Betfair football bot strategy: Draw trading
Posted in From My Inbox by StefanBelo
Hi Stefan perhaps you get mails like mine every day, but i do have some problems making bot`s that work. First my normal trade on betfair is an old tactic but effective ..place alay bet on draw i a live soccer match and trade out when a goal is scored. You probably know this since it is very common. My problem is that though I asked you before for this the solution you gave didn't work out for me, seemed like it did not always trade out and I could not understand why..I will attach a screenshot of the bot you sent me.
I know I'm not the best bot operator so please explain me what I need to do in order to make this work.
I run my bots on over/under markets as well. I think for a novice trader (bot operator) it is the easiest way to trade, on markets with predictable odds trend, simply if no goal is scored the under odds are shortening and the over odds are drifting. Going into the in-play market takes risk of earlier goal therefore I mostly close my position before match start.
The above sounds like a cool strategy may I see more screenshots so I easier can set up a bot for that to ?
1 last thing..can a bot be made that backs 0-0 1-0 0-1 1-1 5 hours before kickoff (soccer) and trades out 5 min in to the game ( all positions).
You created bot settings to place lay bet with stake 1 Euro on draw in football matches, if lay is offered in allowed odds range from 3 to 5. You want to close your position when profit percentage is equal or greater 25%. That means that you had to setup the Place bet and close position with following parameters:
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| AllowPlacingBetInPlay | True |
| BetType | Lay |
| MinOdds | 3 |
| MaxOdds | 5 |
| PlaceBetOnRunner | 3 |
| Stake | 1 |
| MinReturnOnInvestment | 25 |
| UseMinOddsDifference | False |
To this point all is clear I hope, you have to instruct this betfair bot to place your lay bet and prset selection (3rd selection) and trade out (close your position) when profit percentage met 25% (MinReturnOnInvestment), so you set 8 bot parameters to instruct the bot to execute this simple trading strategy.
You said: "it seemed like it did not always trade out". Well I have to say that there is no problem with this betfair bot not with your settings.
Your problem is to realize what your settings actually means. If you set to trade out your position automatically by this bot when profit percentage met 25%, with your current settings it does mean that if your lay bet is placed at odds: 3 your liability is 2 Euro, so your profit must be 0.5 Euro, 25% of your liability: (Profit / Liability) * 100 = Percentage profit
That means to take 25% from your 1Euro lay bet at odds 3, the bot must to close your position backing at odds: 6 or above. If there is no such offer at odds 6, your position is never trade out (closed). It also means that odds must increases for 40 ticks.
To setup similar trading strategy on Over/Under markets, you have to change BetType, PlaceBetOnRunner parameters, and if you want to change your trading parameters to trade out when preset odds difference is met, use the parameter MinOddsDifference, and set the parameter: UseMinOddsDifference to True
I would suggest to check any bot settings in the practice mode, using reasonable parameters, you could make such test in couple minutes.
I remember one user from UK who set trading bot to lay selected horses at in-play and back it if odds went against, he also said: "sometimes the bot does not trade out". I explained to him how to setup such trading bot and what has to be fulfill because he will run his bots at in-play where odds changes very rapidly. I thought he will use this bot by starting market monitoring couple minutes before the race off and manually starting bot on each horse he wants to lay. In couple days he replied again, that sometimes bot still does not trade out its position, and that market prices are refreshed each 25 seconds or worse. I asked him to open remote desktop sharing so I could see what he did.
Well, he opened for monitoring all UK horse racing markets at that day, it was more than 50 races. I asked him if he is familiar with betfair data charges, and why he opened all markets for monitoring if he setup his bot to start laying horses 2 minutes before race off.
It was clear for me why his bot "sometimes" did not place back bet to close position. Do you know why it was so? I advised him to use the tool: Execute my strategy on selection, and from that time he had no problems.
There is no reason for "sometimes" behavior when running bots, a bot is program executing its strategy according to preset parameters, and any bot behaves exactly the same way when executing your instructions.
You can setup a trading bot and run it on the correct score football market, but you want to execute your trading strategy 5 hours before match start, and I think you want to run such strategy on many markets. I hope you know that bot is executed only on a market which is monitored within Bfexplorer PRO, and you are familiar with betfair data charges, and the fact the more markets you monitor concurrently the bigger refresh rate of market prices is. Therefore to run your strategy a bespoke solution has to be built, the price for such bespoke solutions starts from 350 GBP.
