Advice please, suggestions

[Paul J]

Hello, I hope that this is not deemed ' to basic' ?, and sorry if this question is not really appropriate to this forum.

For my sins, the only markets I get involved with on BF ( on a serious basis ) are the greyhound markets, we all have to be true to ourselves, and identify our own strengths and weaknesses, my bookmaking / betting background means this suits me just fine, and it works for me, but my IT + technical knowledge is limited, and that is being generous to limited.

I have a fast connection, good system, that i reset, re tweek every morning, in pursuit of speed and bet execution.

Pretty standard for me is to go through all my system tweeks every morning, I then use the standard BF interface, with the BF standard refresh turned off, Garys refresh programme set at 2 secs, verify bets unticked, and after that hours of manual backs and lays, sorry to have gone about this in a long winded way, specifically as my thing is the dogs, would ( or Gary if you are reading this) the one click programme be helpful to me in what I do, relevent to faster execution of bets in the dog markets please.

Any other suggestions, or advice would be greatly appriciated, one final thing, if I may, I use sporting life website feed for the live greyhound shows, as basic as this is going to soung, can I buy a refresh code anywhere that I could set that site to refresh to 2 secs, like garys works on BF, sick of making ten thousand finger clicks everty day.

Thanks for taking the time to read Paul

[Mitch]

If you currently use the BF screen where you click your selection then type the odds and stake then the one-click program will be loads faster than you're used to, as long as the odds you are submitting at are one of the ones shown on screen, and you use level stakes.

If not I think it would still be quicker but maybe not by as much.

Excel can also be used to fire bets in which would be quicker still, but only if you can define 'rules' for when to place bets. ie. it's according to what's happening on screen rather than your experience.

[Dai_Young]

Paul

I suspect you are using Internet Explorer as your browser at present. If you switch to a browser like Firefox or Opera it is straightforward to get the refresh rates you require for the SL greyhound shows. With Opera I believe it is a built in feature to alter the refresh rate, in firefox there is an extension you can download.

Without knowing exactly how you operate it is difficult to say whether you should be using the traditional betfair interface, Gary's program or an excel sheet firing bets. I would guess that if you have been using the official inteface for some time it will be difficult for you to switch, at least at first. The main advantage of Gary's excellent program is that with one click you can bet instantly at any of the prices on offer on betfair to a preset stake. If you think that would speed up the way you trade I would recommend giving the program a trial run.

If you are a systematic bettor who bets to pre-determined criteria, the use of excel in conjunction with Gary's program is a god send. There are plenty of people on these boards who will assist if that is your desired approach.

[thunderfoot]

EXCEL is excellent for 1 click trading.

See http://www.gruss-software.co.uk/forum/v ... .php?t=199 to get an idea of what you can do in EXCEL. This Ladder Trading system is one I've made , and it gives you an idea of what is achievable using EXCEL. The system is by no means finished as I have some features to add, but it does do the basic 1 click trading.

[Uncle Ernie]

......but my IT + technical knowledge is limited, and that is being generous to limited.

I think your Excel prog may be a bit advanced for Paul, thunderfoot.

But nice to see you still gloating over your achievements

[Paul J]

thankyou for your input

[Captain Sensible]

The problem with using a refresh script on the sporting life site is that it'll continually refresh all the other crap on the page like the ads and pictures. I wrote a script to grab the betting odds & runner data only from SP and displayed that rather than the full page for dogs and horses. Problem is it was in php so unless you have that on your PC or access to some webspace to stick it on its possibly useless to you.

Prior to gary writing his refresh script for betfair everyone used to use a free program called privoxy - simple to install and will allow you to set your own refresh rate and parse (remove) the ads pictures etc from the page. I still have some old scripts for sporting life if you want to consider using that if nothing else crops up

[mrclox]

i can send you a spreadsheet that can refresh those prices into a sheet as often as yor inbternet connection can take , but wouldnt yo be better of with teletext or running a tv card with teletext on it?

[thunderfoot]

Wouldn't a Web Query in EXCEL and a Macro to refresh that Web Query every 'x' seconds do the job?

[boycee]

Yes I tried that and the prices come in as a date. Tried to get round the format but each time it refreshes back it comes in date format.???????

[GeorgeUK]

Is there a way to display the prices as decimal rather than fraction on the site?

4/6 will be read as 4th June etc. Had the same problems when trying to download results from another site.
The longhand way i got around it was:
copy from site and paste into word (html format)
copy this table and pastespecial as rtf format (still in word so the rtf characters are in the table)
copy the table again, go to excel, format the required columns as text, pastespecial text
and it should now display as you want it. 4/6 instead of a date.

Like i said a very long way to do something that should be simple, but it works.

[mrclox]

Boycee you can get around the date thingy by formating the cells into number format before you download the data!

[mrclox]

failing that use =day() and =month() to change to numbers and then divide them to give you decimal

[mrclox]

if you look at the date that the download gives you for instance 11/4 is gieven as 11th april ... so you use =month(the cell with date in ) to give you 4 then =day(the cell with date in) to give you 11 then =( [cell with 11 in it ] / [cell with 4 in it] )+1 gives you 3.75 easy isnt it