Is BetAngel for me? I'm not sure

[d4006]

I've been reading and watching BA videos and I'm seeing a lot about "trading" and "exchanges" and that's more of a stock-markety kind of approach. That makes me wonder whether it can do what I'm looking for.

I'm after the chance to implement an algorithmic approach to placing bets. I set the rules, either by UI checkboxes, set my limits for various options, and then let my algorithm loose on the selected sport.

For example, for horse racing I might specify something (crazy) like "at 30 minutes before the race, bet £1 on each of the bottom 3 horses (with the highest odds), but only if there are at least 8 runners, and only if the odds are at least 33-1, and the horse has managed at least a 3rd place in the last 6 races". Yes, that's not a real strategy, but you see how I'd like to set a few rules.

For football I might have something (wacky) like "at one hour before a game starts, if the home team is higher up the league by 4 or more positions, and they've won at least 75% of their most recent four games, and the away team has won less than 2 of their most recent four games, and the home team's odds are >= evens" then bet.

So you see, I'm not looking to get into exchanges and trading ladders, I just want to automate my bets. Currently I need to login to my betting account (ladbrokes) and run through my algorithms in my head. Rather than do that, I'd prefer it to be automated.

Also, I'd like to use historical race/game data to back-test my settings. It'd be nice to test for the last year of racing and see if I'd have become a millionaire or gone broke. With that feature, I could tweak the settings and retry until I find something I'm happy with.

If betangel isn't right for this, any suggestions? I'm a programmer, so can handle needing to do this using an API and scripting.

[Bear's The Name]

Hi,

That's absolutely fine! I'm not a trader either, purely a gambler who loves trying out different systems (most of which ultimately fail, admittedly!), but I only play with small stakes and it's always fun trying to find an edge.

The automation feature, Guardian is perfect for this. You can automate all manner of elaborate strategies based on all manner of factors. e.g. Lay the Draw at x minutes in to a football match when the odds reach 1.5 or less, or lay any horse pre-race that has odds of over 10, and put a lay bet in at 5 in-running.

You can't as far as I know incorporate factors such as betting a horse if it has finished 3rd in the last three races, as that's not information available on the exchange but there might be some way of doing it via advanced excel functionality. I've never explored that.

Another forum member, Dallas, posts frequently about automation strategies, it might be worth checking out some of his posts.

Good luck, and have fun! I do!

[spreadbetting]

I'm sure BA could manage it but if you're a programmer it should be a simple task as the API is easy to use and you'd only use it to get odds and place bets. For your football examples you'd have to be writing routines to grab the table data anyway as neither BA or any other software have those facility's. I'd have thought your own bespoke software would be the way forward.

[d4006]

The automation feature, Guardian is perfect for this.

Thanks for that. I haven't even downloaded BetAngel yet but I am reading the online user guide. Guardian does look like what I would need. I'll get to the end of the Guardian section though before I decide if it's got all the parameters I need.

Note: I've had this strategy worked out since 1987 and tried it several times (first in betting shops, then later online) and I'm fairly happy with it.

Does anyone know if historical testing is possible? I'd really like to run my strategies against, for example, all horse races of the last 12 months and see how it did.

[d4006]

I'm sure BA could manage it but if you're a programmer it should be a simple task as the API is easy to use and you'd only use it to get odds and place bets. For your football examples you'd have to be writing routines to grab the table data anyway as neither BA or any other software have those facility's. I'd have thought your own bespoke software would be the way forward.

Coolio. I'm hoping (and still reading up on) Guardian can do the trick. The football example wasn't really my most serious use case at the moment. I'll leave that one for the future.

One more thing, if anyone knows, do people ever get banned from betting because they're winning too much/often? If I do end up finding the magical strategy that always wins, and as an example average a gain of let's say £500 a day, are they just going to shut me down. Casinos can do that. They either think you're cheating or just choose to throw you out because they don't like losing.

[Zapata]

My method is using the BA Excel VBA, you can access external databases using SQL for making automatic selections. My preference is Proform where you can build systems based on past results then get your code to test for eligibility as BA steps from race to race, then place bets automatically.

Other information can be lifted from web sites, for example I auto transfer Timeform star ratings from At The Races site into the main database and use those in some systems.

No doubt there are plenty of Football based sites/databases online but I only do horses so can't really comment on those.

Good luck, but be warned, its a long hard journey.

[Dallas]

Bet angel is just a interface that sits between you and you Betfair account and lets you see the market in a more dynamic and mulitpe ways as well has having a number of tools to aid what ever type of trading betting your doing and there is a 14 day free trial so user can fully evaluate before committing to any subscription

These two links for the Bet Angel you tube channel should also help

Guardian advanced automation
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 3A6C182236

Excel spreadsheets inc automation
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 48EDF522F6

Does anyone know if historical testing is possible? I'd really like to run my strategies against, for example, all horse races of the last 12 months and see how it did.

Its not possible to test historically using Bet Angel but it does have a practice mode which mirrors the live markets but without submitting real money so you can test stratergies that way

[spreadbetting]

Does anyone know if historical testing is possible? I'd really like to run my strategies against, for example, all horse races of the last 12 months and see how it did.

Btw, do you need to have a Betfair account for this? It seems like that maybe the case.

Yes you'll need a betfair account to access the API,BA etc.

Historical testing can't be done via BA ,betfair do have historical data files available for download at data.betfair.com, but they're not well laid out. Companies like fracsoft sell the data for them in more organised formats.

[marko236]

I'm sure BA could manage it but if you're a programmer it should be a simple task as the API is easy to use and you'd only use it to get odds and place bets. For your football examples you'd have to be writing routines to grab the table data anyway as neither BA or any other software have those facility's. I'd have thought your own bespoke software would be the way forward.

Coolio. I'm hoping (and still reading up on) Guardian can do the trick. The football example wasn't really my most serious use case at the moment. I'll leave that one for the future.

One more thing, if anyone knows, do people ever get banned from betting because they're winning too much/often? If I do end up finding the magical strategy that always wins, and as an example average a gain of let's say £500 a day, are they just going to shut me down. Casinos can do that. They either think you're cheating or just choose to throw you out because they don't like losing.

You won't get closed down on an exchange but Betfair do charge a premium charge when you start hitting high profits, you could make a million a year and they would be happy to keep you.

You have the option of using Betdaq they don't charge extra for winners.

If you think you have a winning stratagy forget bookies they will close you down.

Best of luck.

[d4006]

Thanks a lot spreadbetting, Zapata, Dallas, and marko236. This is all great info.

What's really disappointing though is that I can't go into the program and try to create my strategy unless I first sign up to Betfair. That seems like a strange restriction at this point. Obviously if I want to bet or see any data then that would make sense. But I just want to poke around and see what automations parameters and conditionals are available. If I could do that and be content that all the elements of my strategy are there, realised in BetAngel form, then I'd be happy.

So I'm in a catch 22. I can't test BetAngel because I don't have a betfair account, and I only want to create a betfair account to use with BetAngel, and I only want to use BetAngel if I'm confident it can implement all aspects of my strategy. If I can only use 8 out of 10 of my parameters/conditions, then that isn't my strategy, it's a different one.

Hmmm.

[d4006]

If you think you have a winning stratagy forget bookies they will close you down.

Really. So if I funded a bookies account (like Ladbrokes, paddypower, bet365, etc) with let's say 10,000 and then over weeks and months got to 20, 30, 50, or maybe even 100,000 they'd actually want to shut me down. I'd have thought somebody would have sued them by now for trying that.

[marko236]

If you think you have a winning stratagy forget bookies they will close you down.

Really. So if I funded a bookies account (like Ladbrokes, paddypower, bet365, etc) with let's say 10,000 and then over weeks and months got to 20, 30, 50, or maybe even 100,000 they'd actually want to shut me down. I'd have thought somebody would have sued them by now for trying that.

Bookies don't have to take your bets, and they can close your account at anytime, winners are no good to a bookie.

You can't sue them they don't have to take anyones bets if they choose to do so.

An exchange will charge you when you win so they don't care how much money you make that's why they don't ban winners.

[Dallas]

If you think you have a winning stratagy forget bookies they will close you down.

Really. So if I funded a bookies account (like Ladbrokes, paddypower, bet365, etc) with let's say 10,000 and then over weeks and months got to 20, 30, 50, or maybe even 100,000 they'd actually want to shut me down. I'd have thought somebody would have sued them by now for trying that.

You would be very very lucky if you still had an account after doubling that 10k deposit, most will close you within a few days if you have just a few winning bets totaling a few hundred.

You will get the standard letter from them saying something like

"Our risk dept have deemed that you will be unprofitable for our buisness and therefore we have taken decsision to close your account, this matter is not subject to appeal"

You may be lucky and just be restricted and allowed to stake upto £1.20 or even as much as £2 on some markets but if your serious about making any money from sports betting/trading you will have to use an exchange and completly forget about any bookmakers

On exchanges your betting agaist other users and the exchange takes a commision off whoever wins so they dont care how much or who wins, in fact as Marko236 has already said the more you win the more commission you pay so the more they love you

[d4006]

Bookies don't have to take your bets, and they can close your account at anytime, winners are no good to a bookie.

An exchange will charge you when you win so they don't care how much money you make that's why they don't ban winners.

Oh, I hadn't factored in exchange charges into my numbers. At least it's only when you win, that's something. Stock market trading you pay win or lose, that can really be a PITA.

Btw, I've been executing my strategy manually for a week now, with these results. Each bet was £1, on horse racing. I know it's early days but I'm feeling good about it so far.



Obviously if I were to take this seriously, I'd be looking at initially 10 times that bet size (£240 profit for a week isn't so bad), but ultimately 100 times the size (for a nice little earner of over two grand a week). All assuming that it continues that performance (and you're all probably thinking it's just a lucky run, maybe so, time will tell). I've been sitting on the strategy for donkey's years and want to finally find out if it's really any good.

[d4006]

You would be very very lucky if you still had an account after doubling that 10k deposit, most will close you within a few days if you have just a few winning bets totaling a few hundred.

Holy crapola. They really don't want to play fair. I didn't realise they'd potentially jump on it that quickly. I wish I'd taken that 20 horse accumulator and won it last week. The stake was £1 and the payout £5.5 billion

Those betfair charges (and the premium charges) look like they'd maybe wipe out my entire strategy. I guess I'm going to stick with ladbrokes for now, until they shut me down if I reach a couple of hundred quid profit, then at least I'll have given the strategy a good run. Then, who knows, if it truly feels good, move to Vegas (although all gambling is taxed there, damn).