Soccer Supervisor 2 Pro, Malbot, Spikey and Spikey Tennis: Betfair Bots
A Betfair Bot is simply a computer program that runs automatically on Betfair, according to the rules in the program. And there is no doubt there are many opportunities to make use of them on Betfair. Since they work automatically, one particular strength of is that you can set your bot to work when you aren’t there to keep an eye on your screen. So that’s alright then?
NO! If you don’t know what you are doing the using a bot can seriously damage your wealth. For example, you might decide to have a Betfair bot that bets on the favourite if the odds are greater than x and there is a gap of y points between the prices of the first and second favourites. You might even add bells and whistles such as a recoupment strategy. Sounds good? It does actually sound OK: you can go about your business and your bot is quietly working away making a tonne of money. Catch is that your bot has no brain and, if badly written, will carry on betting as your losses mount and bank dwindles.
A well-constructed and thought out Betfair bot can do wonders for your betting life…
If you do decide to have a Betfair bot, you can see that it is vital that you build in limits and safeguards and that you test and retest to be sure it will do what you want it to do. It is also important that you have a good feel for how Betfair works. A good example is to know that markets can be suspended and what the impact of a suspension on the market might be. You then have to ensure your bot can cope with such a suspension in a way that is helpful to you.
Beginning to sound like having a Betfair bot is more trouble than it’s worth? Anything but! A well-constructed and thought out Betfair bot can do wonders for your betting life on Betfair and give you much more freedom. Let’s have a look at scenarios where bots can be useful. “Bot” comes from “robot” and, just as robots main strength is with repetitive tasks, so too can a bot save you time and energy doing manual tasks. Go back to the strategy mentioned above. If you were to operate this yourself, you would have to sit in front of your Betfair screen with your calculator subtracting the price of the favourite from that of the second favourite. Race after race…. A Betfair bot can do that for you time after time and never get bored.
A Betfair bot becomes much stronger when the strategy becomes much more complex…
Similarly, there are a lot of strategies that cut across several markets. Suppose you reckon there is a great chance of a winner if there is a particular relationship between the differences in price among the top 3 selections over the last hour and the last 10/5 minutes before the off in both the win and place markets and the weight and volume of money. This will involve switching between screens and more use of the calculator, as above. Not only will a Betfair bot be more efficient in switching screens and calculating it can also pick up prices you don’t see (in an active market the price on your screen is a headline with a lot of ebb and flow bets going on beneath the surface). Thus, your bet can often pick up the best price.
We referred to a couple of simple examples where it could be well worth your while to have a bot. However, the rationale for having a Betfair bot becomes much stronger when the strategy becomes much more complex. For example, in football, we might want to build a strategy which takes account of the price of the favourite, the score, the time passed in the match, the number of corners for and against and current price in over/under markets. Frankly, impossible for me to do with any efficiency but a no brainer for a bot (which, you won’t need reminding, has no brain). It can do all these things simultaneously, instantaneously, again and again.
Try out new strategies…
Which brings me to another, perhaps even more valuable reason for working with a bot, especially one which may have a lot of triggers. You should be able set it to operate in Test Mode. There are 2 good reasons for this: the first is to be sure that it works the way you want it to. The second is that you can try out new strategies and tweak them until you have got it right. Or, perhaps even more valuably, to prove it does not work! Better to “lose” your cash in a test than in the real world.
There you have it: Betfair bots are excellent compadres for routine, repetitive work; for quick comparisons and calculations over a range of screens/markets. They don’t get tired, bored or emotional. We said excellent compadres, maybe not. They are pretty boring grinding away at the tasks they have been assigned to do. But they do leave you free to do less boring things and to be more adventurous in setting up your bets.
Clarification: While we wrote about Betfair bots (the major volume of bots we create) you are not limited to Betfair as we also create bots that you can use on Smarkets, Matchbook and Betdaq .