I have just installed the trial version of Bet Angel Professional and before I start studying how to use it properly, I'd like to know if it's capable of automating my particular strategy.
I need it to be able to place bets ONLY IF certain criteria is met, such as:
The number of horses in the race must be a certain amount, the position the favourite came in it's last race must be a X position, the track condition must be a certain condition, the favourite must have raced in the last X days, the track length must be X meters within the length the favourite last raced at, there cannot be an apprentice jockey, the favourite cannot be carrying more weight than it carried in it's last race and the race cannot be a maiden race.
Can this software apply these filters?
Thanks.
Can Bet Angel do what I need?
Bet Angel's own built in automation can't mainly because a lot of what you need isn't available from the Betfair API which also means no other 3rd party software could do it either, instead you'd need to go down the excel route and import/scrape all that criteria from a racing site
The way Bet Angel works with Excel is that you bind a set to markets loaded into Bet Angel to individual worksheets in Excel. Prices are then pushed into the sheets and Bet Angel scans certain cells for betting commands. You're free to do whatever you want in Excel to generate those betting commands, so if you want to string match selection names and check things like the position the favourite came in it's last race must be a X position, the track condition must be a certain condition, the favourite must have raced in the last X days, the track length must be X meters within the length the favourite last raced at, there cannot be an apprentice jockey, the favourite cannot be carrying more weight than it carried in it's last race and the race cannot be a maiden race using a CSV file, you can read that with Excel;
You just write Excel macros in VBA to do whatever you need to do to decide when to place a bet and then populate the appropriate cells in the Bet Angel worksheets to trigger a bet. So as long as you have some VBA coding skills you can do pretty much anything you want with Excel
The way Bet Angel works with Excel is that you bind a set to markets loaded into Bet Angel to individual worksheets in Excel. Prices are then pushed into the sheets and Bet Angel scans certain cells for betting commands. You're free to do whatever you want in Excel to generate those betting commands, so if you want to string match selection names and check things like the position the favourite came in it's last race must be a X position, the track condition must be a certain condition, the favourite must have raced in the last X days, the track length must be X meters within the length the favourite last raced at, there cannot be an apprentice jockey, the favourite cannot be carrying more weight than it carried in it's last race and the race cannot be a maiden race using a CSV file, you can read that with Excel;
You just write Excel macros in VBA to do whatever you need to do to decide when to place a bet and then populate the appropriate cells in the Bet Angel worksheets to trigger a bet. So as long as you have some VBA coding skills you can do pretty much anything you want with Excel
You'll be able to (and will need to) use the Betfair API and trading software like Bet Angel for retrieving market prices and data and placing of the bets etc
What I meant was some of your criteria you've asked for isn't available from the API ie, the position the favourite came in it's last race must be a X position
Unless its available on the Betfair API Bet Angel and any other 3rd party software can't access it and check against it.
With Excel you can link that to any source you want, so you'd pull all that info in from Website 'X' while at the same time have an Excel worksheet attached to Bet Angel and connected to Betfairs API to retrieve all the market data
To be honest it would need an experienced excel developer to create something like this for you, and if you don't know the sites the information you want can be sourced from its going to take them sometime.
You can try posting in the excel section on here, there are a lot of very experienced users on here who might be able to help or point you towards someone who can
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I've been thinking about trying this idea, but I've thought of a potential problem. If I'd have to get other data such as the position the favourite came in in it's last race, how am I going to make the spreadsheet find this data and make sure it's from the same exact race as the one Bet Angel is getting data from? In other words, say i'm focusing on one particular race, which Bet Angel is able to retrieve most information about it via the Betfair API, and since I would need some other source to get that other information that isn't available via the Betfair API, how's it going to make sure that it's the same race this other information is coming from? Maybe a date code as well as meeting and race numbers? I guess it depends on what this other source is going to be.
Also, I forgot to ask, if I am able to get this to work, would I be able to use Bet Angel to back test with historical data as well as do live bets?
Also, I forgot to ask, if I am able to get this to work, would I be able to use Bet Angel to back test with historical data as well as do live bets?