Trigger betting - dutching

[danjuma]

I know how to write triggers for simple straight forward bets, but got no idea how to go about writing one for dutching.

What I want my spreadsheet to do is monitor a horse race prior to off, select each horse to dutch starting with the favourite until the book % is not more than 85%, and the stake is not greater than 5 times the targeted profit. At least the first three favourites must be included.

Can this be achieved using excel only, or would one have to resort to VBA?

Suggestions and advice please!

Many thanks

[danjuma]

Ok, time for some incentive.

Anybody willing to assist me with this can PM me and I will share this strategy with him/her. There's more to the startegy than above. However, I can't vouch for it's long term profitability, as it is not my strategy and I am yet to trial it long term hence reason why I want to write a trigger to execute it automatically.

Cheers.

[Spike]

What you're asking for can be accomplished with formulae only- if you want to do it that way.

You're asking for something fairly complex so I can't tell you exactly how to go about it- but broadly what you need to do is filter out the shortest runners, do 1/odds for each runner, add the values together and see what they come to- if it's what you want bet accordingly.

An easy way to deal with the triggering is to name a cell "BET" (or whatever), check all your criteria with IFs in that cell and make it show (say) 1 when you want to bet, then you can put a simple IF in the trigger cells along the lines of:

=if(and(BET=1, (+ something to distinguish which rows you're betting on), "BACK", "WAITING").

Speaking frankly though the Excel won't be the problem, it's the strategy that counts- and it's not as easy as you might think. No-one in their right mind will tell you how to win (if they know) but I will just advise you not to ask for too much- in my experience the less you ask the more you get. Then you just keep asking for it again and again....

Although you seem to prefer a no VBA solution (I can understand why) you'll certainly do better if you can propperly anylise your resuts. When I try new bots I record all the market data at the instant they fire, I would thoroughly reccomend this as otherwise you end up with no idea of what your bot just did- but for this you will need a bit of VBA. You can start by recording a macro that coppies and pastes the entire market data onto a different sheet, then strip out all the fluff from that and link it to a worksheet change event (there's plenty on that in this forum).

In running betting is a bear pit and there are lots of people (me included) who are ready and waiting to take your money. If you like being solvent then start off small and don't get excited too quickly.

I'd also suggest that you make a few different varations of your strategy and run them simultaneously, as otherwise it's impossible to compare bots like for like and you'll always be left wondering what effects the changes you make really have.

I would wish you luck but as one of the Bears in the pit I suppose I'm hoping you'll screw up and make me rich...... so break a leg!

[Spike]

Sorry- I just re-read your initial post and realised that you CANT do this with formulae only, as you need to be retaining data one way or another. So scratch what I said just now, it's VBA agogo.

[danjuma]

Spike, thanks at least for your attempt. Cheers

[Captain Sensible]

Can't see any reason why a triggered sheet couldn't be done using excel as the program allows you to export the order by odds so that taes care of using rank etc. Easy enough to use count to select at least the top three, book percent is easy 1/odds*100 (just use cumulative totals starting with the fav). Obviously if you're monitoring data and storing it you'd need vba but for a simple fire when the criteria is met sheet, 10 seconds or so before the off, shouldn't be a problem.

[GaryRussell]

The sort order in Betting Assistant is not reflected in Excel. You can use the Excel RANK function to identify the favourites. See http://gruss-software.co.uk/forum/viewt ... light=rank

[Captain Sensible]

Didn't realise the order wasn't exported to excel as never use it

Makes things more complicated for you when trying to add your cumulative totals up to 85% as the order isn't now as simple as usig rank. You'd probably need to use excels built in functions to deal with using arrays. Just lookup "Excel array formulas" in google should bring up lots of examples.

Personally I've no idea why you're setting a cutoff at 85% when when your targeted profit is effectively setting the limit at 80%. That assumes you're going to be offering odds rather than taking which leaves you open to the problems of being part matched on the losers only or betting into not fully formed markets.