Notifications For Selection Changes?
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Hi All,
Just an idea (or maybe something that can already be done and I just don't know how) - is there any way we can set up notifications for every time one of my 'selections' changes within, lets say, an hour of the race?
I do fixed pre-race bets on horse racing, rather than active trading and use Bet Angel (rather than other bots) to place the bets if they fall in the right price range. The difficulty I'm having is that I seem to have to log-out and log-in all day long to see if any selections have changed. This also requires me to check a lot of bets against the 'new' list and that takes a lot of time.
Most of my strategies are based on flat metrics that shouldn't change during the day (weight/ age etc), but they only need to have one factor that does change and I'm stuck. Often I will log-out/ in multiple times throughout an afternoon, go through the list for the next 10 races and nothing will have changed. Then I log on the next day and notice the saved strategy changed it's horse at the last second and my performance is vastly different to the recorded strategy. Yesterday, I had one selection that was selected by four different strategies. It won at 29-1 (I had laid it as they were all lay strategies) and it cost me a fortune. I was/ am absolutely fine with that, but then this morning only one of my strategies is showing it as a loss - because one element changed that disqualified it from the others, but it must have been quite last minute.
This isn't a moan about the result, but it would be amazing if there was an automatic notification feature that could email me as soon as a change occurred - or even just a section in my area like a dashboard that would display updates to selections the second they happen and can be refreshed so I don't have to log-in/ out every time to update the selections. I spend hours checking/ counter-checking and then they change the moment I'm not doing it.
Any ideas/ suggestions?
Many thanks, Michael
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@Michael-Chalk I think this is a good idea. I'll have a think about how to implement it!
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@Michael-Chalk in BFBM I can set the minimum number of runners, can Bet Angel not do this??
If there is anything which I can get BFBM to check before placing the order I run a strategy with those removed and this is what feeds into BFBM. If the number of runners drops from 7 to 6, then the bot will just ignore that market.
That way I can upload all the races in the morning once and wait for the bot to do it's thing before placing the trade. With the link between BFBM and the horse software, I don't even need to do that, except for one strategy where I have to enter the potential selections in the to be placed market.
I then have a version with all the criteria back in to compare to what BFBM is actually trading. There are trades the bot takes that don't appear on the results and results that are listed on the strategy that BFBM didn't place, but on the whole they are comparable.
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Hi Paul,
Thank you for your input. I always test my strategies with BSP as well (with a criteria of price between x and y for backtesting). There is sometimes a small (one tick) difference between betfair and BTC's software prices, so the BSP is identical for either laying or backing and easy to replicate. But this isn't a problem, providing there is sufficient margin anyway.
My problem is when the selections in my strategy change and I don't know about it to alter my placed orders on bet angel. For example, I have a criteria on one strategy that says minimum 7 runners in the race. If a horse drops out 20 minutes before the race that takes it to 6, I need to know so I can remove the selection as the race and selection no longer qualifies. I have quite a few bets every day and am constantly checking for updates, but this is very time consuming.
It is especially frustrating when I don't see a change to the selections or it doesn't appear in the updates, so I back or lay the horse only for it to go against me, but then not be recorded as a selection in my strategies. My BTC graphs show a very profitable day, but my betfair account disagrees. Sometimes this goes the other way too of course (this is not a conspiracy theory/ moan). Profitable strategies aren't hard to find with the BTC software in my opinion, the challenge I'm finding is matching my bets to the selections.
I used to think wouldn't it be interesting if there was a way of searching historically over the 3-4yrs all the selections for any strategy but with the selections frozen at 1pm that day i.e. with no last minute changes. The actual prices as of 5 seconds before race time, but the original horse picks. But that would be almost impossible to do I would imagine.
So my big challenge is how I can stay on top of any potential changes and some sort of notification has to be the way to go. Hopefully @Adam will have some ideas!
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@Michael-Chalk I use BFBM and run my strategy selections without taking odds into account, then have the bot make the trade if the odds criteria is met.
I then have another version of the strategy names results, which does have the odds criteria to compare against the actual trades entered.
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@Michael-Chalk I'll tag @Adam
