Trouble matching at market price in low-liquidity market

[asahenettleton]

Hello, All.
I am placing some bets automatically at the best market price with Guardian in a market without much liquidity. Even though my bets are small and certainly smaller than the amount of money in the market in real time, too often the bets fail to match. I am now streaming and so refreshing at 20ms instead of 200ms, but that has helped less than I expected. Perhaps the problem is how long it takes to send data as opposed to receiving it. I tried slightly reducing the odds, but then my strategy is not profitable and sometimes the bets still do not much.

I am contemplating using wired internet (I have been using fast wireless) and/or using a faster computer (a desktop instead of a laptop, albeit a high performance one by the standards of 2015). But I thought I might into into the group's collective wisdom on whether such ideas or others that I haven't had yet are useful. I doubt that this problem is novel, but I was not sure what to search for.

If money is indeed placed in a queue and not all priortized by bet size, then the fact that my bets are small shouldn't make them low-priority, I take it.

Might Excel be running more slowly than it could? Thank you.

[ShaunWhite]

Refresh rate only affects the display of data and not bet placement.

Wired is definitely preferable.

Bets are matched by Betfair strictly on a first come first served basis rather than size or anything else.

Getting matched at the target price is all part of the game I'm afraid. Low volume markets with high liquidity being especially tricky.

Excel shouldn't come into the equation if you're doing this with Guardian.

[asahenettleton]

That is helpful, thank you, ShaunWhite. Excel comes in due to the Excel spreadsheet integration. I should make a more sustained trial of wired internet, though it will require changing where I work.

[ShaunWhite]

If wired access is difficult try googling "powerline ethernet".

I tried them once and it was better than wireless, not perfect but good enough. It's probably easier than having 20m of ethernet cable draped round the house.

[asahenettleton]

Thank you very much. I hadn't heard of that, but it could be very useful.