Question regarding 'case sensitivity' with Excel Automation

[secretgambler]

I have had reports that bets on Dreams Of Reality did not get placed due to the name being Dreams of Reality (lowercase o) via some bet automation using Gruss with Excel trigger betting. Can you confirm whether this may or may not be the case ?

[MiniBlueDragon]

I'd guess it's entirely dependent on the type of automation you're using to be honest. e.g. if you're looking for a specific odds movement across the field then the spelling of horse names is irrelevant.

If you're specifically trying to match a horse's name you're always best off checking in Gruss beforehand anyway as I've seen instances of Racing Post spelling a runner name one way, Sporting Life another and Betfair another still.

Another example is Cave Artist in the 20:30 Sligo tonight. In Excel he's:

Cave Artist (RES)

On racecards he's:

Cave Artist

or

Cave Artist (IRE)

etc.

I tend to use column Y to replicate the names and strip out un-necessary characters using this:

Code: Select all

=IF(A5="","",SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A5," (NR)","")," (Res)","")," (RES)",""),".",""))

[secretgambler]

I'd guess it's entirely dependent on the type of automation you're using to be honest. e.g. if you're looking for a specific odds movement across the field then the spelling of horse names is irrelevant.

If you're specifically trying to match a horse's name you're always best off checking in Gruss beforehand anyway as I've seen instances of Racing Post spelling a runner name one way, Sporting Life another and Betfair another still.

Another example is Cave Artist in the 20:30 Sligo tonight. In Excel he's:

Cave Artist (RES)

On racecards he's:

Cave Artist

or

Cave Artist (IRE)

etc.

I tend to use column Y to replicate the names and strip out un-necessary characters using this:

Code: Select all

=IF(A5="","",SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(SUBSTITUTE(A5," (NR)","")," (Res)","")," (RES)",""),".",""))

I hear that. Ultimately though it should take the Betfair name and ignore the case. I have seen instances of House Party being listed in RP, PA correctly but Betfair listed as Houseparty which is quite annoying but I would like to think that "Dreams Of Reality" would be the same as "Dreams of Reality" or "Dreams of reality" or "Dreams Of reality"...they are all the same horse, just wanted some clarification as to whether Gruss ignored the actual CASE rather than any kind of suffix etc.

[MiniBlueDragon]

Not sure if it officially does or not but I guess a workaround for case (assuming the suffixes never cause you issues) could be to use column Y with:

Code: Select all

=PROPER(A5)

and do the same for your runners to match from.

[Captain Sensible]

I hear that. Ultimately though it should take the Betfair name and ignore the case. I have seen instances of House Party being listed in RP, PA correctly but Betfair listed as Houseparty which is quite annoying but I would like to think that "Dreams Of Reality" would be the same as "Dreams of Reality" or "Dreams of reality" or "Dreams Of reality"...they are all the same horse, just wanted some clarification as to whether Gruss ignored the actual CASE rather than any kind of suffix etc.

It's not actually Gruss that's handling those routines but excel that's deciding whether the names match to then set the trigger cells. I've no idea what formulas you're using i.e. MATCH, FIND, VLOOKUP etc but some of the excel functions like FIND are case sensitive whereas MATCH isn't .You just need to take that into account either by switching to case insensitive searches or even just typing everything in lower case and forcing the search to look for lower case only i.e.

FIND("lower_case_name",LOWER(A5))

each Horse has it's own selectionID that stays with it so as long as you use the names from the website or Timeform site which (Betfair also own) you should be OK. Although like MiniBlueDragon says it's worth stripping out the reserve tags that can crop up on the Irish stuff or Dogs

[doncht]

Thanks. I'll try this out and make sure I use the names from the website. I pretty much confident that it will be a smooth one. I'll update in a few.

[zuqiu123]

I've no idea what formulas you're using i.e. MATCH, FIND, VLOOKUP etc but some of the excel functions like FIND are case sensitive whereas MATCH isn't .

[yellowman]

I pretty much confident that it will be a smooth one. I'll update in a few.








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