Help/advice on trigger betting please...

[aelara]

Could anyone give my some advice/formulas re trigger betting? Basically I have not got a clue when it comes to excel formulas and macros but need to able to do (try) the following. As the kids school run is slap bang in the middle of the racing day, I need to be able to set a 'back' bet on a particular horse when the race goes in play and also in the same race, (also when it goes in play) set some lay bets at odds of say 1.4 also on some particular horses. I hope this makes sense, as I have posted this before but got no replies, so maybe I didnt word it properly the first time.

[PeteB]

You can do what you want in Excel - monitor the status field in cell E2, which will show "In Play" when the race goes in play,

Set up your bets in advance, and then use cell formulae to set the trigger column to one of the trigger betting commands to place the bet when your conditions are met.
=if(E$2 = "In Play", "BACK", "WAIT")

If you are testing this, then set your back odds to 1000 and your lay odds to 1.01 (and make extra sure you never get thisthe wrong way round!) and you will see your bets get fired in

You will need to do something to make your formulae only bet once - have a search through the forum - there are a few examples - you could make sure the bet ref column is empty for example:
=if(and(E$2 = "In Play",U5=""), "BACK", "WAIT")

That should do it for your requirements in this post. In your other post, you wanted to place some bets before the off I think - if you do this, and they aren't matched, they will get cancelled if the market is suspended e.g. if a runner is withdrawn. So you would need to test for this and resubmit. Probably need to learn some VBA to do this - again there is lots of example code on here already.

Happy testing!

[aelara]

PeteB
Thanks for taking the time to reply. As I mentioned before, I am not really up to speed with excel formulas etc, so i do really need my hand held on this one. To make life much simpler, if I just wanted to lay a horse(s) after a race has gone in play, bearing in mind that i want this set up at an earlier time as I wont be by the computer at the time of the race, what formula can I use to achieve this?
Tony

[PeteB]

Ok hand-holding mode

First of all, how to send a bet from Excel manually:
Start Excel, Start BA and select a market.
Then in BA, select Excel -> Log current prices from the menu.Check the Enabled Triggered Betting checkbox, and click ok.

Now go to Excel, and check you can see the market displayed in Excel - it should have some market details, all the runners and their prices, and some extra columns, and at least the clock should be updating all the time. If the prices are changing, you will also see these changin in Excel.

Now set up your test bet - we will back the top runner for £2 at odds of 1000, as a safe test bet
In Cell R5 (under Odds), type 1000
In Cell S5 (under Stake), type 2
In Cell Q5 (under Trigger) type something like WAIT, or FRED, or anything really other than BACK, LAY, CANCEL, or CLEAR, or LAYFIELD
Nothing should have happened yet
Now change cell Q5 (under Trigger) to BACK -this will fire in a Back bet

You will see cell T5 (under Bet ref) say PENDING for a a short time - under a second before the race is in play, over a second if it is in play
Then it will change to a number, which is your bet reference - you may need to drag the column a bit wider to see the number properly

Now go to BA (or to the betfair website) and check that your bet has appeared - hooray it has!

Now let's cancel the bet:
Change change cell Q5 (under Trigger) to CANCEL
Cell T5 (under Bet ref) will now empty.
Got to BA, or betfair website, and check your bet has been cancelled - hooray!

You can also put CLEAR in cell T5 if you have placed one bet successfully, and you want to remove the betref so you can send in another bet.

So that's it - all you need to do now is make Excel put BACK in cell at the right moment

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Next step - how to make Excel put BACK in a cell when you want it to...

Ok we will do this in Excel without BA, so no danger of sending bets

Start a new Excel. In Cell B1, type =IF(A1="TWO WHEELS","GOOD", "BAD") and press enter
(make sure you have the equals sign on the front, and the quotes and commas in the right place)

Cell B1 should now read "BAD".
Now type TWO WHEELS in cell A1, and you should see cell B1 change to say GOOD
Type anything else (like FOUR WHEELS) in cell A1, or leave it empty, and cell B1 will say BAD.

(Use the F1 key on your keyboard to get Excel help, and it will tell you how the =if function works in Excel)

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Now put it together

Let's say we want to lay the first horse for £2 at 1.04 when the race goes in play

Start Excel, Start BA, start Excel logging with triggered betting enabled as before.

In Cell R5 (under Odds), type 1.04
In Cell S5 (under Stake), type 2
In Cell Q5 (under Trigger) type =if(E$2="IN PLAY", "LAY", "WAIT") and press enter
(again use Excel help to find out what the $ inn E$2 does - look up 'cell references' or something - it just means you can copy the formula to the second horse if you want to)

Cell Q5 should say WAIT

When the race goes in play, cell E2 will change from NOT IN PLAY to IN PLAY, and cell Q5 will automatically change from WAIT to LAY, and so fire in your lay bet.
Sit and watch it do this, and then feel very pleased with yourself.

That's it - now all you have to do is think up clever ways of making the Odds Stake and Trigger columns say what you want when you want - there are lots of other messages on here already showing how to do things at certain times, or at a certain number of minutes before the off etc - will take a while to find all the posts but it will be well worth it!

[aelara]

Thanks for the reply.
Amazing thing this holding hands lark! Certainly made it clearer to me. I will give it a bash this afternoon and let you know how I got on.
Tony

[aelara]

OK. Two races gone and......somethings wrong. I used the formula for laying and in each of the first to races I tried to lay 2 or 3 horses at 1.01 for minimum odds. I got as far as the bets firing when the races went in-play but the bets reference cell stayed as PENDING for each bet and that was it! Where did I go wrong?
Tony

[PeteB]

Hmmm not sure - if it has got as far as 'pending' then I think you have done everything right

There have been some other threads "Bet refs stay pending in Excel" or similar - not sure what the outcome of these was though

[PeteB]

See here -looks like it's a known problem with a possible fix on the way
http://www.gruss-software.co.uk/forum/v ... .php?t=986

[aelara]

Thanks PeteB. Appreciate all your help. Glad to see its nothing I've done wrong. Will wait a couple of days and see if a fix comes out.
Tony

[Mitch]

I don't want to make things more complicated than they already are just starting out with formulas but.......

In most races the IN-PLAY indicator comes up before SUSPENDED disappears so you would need an extra part to your formula.

At the moment you have

Code: Select all

=IF(E$2="IN PLAY","LAY","WAIT")

with the 'condition' being E$2="IN PLAY".

You need to slightly alter the condition so that E2 must say IN PLAY and at the same time F2 must not say SUSPENDED.
To do that we need to use AND to specify that 2 things must happen before LAY is written in the cell.

Code: Select all

=IF(AND(E$2="IN PLAY",F$2<>"SUSPENDED"),"LAY","WAIT")

<> means 'not equal to'. You can put as many conditions as you like in the first part of the IF statement, and as many as you like in the AND statement, so your criteria can get even more specific if you want it to.

[aelara]

Mitch
Thanks for that mate. I'll give it a bash with this afternoons racing.
Tony

[aelara]

That worked a treat. Thanks to both of you. The only thing I haven't worked out yet is how to get over 3 races ready. ie I can get excel to show 3 races in book 1 with sheets 1,2 and 3 but when I try and set a 4th race up I kind of hit a dead end. Is there a secret to this?
Tony

[PeteB]

On the Excel menu, do Insert -> Worksheet

[aelara]

As simple as that??
Well, thanks again.
Tony