Import Selections From File

[SionyBA]

I'll try and frame the use case best I can.

I have a spreadsheet for doing Pre Game research for Football/Soccer trades.
I want to import them as a coupon or similar into Guardian.
So, if they are in csv format

16:30,Man Utd,Liverpool

OR if its a horse Race

13:50,Ascot

OR

13:50,Ascot,Frankel
16:30,Liverpool

IF its possible to be specific about the team/horse you want to focus on that would be even better.
This would probably be relevant if you have automation files that for example want to back then lay Frankel in running or focus on markets for Liverpool.
Back/Lay 'Imported Selection' could then be an opening trigger in an automation sequence. It opens up all sorts of possibilities.

The ideal scenario would be a function in Bet Angel that links to a file (text file, Excel) that allows us to import just the matches/races/horse/team we want to focus on without having to search or filter for them the way it is set up now. This could also be a weblink for anyone using Google sheets to store their selections.

Within this link would be the ability for it to check the file for changes. This could be set in two ways.
1. Every 24 hours at a set time (e.g 9:00 am)
2. Check file for changes every X minutes.

I just want to populate Guardian with the specific races/matches I want and this seems to me to be the most efficient way of doing it.

I have added a poll for this post. I'd love to know if this is something other users would see as a good addition to the Bet Angel software or not. If you think it is a feature you would use hit the "Build it NOW Mr Webb" option . If you think I should just lay off the strong cheese before I go to bed then hit the " Not Needed" option.

[ShaunWhite]

You'll struggle to reliably match the market and selection without using the Betfair MarketId and SelectionID (both numeric codes). That would require some sort of export of all the markets and selections ahead of the days racing and then matching those against your text descriptions, before then making just the required IDs available to Guardian again. It's not impossible but I think the reason it's not already doable in BA is because the devil is in the detail. Development isn't cheap and the cost/benefit (ie subscribers they wouldn't have without it) is probably marginal.

When it comes to slightly 'exotic' functionality then one approach is to use BAs excel integration in such a way that BA becomes what's essentially just a transaction processing engine. It exports live market info, you develop a system (in excel or anything else) to use that in anyway you want and then feed the resulting transactions back into BA for it to handle the comms to Betfair. The open nature of BA is what attracted me to it initially as although it's already absolutely stuffed with functionality, it's also possible to build on that if you need to.

So if you don't have much success nudging the BA development project plan, there may be a way to get what you need with some lateral thinking.

I think a while ago I also had some success passing information to BA by devising a protocol that used various bet sizes, at various prices, on certain runners. BA can count unmatched bets and I think also unmatched bet size. So by for instance using excel to create an unmatched bet of £2 at 900 or £3 at 1000 on an outsider, you can setup Guardian to look for those and perform the actions you want. Not easy to do and easy to get in a mess but it's another way BAs openness can be an asset. (don't ask for details because I've forgotten exactly what it did and I don't use Guardian these days so can't comment on what the latest version can do)

[SionyBA]

Many thanks for the reply ShaunWhite. Getting other views on this is exactly what I wanted.

If MarketID and SelectionID are required to make it work then I'd likely find a way.
I've used Excel as a bridge in the past to pull the live data and trigger bets back into the software so I'm pretty familiar with that approach.
With horse racing its fairly easy to just load up the UK and IRE markets and there you go. On other software its just a case of pointing it in the direction of a csv or an excel sheet and it will import the selections. One software accepts an external list in this format.

Strategy X,Majestic Moll,WIN,09/02/2017 16:30,BACK

So, it even allows it to be attached to a certain strategy. That strategy is set to only place bets/open trades on matching selections dependent on it also meeting other strategy criteria.

I'm just trying to find a way to put the football games I'm interested in into a coupon and then apply automation rules to that list. Having the ability to attach the games to a certain strategy at the import level would be even better. I'm trying to avoid having to add each game manually to the market list and risk errors/missing games or just adding entire leagues to the list when I don't need 90% of the games to be there.

I accept that what I'm asking may indeed be judged an edge case so will go no further but a few users have taken part in the poll (Thank you to everyone that has) so I'm hoping the BA Dev team can at least have a look at it and see if a solution is beneficial to users and not too expensive/time hungry to implement.

Much like the workaround suggested by ShaunWhite, if anyone has any ideas how my suggestion could work then I'd love to hear them.

[matthlock]

I've just started a trial of Betangel Pro, mainly to compare it's automation features against other products, specifically for soccer matches. This import can be done in other software where I just need to point it to a text file containing the names of the selections (one on each line) and it finds the matches for that day, with the option to deselect if it picks up multiple from the same name.

This is working perfectly for me, and saves so much time over drilling down each country, league, date and match.

I'd love to see this feature in Betangel, as at the moment I'm leaning more towards other software because of it.