Which VPS version to use?

[shakespeare]

Anyone have any advice on which VPS version to buy from Bet Angel? I'm probably just going to use it run a bot on in-play horse races all day long. So would the Basic VPS be good enough or would I need a more expensive VPS?

[Dallas]

Basic should be fine if its only guardian automation you ll be running.
For guardian automation and manual trading then go for 'Starter' or above,
If you plan to use Excel for your automation, then use 'Recommended' or higher.

[shakespeare]

Cheers, Dallas. I'm thinking about VPS because of what happened today. I was using Guardian to bet on the French Open tennis and the horse races at the same time and the racing bets started to go wrong. Then I noticed that the racing prices were updating really slowly even though I had refresh restricted and the speed set to 200ms. I suppose Guardian was taking so long to work through all the tennis games that it was missing the triggers on the horse races. So I reckon I might need to put the racing on a VPS on its own and do the other bets on a different computer.

[Dallas]

Yes when trading on multiple markets/sports at the same time if you have a lot in guardian automation triggers will be missed.
I done a thread on it a short while ago if you want to have a read through and see if it confirms your thoughts.
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11491

Another thing with VPS is the response time is much quicker so running the same automation file on a vps as you are on your home comp the VPS will always have the bets submitted quicker.

[jimibt]

Yes when trading on multiple markets/sports at the same time if you have a lot in guardian automation triggers will be missed.
I done a thread on it a short while ago if you want to have a read through and see if it confirms your thoughts.
viewtopic.php?f=37&t=11491

Another thing with VPS is the response time is much quicker so running the same automation file on a vps as you are on your home comp the VPS will always have the bets submitted quicker.

i can concur with this 100%. locally, I struggle to hit 60-70ms ping. On my VPS, I average 18-25ms. Doesn't sound a lot, BUT when you're literally competing head to head with low latency bots, it makes a major difference when matching fast moving odds to your pre determined strategies. I have conducted tests where the same routines are running locally vs the VPS and have always found that there are major inconsistencies. I attibute this to the cross matching which (imho) works at sub millisecond level.

In short, I'd say, trust your VPS more to match up than your local instance. However, multi-tasking across markets will def prove challenging in either environment. Split if you need I'd say!

Ideally, use the 2 RDP logins (on different credentials), to utilize 2 separate instances running (one for horses, one for tennis), then you achieve the best of both for the price of one..

[shakespeare]

Thanks, guys. I've learnt two things today. The first is that to get my racing bets matched in running I reckon I'll need a VPS, just to get more bets matched when I need them.

The other thing, which I got from Dallas' article is that until I get a VPS I can still run tennis and racing bots in the same Guardian instance. The trick is to set the refresh rate in Guardian to something slow like 20 seconds, which is fine for tennis. But then also tick the Switch option so Bet Angel will switch to the main screen when a horse race starts. You set the refresh rate on the main screen to 200ms, so hopefully the race that's in play will get the fast refresh and the others will refresh slowly and not interfere with it. It should work unless the horse races start to overlap with each other...

[shakespeare]

i can concur with this 100%. locally, I struggle to hit 60-70ms ping. On my VPS, I average 18-25ms.

Is that right? Is that really the latency with VPS? I have fibre broadband and I can get 7-15ms latency on this laptop. Might it actually make things worse for me if I get VPS???

[Dallas]

If you split your markets up and put horse racing in one guardian and tennis in another you could set two seperate refresh rates, on the horses as well as using "market switch" if its only IR your trading you could also keep guardian refreshing at 200ms but restrict refresh till 5 secs before the off till 900 secs after even if there is a clash of races there will be no more than 2-3 markets being refreshed at anyone time so each will still be getting checked twice a second.
(Thats typically how i have mine set on my VPS which is for IR only)

Tennis is a little more tricky as the matches sometimes dont start till hours after the scheduled start time and the restrict times are based on the scheduled start and not the actual time it goes in play so you need to bear this in mind when setting it up
However the rule does nt need to be checked as much as it does for horse racing so using a 200ms will get through 25 markets every 5 secs so if you can keep to around 25 markets being cycled your rules should work fine.

A VPS will definetly be quicker and you wont need to have your comp powered up and running all the time.

The ms figures being refered to and the ones you need to check are the response times it takes to retrive the latest info from betfair and are displayed by Bet Angel at the bottom of your screen - the number on the far left of the attached image shows the response time in ms it takes to retrive the latest price from Betfair, on my computer on a average day this number flicks between 31-46ms but on my VPS it runs around 15-18ms.

[jimibt]

i can concur with this 100%. locally, I struggle to hit 60-70ms ping. On my VPS, I average 18-25ms.

Is that right? Is that really the latency with VPS? I have fibre broadband and I can get 7-15ms latency on this laptop. Might it actually make things worse for me if I get VPS???

This is related to the Betfair ping/roundtrip when collecting the full market depth for the event (rather than the ping to test the latency of the bbc etc).

[shakespeare]

Ah, thanks. I was quoting the latency numbers from the broadband speed tests I do. I'll take a look at the Betfair numbers when I get home tonight.

[shakespeare]

My Betfair ping in BA runs generally in the 15-40ms range but sometimes shoots up to 60-70. So I guess a VPS will be a lot faster.