tested as well, and am interested in your opinion about them. The first one BeTrader, this app was and maybe is the best app for trading on betfair market, at least that was such opinion of betfairians couple years back.

Market feeder, the best app for automated trading and as the activity on their forum could suggest, this app is most loved app by Russian users as well. Betfair says about this app:

Triggered Betting - A new language that bettors already speak, more and more Betfair users discover triggered betting these days. A trigger is any set of instructions that result in something done upon certain conditions. Many bots offer it, it presents loads of new profit-making opportunities, and it saves you time and money.

I think other users here used this app already and I am interested in their opinion too.