Testing my spreadsheet

[97hills]

I have finally got a working prototype to start sending a few prices through to betfair. I've got a few questions that I'm hoping someone out there can help me with before I send my first set of prices through:

1) Is it possible to test at tiny stakes first such as a few pennies? I know the minimum stake is £2 but I'd like to test it first at far smaller stakes for obvious reasons

2) The sheet I have right now is very basic. My initial plan is just to get my first set of prices onto betfair and once I'm happy that's working perfectly I'll start to get a bit smarter with putting up more money a few ticks away if the first batch is taken and other features such as that. However I'm curious as to how the BACK trigger works in practice. For example, if I was to put up a £1k lay at evs, what would happen within the sheet until all that money was taken? i.e. is the bet ref, time, av match odds and matched stake constantly updating within the excel trigger sheet?

3) Does the sheet work by just sending each price/stake through in a one way batch? For example, if my trigger is once again to lay 1k at evs, will that price stay up there until the full stake is gone or until the trigger is changed/deleted? i.e. for a 'suspend all bets' within my sheet, is deleting is triggers enough so cells Q:S are blank or do I have to change the trigger to 'CANCEL -ALL'?

I'm sure a lot of these little queries will be very easy to figure out once the sheet is up and running but as you can imagine, I want to get this working as well as I possibly can before I start populating betfair to minimise my chances of making a big error.

Thanks in advance

[osknows]

Hello,

1. Yes below minimum bets are possible, however BA places them in stages by submitting a £2 bet first so the balance needs to be sufficient to cover the liabilities of the initial bets. Also, there are some restrictions on SP Lay bets I think.

2. A partially matched bet will have "P" appended to the end n the Bet Reference column in the market sheet and the matched amount/profit loss will update as more is matched. MyBets sheet will have the bet reference listed twice once with F with the matched amount and one with U as the unmatched amount and update on each refresh based on any changes.

3. Columns Q, R & S are the trigger, odds & stake. If these are all filled then a bet will be placed on the next refresh. A bet reference will then appear in column T. No other bets will be placed until Column T is cleared. So if you you left the contents of Q, R & S intact after a bet and cleared column T then the same bet will be triggered again. CANCEL-ALL and similar triggers are only needed if you want to cancel unmatched bets already placed.

Regards
Os

[97hills]

Hello,

1. Yes below minimum bets are possible, however BA places them in stages by submitting a £2 bet first so the balance needs to be sufficient to cover the liabilities of the initial bets. Also, there are some restrictions on SP Lay bets I think.

2. A partially matched bet will have "P" appended to the end n the Bet Reference column in the market sheet and the matched amount/profit loss will update as more is matched. MyBets sheet will have the bet reference listed twice once with F with the matched amount and one with U as the unmatched amount and update on each refresh based on any changes.

3. Columns Q, R & S are the trigger, odds & stake. If these are all filled then a bet will be placed on the next refresh. A bet reference will then appear in column T. No other bets will be placed until Column T is cleared. So if you you left the contents of Q, R & S intact after a bet and cleared column T then the same bet will be triggered again. CANCEL-ALL and similar triggers are only needed if you want to cancel unmatched bets already placed.

Regards
Os

Excellent, thanks for your help.

Is it possible to put up both a back and lay on the same player/horse etc? For example, if I made the price evs so would be more than happy to back at 2.5 or lay at 1.5. Can this be done through one spreadsheet or would I need to have two different spreadsheets running? One to effectively put up all my back prices and one to put up my lay prices?

[97hills]

Hello,

1. Yes below minimum bets are possible, however BA places them in stages by submitting a £2 bet first so the balance needs to be sufficient to cover the liabilities of the initial bets. Also, there are some restrictions on SP Lay bets I think.

2. A partially matched bet will have "P" appended to the end n the Bet Reference column in the market sheet and the matched amount/profit loss will update as more is matched. MyBets sheet will have the bet reference listed twice once with F with the matched amount and one with U as the unmatched amount and update on each refresh based on any changes.

3. Columns Q, R & S are the trigger, odds & stake. If these are all filled then a bet will be placed on the next refresh. A bet reference will then appear in column T. No other bets will be placed until Column T is cleared. So if you you left the contents of Q, R & S intact after a bet and cleared column T then the same bet will be triggered again. CANCEL-ALL and similar triggers are only needed if you want to cancel unmatched bets already placed.

Regards
Os

Excellent, thanks for your help.

Is it possible to put up both a back and lay on the same player/horse etc? For example, if I made the price evs so would be more than happy to back at 2.5 or lay at 1.5. Can this be done through one spreadsheet or would I need to have two different spreadsheets running? One to effectively put up all my back prices and one to put up my lay prices?

Off that, this one is actually relatively easy to test! Looks like it is possible through one spreadsheet

[gavind]

Let us know how the test fairs. I'm confident that people won't mind shelling out a few cash if the tests goes good.