Wach Me Going Through The Process of Getting Online Help
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Hi everyone
I love listening to podcasts. It makes me realize that I'm not alone with my problems, gives me ways and suggestions to get on the right track and it makes me a better trader. One of the best podcasts out there, in my opinion, is "The Business of Betting Podcast". If you haven't heard it, it's a must.
So the other day I was listening to episode 77 - Data Analytics and Betting Optimization. This Aussie, David Vitali, has a company called Statfreaks. If you - like me, handle a lot of data every day, collecting cleaning and analysing you should really think of what you are doing. Or as David puts it:
"I rather a professional punter spending an extra two hours analyzing the data, then copy-pasting off the internet into Excel. To me, that is a complete waste of time cause they are artists with a skillset of understanding what they are searching for, suffering from doing everything manually where there can be automated processes."
Booom!!!
I know this, I do. But somehow I have not gotten around to do something about it. But what he said really hit home with me. I spend about three hours every day collecting and cleaning data from the internet, another hour updating and maybe one more to go over the results and putting it into the right tables. That is totally insane and I'm not going to have it anymore.
Now I don't want to use Statfreaks service, even though I might benefit from it. But since I don't need the Australian horse market (only doing British and Irish stats) there was only one option open for me, the three-step one-on-one learning system. And in order to do the last step, the SQL part which I deemed most important, I had to do the first two, and since I'm pretty good with Excel, it felt a bit overpriced for me.
So instead I'm going to buy myself help from external programmers. They will be able to get me exactly what I want (or they won't get my money, hehe...). Sitting here planning this, it occurred to me that if I did this openly to the community, if I let you in on the process as it happens, the planning, the execution, the result, all of it, you could let yourself be inspired to do the same and you could help me with your opinions and thoughts when or if you have any. I'm going to do this starting tonight and I hope to be able to have everything set up in a month or two.
Ok, here I go...
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This is how far I got at the moment.
Pavel has now delivered two scrap engines for the total sum of $70 (£53.13). $30 for Patternform and $40 for TimeForm. I have a folder on my desktop:
What I do is opening the horse_races_scraper and I get a menu where I put in a date and click on Download, either Patternform or TimeForm.
The data is then downloaded to either in PatternForm or TimeForm.
Patternform is the page I use pre race to find my selections, together with GeeGeez and Betfair. TimeForm is the page I use to get results, BSP and hi/low inplay numbers.
I have Pavel looking at GeeGeez and Betfair right now to determine what to scrape next. In the meantime, I have started to build a database in a program that I know how to handle, FileMaker.
FileMaker will not be able to cope with all the data and do all the calculations needed. I'm using it to understand, plan, test and evaluate before I pay someone to build it in SQL.
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I gave Pavel my second project, scraping off the TimeForm. After TimeForm it's hopefully time for Betfair. Pavel needs two days for TimeForm.
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@pontus-kylberg Thats a cracking review, the software looks good!
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I gave Pavel 5 stars:
Like I have driven a Bentley, sure...
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Ok, I'm done with my first of many freelance investments.
Pavel from Russia gave me a superb scraping script for $30 (+ $3.50 to Freelance.com). I start Excel, and this is what I see on my computer:
I put in date (or an URL if the document I want to download is in a different folder) and press DOWNLOAD. This is what I get:
This is just what I want, and I am now going to add this in a DB program and merge the data with data from other sites. This will take 2 hours of my working day, and I love it.
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@charles-cartwright
I have a shortlist of five decent programmers right now, but since Sweden regulated it's betting Betfair had to redo its Swedish site, and it's a little bit unclear about the API. It will take a week or so to get it sorted. In the meantime, I'm doing Patternform.
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@pontus-kylberg
Did you get anywhere with your other request?
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@stuart-rozzier I'm glad.
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Really enjoying this thread!!
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Update!
I have listed another project to get Patternform scraped and turned into Excel. This was a much simpler task then the Betfair page and I got 120 interested. What I have asked for is this page:
Some of you might say that this is a super easy page to scrape, download, turned into Excel or whatever. Not me. I need help and I don't want to ask my friends who are busy doing there one s**t. I want this to be as simple as possible, and so I want to be able to just put in a date in a box and by that make the correct Excel file appear on my desktop, and I want to be able to collect data from earlier dates.
I had a lot of bad offers to go through, but finally ended up with this guy yesterday:
Pavel is new to this forum and wanted to build his portfolio. He offered to complete the task for $30. And he will be done by Friday.
So how doe's delivery and payment work?
When you register a project, you chose whether you want it to be one set amount or if you want to pay by the hour. I chose a set amount for this project. You then decide if you want to have milestone payments or not. This is such a small project so milestones will not be necessary.
Freelancer then asks you to deposit the amount into your account in Freelancer. The money sits there until you are satisfied with the results from the freelancer. That is, when Pavel has delivered the application and I have tested it to my satisfaction, I release the funds and he gets the money.
I have previously encountered a guy from India that I hired who was a total bs. He did not deliver what we agreed on and after two weeks I shut him down. I spoke the customer service and they told me to not pay him anything at all, even though he had worked hours with my project. I could not use anything of what he had done and I had to restart with a new freelancer and so didn't pay him anything. The system feels quite safe for me, the customer.
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Well, the data is out there for everyone to see, but there is no commercial program that gives me the data the way I want it. So I'm going to pay someone, and they're not all dubious
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@pontus-kylberg
What exactly are you trying to do because I almost certain there are commercial products available that can do what you want without hiring some dubious guy off the internet
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@charles-cartwright yep. Not 100% sure where this is going to land at the end. Let's see.
(No, not using VPS)
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@pontus-kylberg
They all sound a bit dodgy to me.
I mean just extracting data from their database and converting it into a convenient excel spreadsheet is relatively simple (and probably would cost only a couple hundred bucks) but collecting data in real time and then populating some database on a server (that you would have to pay for) I would guess to be really costly and not sure what your ROI is likely to be.
Do you use a VPS right now to run anything? I use one for various reasons and they are not cheap if you want one that is fast enough to trade in and out of betfair without a lag.
Good luck with all this though! Not for me I have to say.
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Oh, just need you all to see this. Sounds like they want me to buy a whole casino, for only $155. Wow!
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Now is the season for sorting and choosing. I had quite a few decent suggestions, and some not so good. Som where a bit too pricy, like Kenta S. that wants me to invest in... something, I really don't know in what.
Then we have the guys that say No! Can't be done! By anyone! Like Issam B.
Or those that have "read your description very carefully and are ready to start now. Project done in 3 days, only $55!" like Fouad S. The guy that read the description very carefully suddenly reads it...
And then the ones (quite a few) that is trying to real me into buying before I've looked at all the offers. Like Raja K.
But I have found some good ones too. I think this will cost me around 150-200$.
Keep you updated.
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This is the project description I'm sending them.
Hi Nnnn.
Thank you for showing interest in working with me on this project. To find the data that I want from Betfair, this is where you go to find it (although you are using API):
And this is what I want as a result in Excel on my desktop:
The columns are as follows:
A - ID-Numb
The cell contains a code that identifies the row in order to merge it with information from other data. I have colour-coded row 2 so you can see what cells make up the code.
Red is the content of the Date column, 10 positions.
Blue is the content of the Time column, 5 positions.
Brown is the content of the first five positions of the Track column, 5 positions. If the track is shorter then 5 positions, like for instance the track Ayr, the empty space should be filled up with "x", like so: Ayrxx.
Green is the content of the Number column, 2 positions.
Between the contents in the code, there should be "-"B - Date
The date of the races formatted like: YYYY-MM-DDC - Day
This is also a date field, but formatted in Excel like: DDDDD - Time
The time the race is scheduled to start.E - Track
The name of the track.F - No
This is the order of the race from one specific track. The number doesn't exist on Betfairs webpage, but maybe in their API? Otherwise, you have to create it. The numbers should be like:Huntingdon 14:00, number 1
Huntingdon 14:30, number 2
Huntingdon 15:00, number 3
Huntingdon 15:30, number 4
Huntingdon 16:05, number 5
Huntingdon 16:35, number 6
Huntingdon 17:10, number 7
Huntingdon 17:40, number 8
Market Rasen 15:10, number 1
Market Rasen 15:45, number 2
and so on...
G - Condition
This column contains the track condition. You can see the information in the picture above.H - Distance
This column contains the distance of the race, as seen in the picture below.
I - Type
This column contains the information to the right of the distance in the picture above.J - Selections
This column contains the number of horses in the race. If horses get scratched, this number change. It could change all the way up to when the results of the race come in, a couple of minutes after the race is settled.K - Number
This column contains the horse's individual number from 1 and upward. If a horse gets scratched in a race, that specific number is not used. So the numbers of the starting horses in a race could look like: 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7.L - Draw
In some races, they use starting gates. In those races, the horse gets a draw number, a number representing the position in the gate. It looks like this:
M - Name
The name of the horse.N - Back
The odds in the BACK column, the blue column. These odds change frequently until the race is over.O - Favourite
This column grades every horse by the column BSP. The lowest value gets 1, second lowest gets 2 and so on. These values change frequently until the race starts.P - BSP
This column contains what is called BetfairStartingPrice. These odds change frequently until the race starts.Q - Lay
The odds in the LAY column, the pink column. These odds change frequently until the race is over.R - +60
This is a timestamp 60 minutes before the scheduled offtime (column D) containing the BACK odds (column N) at this specific time.S - +30
Same as column R, but 30 minutes before the scheduled offtime.T - +10
Same as column R, but 10 minutes before the scheduled offtime.U - +9
Same as column R, but 9 minutes before the scheduled offtime.V - +8
Same as column R, but 8 minutes before the scheduled offtime.W - +7
Same as column R, but 7 minutes before the scheduled offtime.X - +6
Same as column R, but 6 minutes before the scheduled offtime.Y - +5
Same as column R, but 5 minutes before the scheduled offtime.Z - +4
Same as column R, but 4 minutes before the scheduled offtime.AA - +3
Same as column R, but 3 minutes before the scheduled offtime.AB - +2
Same as column R, but 2 minutes before the scheduled offtime.AC - +1
Same as column R, but 1 minute before the scheduled offtime.AD - +0
Same as column R, but on the scheduled offtime.AE - Low +5
This is the lowest traded odds from 5 minutes before the scheduled offtime, and until the race goes into live-mood (until the race starts). In the picture below you can see where the information is found on their webpage. In the first table marked in red, you see the traded odds, and the second marked column is the amount traded. The amount here is in SWEDISH currency.
I want the cell AE to contain the lowest odds traded over the amount 999 during the period 5 minutes pre off and up to the time in which the race starts.
So if the picture below only contained the amount traded within this time period, and the race now would have started, the cell should contain the value 3,65, the lowest traded odds with the amount traded over 999.
I would like all races from the same date to reside in the same table one after the other. And all the numbers have to bee in European format, so 3.65 should be 3,65 (point/comma).
I would like to know your price and proximate days it will take you to do this. Your'e wellcome with questions.
Thank you.
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@pontus-kylberg said in Wach Me Going Through The Process of Getting Online Help:
This is a Sunday evening. I posted my project around 16:00 and now I have 13 answers. I expect that I will have double the amount on Monday evening. This is what I got so far.
The massage offer at the bottom sounds interesting:
