Posts Tagged spreadsheet
Many hands make light work
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on October 21st, 2011
If you are searching for that elusive edge, have you thought about utilising Bet Angel’s many varied automated features? They say that many hands make light work and it’s true on these markets as well, even if they are virtual hands.
Using the spreadsheet functionality on Bet Angel it’s possible to construct very simple to very complex commands, instructions, tools and scripts to do pretty much whatever you want. You can also use it to test ideas or concepts fully automatically while you are busy doing something else. It’s a very useful way to explore the market or actively participate in it.
The way we have designed this tool is pretty clever as well. It’s possible to use Bet Angel’s main trading interface while the spreadsheet does it’s own thing. It can do this thanks to the way the multi market tool Guardian works. You can get Guardian to cycle around markets or load a ton of them onto one workbook for it to work on simultaneously. The advantage of this is that you could create, for example, something to look for arbs on football matches, or perhaps certain conditions on certain markets That can run automatically in the background while you work on the racing.
We have some very innovative solutions that people have put up on the forum. It’s amazing how creative people are given the right tools. Hopefully we can deliver more in the coming months.
If you are interested in how to use this functionality, then please view a few videos for the basics of how to set up and use it: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/using-spreadsheets
You can use similar functionality on both the Betfair and Betdaq versions.
It’s all kicking off!
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 13th, 2011
Yes the premier league is back. Twenty teams, OK maybe four, well maybe three battle it out for the greatest honour in football…. Who will sack their manager first!
As I have mentioned in previous posts the market tends to inefficient at the start of the season. I looked back over the two months at the start of last season to see what happened last year.
The first thing to note is that the market got the number of goals scored pretty much spot on. On average there were 2.72 goals scored per match over this period, this was against a forecast of 2.72 goals. So little value was created there. Home wins were forecast at 48% and came in at 47%, so not much there after commission (especially 60%). However, the predominant characteristic at the start of last season surround away teams.
Away wins were forecast by the market to arrive 26.6% of the time in the first two months but only occurred 20.7% of the time. Draws were forecast 25.5% of the time but occured a whopping 32.3% of the time. So if you were looking for value last season, that was were to find it. To qualify that and to see if it will repeat this season, you also need to answer the ‘why’ question.
New Videos
Don’t forget to fire up Soccer Mystic (see video) to have a look at matches you are likely to trade. While it can’t be 100% accurate it will give you plenty of ideas on where odds are likely to be and should fire up your imagination for some strategies.
You may not have considered a couple of unique ways in which you can use Bet Angel to trade, analyse or bet on football matches. So watch the following videos to see: -
How to connect multiple markets to one workbook on your spreadsheet
How to connect multiple football matches to one spreadsheet for trading simultaneously
Use the subscribe button on the channel home page to automatically get updated when new videos are uploaded.
Botfair
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on July 20th, 2011
I read some comments yesterday evening from some ‘traditional’ punters about how they were pleased Betfair’s new charges were going to get rid of the bots. Unfortunately for these posters, the opposite is almost certainly likely to be true. There is some pretty simple logic behind it.
Say you have a winning bot that makes money on a market and you suddenly face higher charges. At this level you would most likely work more aggressively to make more to offset those charges. Dropping down a level, say you had something that generally worked but took a lot of time as you had to manually do certain tasks. Losing a lot of that income to a third party for no reward means it could suddenly be unviable if you manually intervene, so the answer is to automate it to save your precious time. OK it may not yield as much, but at least it yields something and doesn’t take any of your time.
Less bots because of increased charges? I bet you it’s more.
If you are interested in automating your activity give Bet Angel’s spreadsheet functionality a try, http://www.betangel.com/excel/. It can pre-load multiple markets to one sheet, or automatically switch to events as the day progresses. It also includes some unique scripting capabilities to enable you to automate key trading functions.
Safety in numbers…
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on March 5th, 2011
An overlooked strategy on betting exchanges is spreading your risk across a number of selections and / or markets. A lot of people think this involves more risk but I’d actually argue it involves less.
By doing more you increase your chance of a return and minimise the pain of a loss. This is strategy that can be applied in a number of ways but can most commonly be applied across, say, a number of football matches before the start. I will often group matches into batches where I will take a position on 3-5 matches in one go. I’ll be looking for a general characteristic that should deliver a payoff. If I am wrong I can exit one or more positions or cash in on others. You can see a simple example of how to do it here: -
If you pin your risk on one event, one loss could be significant to you and cause you a fair deal of emotional pain. This level of risk is also likely to force your hand. Spreading out the risk may reduce your immediate return, but, if you are following a net positive strategy, then increasing its scope shouldn’t worry you anyhow. In fact, it could get you to a more positive place in double quick time. This is because you will learn quicker and increase your scope in a defined and controlled manner.
I only ever aim to be right more often than I am wrong, I am playing a numbers game. Doing this by putting more through the market across more selections I have found aids me in this process. I’d recommend it.
Automated trading
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on September 5th, 2010
Early on in the development of Bet Angel I decided we should be able to link to a spreadsheet. Doing this meant that I & other Bet Angel users could experiment to their hearts content, create new views of the market or new trading tools using the spreadsheet. Since the first primitive implementation we have worked hard to add additional features so if you haven’t used it recently give it a try
There are many useful things you can use a spreadsheet for including improving your trading, discipline or trading fully automatically all day if you wish! A Bet Angel user recently uploaded this really use spreadsheet that allows you to automate various trading functions. There are lots of things that you can do with it so it’s worth downloading and having a play with it. As with all automation though, please take care. There are several other useful spreadsheets on the forum as well.
If you have never used the spreadsheet functionality before, I’d recommend using it as will add another dimension to your trading.
An easy way to maintain discipline
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on May 20th, 2010
There are no end of horror stories out there of people that fail to exit a position before the off and then they let that trade turn into a gamble. If you struggle with this or simply want to automate some aspects of your trading you may want to use a spreadsheet in conjunction with Bet Angel to help you achieve this.
Using Bet Angel you can link to a spreadsheet and automate a variety of elements of your trading without having to worry about additional data charges. Bet Angel will even flick through each market for you automatically. You can use all the functions of Bet Angel and the spreadsheet at the same time. In this example we put some trades in via Bet Angel’s main interface and the spreadsheet closes all our positions at the off. Just one of many ways you can use the built in spreadsheet integration. I recently covered in this post how to create your own charts or indicators using the ready made spreadsheet we supply with Bet Angel, you may want to look at that as well.
Charting how you want it
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 14th, 2010
I recently put this video up of how to connect to the Bet Angel charting spreadsheet that is supplied with Bet Angel. We put this spreadsheet in the product as a demonstration of not only the spreadsheet capabilities in Bet Angel, but also to give you some additional tools to play around with. I often use this spreadsheet to play with a variety of charts and technical indicators. Some are really interesting but others that prove useful in traditional financial markets, just clearly don’t cut the mustard in sports markets. Using this spreadsheet there is nothing stopping you from re-creating any one of the hundreds of technical indicators that are out there. If you google for spreadsheets there are a lot available which won’t take much modification to plug into Bet Angel.
You can run the spreadsheet in parallel with Bet Angel and it won’t incur any additional API calls or charges as it shares its feed directly from Bet Angel. You can use it to signal, trigger bets or display information that will help you trade. If you have never used it before, give it a try as it can be really useful and interesting to experiment with.
Quiet end to Ebor
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 21st, 2009
The Ebor meeting closed with a quiet day, no fireworks or anything particularly special, but it’s been a good meeting.
I made a couple of cock ups today. Went too aggressive on one market and couldn’t turn it around when it went against me, but I did manage to restrict the loss to only -£50. Then I completely messed up the last and lost £120, not the ideal way to end, but the other races were OK. I managed to get a fair bit out of Chester today for some reason so I am hoping that continues into tomorrow. On the same day last year I didn’t do well so I am hoping to put that to rest tomorrow.
Subject to how tomorrow goes I could grab by fourth best ever week and depending on how next week goes I could be on target to set my highest ever strike rate for one month. About eight weeks ago I decided to do some analysis as I noticed my strike rate was gently slipping during the year. I narrowed this down to its cause and put in corrective action.
Just goes to show that no matter how experienced you are, there is always room to improve. It also shows you the importance of keeping good records. If I didn’t have such good records I may not have seen the gentle slope down or been able to identify the cause and put in corrective action.
There is a really useful spreadsheet on the forum for keeping track of your results. It’s worth investing some time to use it start keeping track of your results. It will quickly highlight your strengths and weaknesses.