rogue automation

[Gunnessmanc]

Morning,

Please don't take this as a negative post as I love the software and appreciate all the hard work that goes into continually improving it for us.
I enjoy the challenge of coming up with an idea and then trying to Automate it. over the last weekend I worked on a couple of ideas and set them up as bots. During this week i have let them loose (in simulation mode) while i am at work and then checked on the results at the end of the day. 1st couple of days a few tweaks were needed but nothing drastic everything seemed to trigger when it needed to and things were avoided where it had been told to. So far so good, Wednesday went without a hitch and I started to get excited about handing my notice in next week (I wish. ). Then I came home last night to find that 2 races out of the whole day had 'lost me' around £1000. 'Not possible I thought', my setup was for laying the field before the race starts for a certain number of ticks away from the projected sp for a maximum liability of £20. these bets were kept to go in running. all unmatched bets cancelled when the first horse gets matched and then a green up process triggered for a set amount. there were certain conditions like the projected SP had to be less than a set price, but that was it in a nutshell.
Anyway these 2 races, for some reason known only to the ghosts in the machine, the bot decided to trigger the green up process and keep triggering it on the same horse essentially placing a back bet on the same horse multiple times at between £30 - £50 to the grand total of over £700 and then the same thing a few races later greening up on 1 horse again between £11 - £20 resulting in a loss of over £200.
I have no idea why this would have happened as the process ran happily for the entire afternoon race after race but then just on these 2 races it decided to go rogue. I certainly couldn't in all faith let something like this loose unsupervised which kind of negates the purpose of having automation in the first place. Is this something that other people are experiencing? If it was something just not getting matched I would be inclined to think it was an anomaly in using the simulation market as opposed to real world but this appears to be a command that triggers and works perfectly for 99% of the markets but suddenly doesn't work as planned, unfortunately those rare occasions could easily wipe out an entire bank.

Also if this is in the wrong section I apologise, i wasn't sure but as it was to do with automation then I thought here was relevant.
As I stated at the beginning I don't mean this to be negative in anyway, it is mentioned time and time again that all automation should be tested rigorously before risking real money. I will persevere and try again from scratch because of course I can't rule out that it is my own fault and not crossed a T or dotted an I and it just needed a specific sequence of events to hi-light my short comings.
Anyway onward and upward, this time next year....... as the saying goes.

Kind regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

[Dallas]

What you've described would happen if you have the green up rule armed to trigger unlimited times (or a lot of times), and there was an issue with either your connection to Betfair or at Betfair itself preventing the match bet status being retrieved by BA so having no idea if you've been matched it will keep triggering bets while your conditions are met and you still have a number of triggers remaining

Really you'd never need to use more than 3-5 triggers on a green up rule, and there are conditions you that can also help in the event of a Betfair/connection issue but without knowing for sure when it happened, and the actual cause its difficult to advise

[Euler]

If you are trying to green inplay they it sounds like you are not waiting for the bet to get matched and that the condition attached to that isn't checking before firing again.

Difficult to tell without looking at the rule.

Debugging and trapping errors is all part and parcel of automation. The software will only ever do as instructed, so if something is going wrong you will need to go through each stage, step-by-step to work out where the instructions are wrong.

[Gunnessmanc]

Afternoon,
Thanks so much for such a quick response to my ramble, not only that but by the 2 most respected people here, no offense to everybody else of course.
You're right Dallas I have my greening up command set not long after the off as sometimes one selection gets a super equine effort from the off and the odds shorten dramatically and my match is made, obviously other times it can take 1/2 of the race time or more for the odds to move to that point. is there a command to set the greening trigger to wait until the 1st horse is matched and all the unmatched bets have then been cancelled? I'm guessing it needs to be looking at the number of unmatched bets in the market to = zero before it triggers? how many times would you suggest triggering a green up command and if more than once how long before triggers. are rearmed?
Thank you both for your comments, I love the challenge of not only trying to come up with an idea to try and make a profit but I think that, as difficult as automating a process is or certainly can be, it can also be a way of making you analyse what you are trying to do and what is needed for your idea to ultimately be profitable.

Kind regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

[Dallas]

Afternoon,
Thanks so much for such a quick response to my ramble, not only that but by the 2 most respected people here, no offense to everybody else of course.
You're right Dallas I have my greening up command set not long after the off as sometimes one selection gets a super equine effort from the off and the odds shorten dramatically and my match is made, obviously other times it can take 1/2 of the race time or more for the odds to move to that point. is there a command to set the greening trigger to wait until the 1st horse is matched and all the unmatched bets have then been cancelled? I'm guessing it needs to be looking at the number of unmatched bets in the market to = zero before it triggers? how many times would you suggest triggering a green up command and if more than once how long before triggers. are rearmed?
Thank you both for your comments, I love the challenge of not only trying to come up with an idea to try and make a profit but I think that, as difficult as automating a process is or certainly can be, it can also be a way of making you analyse what you are trying to do and what is needed for your idea to ultimately be profitable.

Kind regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

From what you've said you should have a 'Cancel All unmatched bets' rule armed to trigger 1 time after the race has gone in-play
this needs to be applied to 'ANY' selection

with a 'number of unmatched bets' condition
on selection
is equal to 0

Then add a 'Green all selections' rule armed to trigger 3-5 times after the race has gone in-play (use a minimum 3 sec re-arm time)
(this rule can be left as being applied to selection in row 1)

with a number of unmatched bets' condition
on market
is equal to 0

Also add any further conditions you want ie, profit condition etc

If I've understood what you want from your two posts that should do it


You could also use a 'close trade on selection with greening rule' instead of the green all selections rule
if you do then that needs to be applied to 'ANY' selection
and instead of a green all profit condition, use a 'close trade profit condition

[PeterLe]

Morning,
.......
Please
Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

Graeme - just leave a minimum amount in your account when testing, either put the rest into the games wallet or 'park' your money elsewhere, ie like a bet in the future that is almost 100% unlikely to happen

[Gunnessmanc]

Afternoon,
Thanks so much for such a quick response to my ramble, not only that but by the 2 most respected people here, no offense to everybody else of course.
You're right Dallas I have my greening up command set not long after the off as sometimes one selection gets a super equine effort from the off and the odds shorten dramatically and my match is made, obviously other times it can take 1/2 of the race time or more for the odds to move to that point. is there a command to set the greening trigger to wait until the 1st horse is matched and all the unmatched bets have then been cancelled? I'm guessing it needs to be looking at the number of unmatched bets in the market to = zero before it triggers? how many times would you suggest triggering a green up command and if more than once how long before triggers. are rearmed?
Thank you both for your comments, I love the challenge of not only trying to come up with an idea to try and make a profit but I think that, as difficult as automating a process is or certainly can be, it can also be a way of making you analyse what you are trying to do and what is needed for your idea to ultimately be profitable.

Kind regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

From what you've said you should have a 'Cancel All unmatched bets' rule armed to trigger 1 time after the race has gone in-play
this needs to be applied to 'ANY' selection

with a 'number of unmatched bets' condition
on selection
is equal to 0

Then add a 'Green all selections' rule armed to trigger 3-5 times after the race has gone in-play (use a minimum 3 sec re-arm time)
(this rule can be left as being applied to selection in row 1)

with a number of unmatched bets' condition
on market
is equal to 0

Also add any further conditions you want ie, profit condition etc

If I've understood what you want from your two posts that should do it


You could also use a 'close trade on selection with greening rule' instead of the green all selections rule
if you do then that needs to be applied to 'ANY' selection
and instead of a green all profit condition, use a 'close trade profit condition

Morning Dallas,

Yesterday I was in a position to monitor the process live as it entered each market and (typically) everything went exactly as ordered, which is brilliant.
I have gone through each rule and implemented some of the changes you have mentioned namely removing the unlimited triggers where it was not needed and I now believe that that was the reason for the 2 races that relentlessly fired back bets into the market.
Thank you for the help you have given me on this I can't even imagine how much time you spend helping people like myself but it is greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

[Gunnessmanc]

Morning,
.......
Please
Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

Graeme - just leave a minimum amount in your account when testing, either put the rest into the games wallet or 'park' your money elsewhere, ie like a bet in the future that is almost 100% unlikely to happen

Morning PeterLe

I had never actually looked into this even though many a time I wished there was a function within the exchange to have multiple wallets for different sports you could put money into that was seperate and 'safe' from all the others. It gets tedious depositing and withdrawing money to and from the exchange mainly as i have to keep transferring money from one account to another at my bank each time i do it.
Thanks for pointing this out and I am going to investigate further today.

Kind Regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)

[ShaunWhite]

I had never actually looked into this even though many a time I wished there was a function within the exchange to have multiple wallets for different sports you could put money into that was seperate and 'safe' from all the others. It gets tedious depositing and withdrawing money to and from the exchange.

If you click on your balance on the Betfair home screen you can transfer your funds to and from the different wallets. Depositing and withdrawing regularly is a bad idea, it's likely to trigger an affordability check because it looks like you need to keep moving your money around.

[Gunnessmanc]

I had never actually looked into this even though many a time I wished there was a function within the exchange to have multiple wallets for different sports you could put money into that was seperate and 'safe' from all the others. It gets tedious depositing and withdrawing money to and from the exchange.

If you click on your balance on the Betfair home screen you can transfer your funds to and from the different wallets. Depositing and withdrawing regularly is a bad idea, it's likely to trigger an affordability check because it looks like you need to keep moving your money around.

Cheers for that Shaun, another very good point I hadn't taken into consideration. Especially under these new gambling guidelines.

Kind Regards

Graeme (Gunnessmanc)