Posts by Dan Wilson
Betfair football bots
The Euro 2020 has finally started, so there are new opportunities for bettors in these high liquidity football events. Therefore we decided to highlight some features of football betting with bots. Obviously you can use similar techniques manually betting on Betfair site, but bots offer a high level of automation saving you precious time.
There are two types of bots that can be used for football betting on Betfair. First are general purpose bots that can place bets in any Betfair market, including football markets. If you are already familiar with one of them, it can be a good idea to try it for football betting. The other type of bots are dedicated football only bots which are made specially to bet on football events. They have a pack of features designed for football and in this way are more convenient and functionally rich than general purpose bots. One of such football bots is www.footybotpro.com.
The FootyBotPro is a web based bot meaning you don’t have to download or install anything. You just create an account on the web site from your laptop or a mobile. It runs on it’s own server 24/7. At the time we checked, the bot includes 5 betting strategies that allow you either to place flat stakes or combine back and lay bets. It covers Match Odds, Correct Score and Over/Under markets. The strategies can be combined with specific football betting conditions, e.g. number of goals scored. You can run up to 3 strategies simultaneously. The betfair football bot can place bets before the kick off or inplay. It also allows to filter by countries and leagues. Some features are still in progress (since it was launched recently), but it looks promising.
One of the strategies included is Lay The Draw which takes advantage on laying the draw before the kick off with aim to back it inplay after a goal is scored.
Betfair bot for mobiles
I often see people looking for a good Betfair bot that would work on their mobile phones (iPhones, etc). Most of the existing Betfair bots are developed for Windows OS or Mac OS and there are few applications that would allow you to trade on Betfair from your phone. Moreover such mobile Betfair bots are usually limited in their functionality.
A good alternative for those who wants to use a bot on their phone is a website based bot. It is not an application that you download from Google Market or App Store, but rather a website where you can login from any device including computers, Android or Apple phones. In the same time it has all functions available in full power computer Betfair bots. You even don’t need to install this bot on your mobile, just open the website in browser.
Currently I am aware only about one such web based Betfair bot that can be accessed from a mobile phone, it is 5starbot (www.5starbot.com). If you know any other such Betfair bots, please let us know in the comments.
Betfair bots and laying traps that won
Today we propose and analyse another betting strategy often available in Betfair bots. The idea of this betting strategy is to wait until a favourite (in horse racing) or a trap (in greyhounds) hits certain number of wins in a row, then lay this trap or favourite. Another variation is to wait until a favourite loses several times in a row, then place a back bet on it. This strategy supposes that the same selection cannot win or lose again and again many times or at least the chance of this is small. For horse racing the strategy usually uses 1st favourite as selection. We will show you how to set this betting strategy up in 5starbot Betfair bot.
We will bet on greyhounds, placing lay bets on 1st trap when after it hits 2 winners in a row. We will attempt to place only one lay bet in the bot, then wait until next 2 winners in a row and so on. Below are options we use.
We enable the whole feature to make it active. We also tell the Betfair bot to be ‘Currently suspended’ from the start because we don’t place bets until it hits 2 winners in a row. Then we want ‘Suspend by meeting’ to count winners for each meeting (course) name separately, since it is more likely that the same trap or favourite wins twice on different meetings.
The bot has to ‘Resume (start) betting after’ 2 WON consequent bets. The bot has to ‘Suspend betting after’ 1 bet with ANY outcome, because we want to place only 1 lay bet and then wait until another 2 winners in a row.
In the 5star Betfair bot (or any other Betfair bot) we also need to load greyhound races with 1st Trap as selection. Actually you can choose any other trap number because it doesn’t have any difference. What matters is that certain trap should win twice. Also we need to tell the bot to place lay bets. To do that select a lay staking plan, for example, Lay Fixed Liability or Lay Level Stakes.
It is up to you to play with above parameters. For example, you can choose to place lay bet after 3 consecutive winners. Or to place Back bet after 2 consecutive losers. In the last case, change ‘Resume betting after’ from WON to LOST and change your staking plan to one that places Back bets.
Stop at Winner (SAW) system
We continue our Betfair bot strategies series with explanation of a very popular Stop at Winner (SAW) strategy. How it works?
- Bet until you hit a winner. Then stop for the day.
- If you hit a loser, the next bet tries to recoup the loss.
- Loss is cumulative, so if you hit 3 losers in the row, 4th bet will try to recover all that loss from 3 bets.
In Betfair bots you usually find this system under SAW, Martingale or Progressive (like in 5starbot) names.
If you play with this Betfair strategy, soon you will find that if you hit losers in a row, stakes size grows dramatically. Therefore it is recommended to have at least 100 or better 200 points in your bank to cover potential bet size.
Also to fight with fast growing bets, set Reset limit that will return to your normal bet size if specific number of losers are hit in a row. Max stake size also can help keeping your bets under a reasonable level.
Good point about this Betfair bot strategy is that with a good luck you can make fixed profit every day, if winners come more or less frequently. But remember that if you get many losing bets in a row it’s likely to bust your bank in one day.
Betfair bot strategies
It’s good to have a Betfair bot for betting. They have many smart functions that make your trading easier and faster. What they don’t normally have are betting strategies. Of course, they do allow you to run betting strategies and automate them, but it’s up to you to choose a strategy and all the betting parameters.
So, you paid for a Betfair bot, what next? It’s time to find a good betting strategy. Here we will not cover different trading strategies, when you place back and lay bets on the same horse to make a trade. We will look at key points in staking strategies when all your bets are same type (back or lay) and you aim to close the day with positive profit, having several horses to bet.
First important thing to understand is that betting strategies do not guarantee constant and reliable profit. It’s a myth that you can find a betting cash machine and live on winnings. Their winning runs are limited and followed by losing runs. Good betting strategies just make winning runs longer.
Most popular betting strategies explained
Progressive or one bet recovery strategies
This kind of betting strategies is simple – you try to recover all your previous loss in next bet. If you run into a series of losing bets, loss grows dramatically and might bust your bank very soon, especially if bets are placed at short odds (e.g. favourites). This strategy might give you daily profit for many days, even months, but in the end it’s almost guaranteed that you will lose the whole bank and previous winnings in one very unlucky day. If you choose this strategy you agree to take the risk. You must not be greedy and quit the strategy when you make some profit, say, 15-20% of bank.
Level stake strategies
These betting strategies are much safer. Because you don’t try to recover losses and always bet only 1 pt (i.e. 1/100 of your bank). It is very important to have strong selections for level stakes, in other words it is not recommended just to bet say favourite in every race, instead you should choose each horse individually. Of course, it’s hard when you are beginner, so your best bet is to follow a tipster.
Betting strategies for Betfair bots
Here we will list several betting strategies that can be used with almost every Betfair bot, for example 5starbot. Please be aware that we don’t promote any of the strategies listed below or say that one of them is guaranteed to make you money. It just can be a starting point for a novice before you set up your mind to go with something else.
Level stakes on 1st and 2nd favourites
Place 1pt back bets on 1st and 2nd favourites in horse racing win markets. You have big chances that one of the two favourites wins. You might also want to set maximum price limit. Start with Max Price = 5.0 and adjust as you progress.
Wait 1st favourite to lose, then place bet
The idea is to wait for 1st favourite to lose several times in a row (say, 2 or 3) and then start placing your bets because it’s unlikely for 1st favourite to lose many times in a row. So after 2 or 3 loses that you skip, you have a better chance to win. This type of betting can be done with level stakes or with partial loss recovery.
Betting on horses that shorten
Watch the prices 15 to 30 minutes before the off when most of the market money come in and place a bet on the horse that price has shortened the most. Many Betfair bots have this function, so you actually don’t have to sit and watch the prices yourself.
We will explain more Betfair bot strategies in next articles. If you are looking for a good Betfair bot, try 5starbot. It is one of the most reliable and has many options to set up virtually any strategy that might come into your mind.
5 Tips How To Choose The Right Betting Bot For Betfair
Probably you thought about a betting software and what advantage it can give you. In this article I’ll explain how to choose a right software for your needs.
1. First of all think if you are ready to switch from manual betting to automated betting using a software. Automated betting and using a software requires certain knowledge in betting. At least you should be familiar with Betfair or Betdaq (because most of the software bots that you can find will work only with these two betting exchanges). You should understand how betting exchanges work. If you are a novice in betting world or only start trying Betfair, it is not good idea to immediately get your hands on a betting software or a bot. Most likely it will be hard to understand how the software works and all its options because a bot is usually much more sophisticated than website of a betting exchange (Betfair or Betdaq). So to summarize, you should try bots and software only when you are familiar with all options that Betfair has to offer including lay betting, BSP betting and inplay betting.
2. Trading or betting. You should decide if you want to trade or just bet on Betfair. Because there are basically two different types of betting software. Trading software is good when your objective is to manually trade on Betfair, e.g. place a back bets and then green it up with lay bet on the same horse making a profit. However such software can’t handle betting systems or fallow tipsters. If you want to use a betting system, i.e. automatically place a sequence of bets in different races aiming to make a profit or automatically load selections from a tipster you need a betting bot or Betfair bot. Such software can’t trade but has other advantages like staking plans and sophisticated betting conditions. If you are reading this article, most likely you are a novice and trading will be too difficult for you.
3. Specialized software. It is not possible to have a betting bot that will do everything good. For example, horse racing and football betting are quite different, especially when it comes to inplay betting. So if you are certain you will be betting on football, it’s betting to grab a dedicated betting bot for football markets. Likewise if you are not interested in football betting, look at software that works only with horse racing and greyhounds. You will be able to take most of it then.
4. Mac, Windows or Mobile. There are much bigger choice of betting software made for Windows than for Mac OS. Only few bots are made for mobiles. One of options for Mac users is to rent a VPS (virtual private server) that can host a bot made for Windows. There are, however, bots that you can access from any device (Mac, Windows or Mobile), for example, 5starbot.
5. Price. Basically two options available on the market: Subscription and one time payment. Subscription can be either monthly or annual. Make sure you understand what you get for the price. Some companies stop providing support of the software after 1 year if payment is one off.
And one more tip. Customer support. Contact the company that makes betting software you are considering to buy. Note how prompt they get back to you. This matters because if you have any requests or questions in future, it’s important when someone if around to help you.
New server based Betfair bot trial
We are happy to inform our subscribers that FREE 7 days trial now is available at 5 Star Bot, a very powerful and promising Betfair bot that has no analogs on the market. The unique bot runs even while your computer is switched off. It can be accessed from any devices including Android and iPad and has plenty of betting options. We’ve tested it over the last two months and highly recommend it. You can register for a free trial using this link: Free 7 days trial.
Betfair launches a new API version
Betfair has released a new version of its API called API-NG (next generation). Also it has announced that previous versions of API (5.0 and 6.0) will retire on 1st Nov 2014. Therefore all software using old API will stop working on 1st Nov 2014. If you have one you need to start thinking how to move it to the new API-NG.
Difference between API 6.0 and API-NG.
API-NG is whole different comparing to 6.0 version. It uses a light weight data format (JSON) which allows faster communication with Betfair servers than previous XML format. Considering this Betfair servers will have less loading issues. There are also new functions available, for example, generic market search. User can enter a search text like in Google and find related markets.
Why to use API-NG.
First of all you should use API-NG because previous versions will expire in 2014. Second, but very important, API-NG does not charge user for excessive data requests, like it used to be with previous versions. Currently Betfair API-NG is free to trial for non commercial use that ends on 30 April 2014.
Useful resources
Betfair stops operating in Germany
Unfortunately after German government introduced new taxes for online betting exchanges, Betfair has decided to stop it’s business in Germany. This means that all users from Germany will not be able to use exchange part of Betfair, but only fixed odds betting. Germany is next in series of countries where Betfair stopped operating. Before this Spain and Portugal have been banned Betfair. Good news is that Betdaq still provides it’s online betting exchange services for German users.