AUTOMATED TRADING:
One of the most interesting bits about Betfair is that there are many 3rd party softwares (some quite reliable), which allow you to automate your trading from start to finish.
The majority of such softwares are designed mainly for Horse Racing as the market mind is rather parallel to each other. However, when other sports are involved the softwares have to do more calculations which in turn make them less reliable most of the time. One of the many reasons why I do not use Automated softwares is purely on the basis of this unknown RELIABILITY. I mean who wants to let the bot software do the job when 24 hours worth of trading gets you pennies or inconsistent profits.
For more info on the many softwares you can choose for Betfair, check out: https://apps.betfair.com/directory/
Now, on to the more interesting side of things. While letting the software run on its own 24/7 is not recommended by me (unless you find a software that is making you consistent profits!), you can definitely make the bot take ADVANCE INSTRUCTIONS in relation to applying your trades.
Let’s take a match between Richard Gasquet and Gael Monfils as the example:
Gasquet odds are 1.88 here prior to the match.
Now let’s assume that you are predicting Gasquet to start well but Monfils to come back and take it to a 3rd set.
Basically you are backing Gasquet @1.88 initially and planning to lay him at a lower price let’s say @1.78 to trade out a greened out profit. However, you have also decided to stop the trade if Gasquet is plays very poor at the start and that his odds have reached a certain target, let’s make it @3.5.
Summarizing the above, here are the 3 things you are essentially planning to do.
- BACKING Gasquet @1.88 (at the start of the match)
- TO LAY Gasquet @1.78 for a greened out profit.(assuming he started well which made his odds fall from 1.88 to 1.78)
- PUTTING A STOP LOSS FOR THE WORST CASE SCENARIO – i.e. Gasquet losing from the start by LAYING @3.5
Or in other words the three steps are BACKING, THEN LAYING (OR VICE VERSA) AND PUTTING A STOP LOSS.
Prior to executing our first step, let’s take a closer look at some of the trading tools within Fairbot. (Please note this example is only catered for trading on Fairbot Platforms. Other platforms will likely have different ways of executing trades).
There are two elements that we will look more closely, namely, OFFSET and SMART BETS.
OFFSET:
Let us assume that we want to trade in exactly the same way for other matches (regardless of the prices), i.e. Backing a player first at a price and laying it exactly 10 ticks below. So assuming another match is taking place an hour later and the odds are 1.6 on Player A, we want to back him/her @ 1.6 and lay @1.5 (10 ticks below). This is where OFFSET comes into play. We can manually set the offset to how many ticks we want in advance.
To activate offset, simply activate the trading tool and select the number of ticks you wish..
Ok, moving on…
BACKING AND LAYING:
The first step is rather self explanatory. You are simply backing the player you wish to put money on. Assuming the Trading tool, is activated, simply clicking the Back Price will bring the following window:
(PLEASE NOTE THAT I’VE ACTIVATED THE OFFSET AND SMART BETS ELEMENTS OF THE TRADING TOOL IN ADVANCE FOR THIS EXAMPLE)
Note that I did not have to enter the lay odds as 1.78 manually as the OFFSET tool has automatically updated it.
Now enter the stake for our backing. For the time, let us put it as 10 units.
You will notice that as soon as you enter 10 as the back stake and press the enter key, the lay stake is already adjusted to 10.56 units giving you a potential profit of 0.56 units.
This is because the SMART BETS is active. It has essentially calculated our lay stake for us automatically rather than manually fiddling with the stake buttons! So basically, the SMART BETS tool gives us that extra bit of time during trading by calculating the corresponding stakes, lay or back whichever is applicable and moreover notifying us of the potential profits.
So refreshing our memory again, here are the 3 events that take place :
- Clicked the back button to back the price
- Entered our back stake
- Lay stakes automatically adjusted as well as the Greened out Profits are displayed at the bottom.
The following image shows the events in chronological order. Please note again both the OFFSET and SMART BET TOOLS are activated and circled in RED:
APPLYING STOP LOSS:
Once our main part of the trade is complete, it’s time we automated our Stop Losses. We chose the STOP LOSS odds as LAY @ 3.5 for this example.
Always activate a Stop loss by RIGHT CLICKING. So in this case we right click the LAY price and enter 3.5 manually as shown below:
The stop loss stake is entered. We also notice the STOP LOSS bets active in the Pending bets section just above the UNMATCHED BETS as we can see from below.
The SSL abbreviation simply means Single Stop Loss.
The above method, which is rather simple to understand has one flaw in it. Assuming the lay bet @1.78 gets matched, this SSL is not cancelled. This means, while initially our player has performed well and guaranteed us a profit, the SSL being active can mean that assuming he lost a bit of form and is now starting to lose. In such a case, the SSL will come into play and our end result will be a loss.
To avoid this, always use the STOP LOSS tool next to the Trading Tool on the platform.
Simply enter the ‘Trigger at’ and ‘Place at’ values you desire as shown below:
When the Stop Losses are placed this way, the pending bets are shown as SL or simply STOP LOSS.
PLEASE REMEMBER that all Stop loss bets activated using the STOP LOSS tool is related to the Trading tool and are cancelled by default once your unmatched bet becomes matched. So in this case, as soon as 1.78 lay odds are matched, our SL pending bet is automatically cancelled and the entire market is traded out resulting a profit overall.
Summary:
Summarizing the stages mentioned above, we can see that by activating the offset, smart bets and the stop loss tools, we are essentially trading the whole market by simply backing the market and entering our back stake.
That is one click and manually entering our stake.
The result?
Three bets are being executed together!
One back bet, one lay bet and one Stop Loss Lay bet.
This is pretty much the procedure of setting a bot in Automated mode!
Essentially, once you follow the mentioned steps, Fairbot trades out the market completely by itself without your actual presence in front of the PC!
Please note that for all automated trades, make sure the AT IN PLAY option is always set to KEEP as all betfair markets doesn’t work out the same way for In-Play trading!
APPLICATION OF TIPS FROM TTL WITH THE INCLUSION OF STOP LOSSES:
This is the last major point of this e-book and indeed the most important and exciting part.
The following are the steps to simply enter the markets on Betfair in an automation mode by simply knowing the back and lay odds of a market through TTL tips:
I am going to take one of the Tips from TTL for this example:
As we can see, the Tip is to back Sijsling@1.45 and lay him @1.2.
The STOP LOSS table from the below link shows that the corresponding S/L for 1.45 Back is 2.42 Lay
http://tennis-trading-league.com/stop-loss-help-and-advice/
The next thing to know is how much TICKS do we add.
Ticks are 1 decimal points for upto odds of 2.00. So from 1.45 to 2.00 there will be 55 ticks. From 2.00 to 2.42 there are only 21 ticks instead of 42. This is because there is no 2.01 or 2.03 odds on Betfair. Only even numbers are considered..
Hence, the total number of ticks here is 55 + 21 = 76 Ticks
Now simply follow the steps:
STEP 1 : Activate Trading Tool and Smart Bets by checking them.
STEP 2: Activate Stop Loss Tool by ticking it.
Now, set the PLACE AT ticks to 76 (which we calculated earlier) and TRIGGER AT to few ticks below, let’s say 74 (a couple of ticks below). It should look like the following:
This essentially triggers the stop loss at precisely 2.38 but places it at 2.42.
STEP 3: Click on Back odds of 1.45 on Sijsling now.
The dual confirmation box will pop up.
STEP 4: Enter the back odds as 1.45, lay odds as 1.2 and back stake at 10 units (HIGHLIGHTED IN GREEN IN THE IMAGE BELOW)
STEP 5: We can see the lay stake is automatically adjusted. Now click Submit. (HIGHLIGHTED IN BLUE AND RED RESPECTIVELY IN THE FOLLOWING IMAGE)
STEP 6: Once submitted, the matched, unmatched and Stop Loss bets are displayed on the right side of the platform as follows:
Please remember, the STOP LOSS is only triggered and NOT placed at 2.38. The platform still places the STOP LOSS at 2.42 which is what we want. It is always a good practice to put the Trigger odds a few ticks lower which makes out for In-Play bet delays on the Betfair website.
This is essentially how you can use Pro Tips from TTL on a platform such as FAIRBOT!
THE PROS AND CONS:
The Pros include definitely saving time in real-time trading. If you are one of those guys whose intuitions are rather spot on most of the time, automated trading is definitely something you must try.
However, as with most exciting stuff these days, there comes a catch. And indeed this catch is a big one!
Whatever I have mentioned above is with the assumption that the market is not WILD. Meaning, assuming if Gasquet gets injured or calls the trainer straight away, this can mean the market can easily go against you or hit our STOP LOSS first. Such situations are rather common these days and was making many markets go wild in the recent Australian Open due to HEAT issues.
MY ADVICE:
My simple advice would always be to stay on the PC while you are trading especially if you are risking high stakes. If everything went according to plan, we would’t be traders would we? After all trading is about going through many hurdles through time and trying to beat most of them, may be not all of them. This is why it can take a long time to be a successful trader as there is no straight and easy strategy to break the bank.
Always experiment with your own strategies that you are comfortable with, before you set up anything automated. This would be my best advice when you are executing all the tools together on Fairbot or any other platforms.
Simply because one uses too many tools doesn’t mean he/she is a better trader. In fact, the more tools you use, the more likely you are, in making mistakes. This must be accepted.
Indeed, it is no surprise hence that this is why some of the best traders out there are those that are more experimental than risky!
Best regards
Patrick