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Bet Angel Reference Guide
Bet Angel Reference Guide
© 2010 Optic Limited - No unauthorised re-production without permission Commercial re-distribution in part or whole is strictly prohibited. Last updated 27th September 2010
TABLE OF CONTENTS
We strongly advise that you familiarise yourself with its capabilities as much as possible
before committing large amounts of money to any particular market. You should also
familiarise yourself with the markets and with the way in which the odds can move, why
and also the constraints on certain markets. As an example, the horse racing market is
relatively stable before the off but displays a lot of volatility just before the off. During in
running there is a one second delay and very high volatility. If you commit money into
the market at the wrong time or accidentally click on an active part of the screen you
could face large losses.
Make sure you use the smallest possible stake while testing and trading experimental
strategies to make sure you feel comfortable with the level of risk and volatility you are
likely to encounter. When you feel comfortable and are more familiar with strategies and
how to put them to use in a market, you can move up to larger stakes. Risk can also come
from outside of your use of the market as well. Systemic risks are items such as computer
failure, unexpected outages and can occur at any stage of the exchange process. You also
have user risk such as accidental use of features and incorrect interpretation of a market
or how to trade it. As such we recommend that you have a clear and consistent approach
to any market so that you can minimise your exposure to all the risks detailed in this
notice.
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The author and publishers of Bet Angel and accompanying materials advice and services
have used their best efforts in preparing material. The author and publisher make no
representation or warranties with respect to the accuracy, applicability, fitness or
completeness of the contents of this material. They disclaim any warranties, expressed or
implied, for merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. The author & publisher
shall in no event be held liable for any loss or damages, including but not limited to
special, incidental, consequential or other damages. The author and publisher do not
warrant the effectiveness, or applicability of any information detailed by us.
Betdaq Version.
The Betdaq version of the software may not contain all the features as discussed in this
guide.
Betting exchanges have changed significantly and we should be grateful to the creators,
innovators and promoters of exchanges for the hard work they have put in to bring
exchanges to this point. It has opened up many ways for everybody to participate in
modern betting markets and more importantly, in ways inconceivable not that long ago.
In 2004 I could see many opportunities, but the market completely lacked the tools I
needed to try and achieve all the things I knew were possible. Resisting the temptation to
return to my coding roots I set about creating a team that could not only create the tools
but also have the mindset to deliver my ideas from concept to fruition. Since those early
days Bet Angel has consistently been first to deliver features that have not been seen
before on betting exchanges and features that wouldn‟t look out of place in other markets.
This is something we aim to continue.
Peter Webb
If you wish to download your software you have two choices. Downloading in one click
or saving and storing the software before installing. If you want to keep a copy of the
software for multiple installation then using your mouse, right click on the appropriate
link and use the 'save target as' option. Confirming will download the software onto
your computer; make sure you remember where you downloaded the software too! The
software is contained in a zip file. When downloaded double click on the zip file and
click on the setup file. The software will run an installation routine, please follow the on
screen instructions and use this guide from step two. The simplest way to install Bet
Angel is to install it with one click.
Step one
Locate and click on the download link you see at http://downloads.betangel.com or the
link you have been provided with. After a short period to download the software, the
speed of which will vary according to your Internet connection, the following dialogue
box will appear.
Click on the „open‟ dialogue box. This will open a screen that looks similar to the
following screen: -
Step two
If you have successfully clicked on this icon a security warning screen will appear. This
screen is designed to alert you to the fact that you are installing „executable‟ software
onto your computer. You are safe to select „Run‟ to install the software.
If you are installing Bet Angel for the first time then you will see a confirmation screen
and asked to agree to our license terms and conditions. If you have a previous version of
Bet Angel installed you will be given the choice of overwriting your existing version by
choosing „Repair‟ or performing a fresh installation by removing the previous version.
Make your choice as appropriate. If you chose to remove Bet Angel you will need to
perform the installation routine again.
Choose where you would like to install Bet Angel. Most people tend to leave this to the
default setting. If your computer has multiple users make your choice of whether the
software should be universally available.
Click next and confirm the installation and your software will be installed and ready to
use!
If you have a serial number, follow the following instructions. If you do not have a serial
number you may need to go through the manual registration procedure.
Your serial number should arrive a short time after you order your product. Sometimes
serial numbers can be held in the system until released by our support team, if for
example there is a query with your order. If you think you should have received a serial
number but haven‟t, please contact Bet Angel support with your Betfair username so we
can 'switch on' your account. We will do this as quickly as possible and are in attendance
during most key times and during normal UK office hours but occasionally there may be
a delay before we can set you up. We may send you a serial number anyway so that you
can register yourself. This is the most secure way of registering.
If you are a new user of our service, before you can use it, you will need to register with
us. You can only use the software once you have registered, if you do not register you
will not be able to use the software. You can only register once you have received a serial
number from us. If you don't have a serial number, please allow a reasonable time for it
to arrive by email. You will already need to have a Betfair account to use Bet Angel.
When you install and use Bet Angel Professional you will see the log in screen. In this
area you will see a link called 'Register Bet Angel using serial number'. Click on this link.
Enter your Betfair username. If you do not have a Betfair account then you will need to
apply for one by visiting the Betfair web site and follow the „Join now‟ link.
When you have entered your Betfair username and your serial number, click the request
account button. Bet Angel will confirm that your software is registered and you will be
free to use the software immediately. If Bet Angel detects a problem with your
registration it may halt the registration and ask you to contact our support team.
Upon successful registration Bet Angel will display a short greeting message confirming
your registration. Click on OK to return to the log in screen. The final step is to log in and
start enjoying Bet Angel professional.
In order to be able to use Bet Angel you need create custom settings and give Bet Angel
some information to allow it to log into Betfair.
Logging on to Betfair
Locate the Bet Angel icon on your Windows desktop or via the Windows start menu.
Double click or single click this icon and Bet Angel will open. Enter your Betfair
username in the „Username‟ area of the Bet Angel Account area and also your Betfair
account area. If you want Bet Angel to remember these usernames, which should both be
the same, tick the „Remember User names‟. Also enter your passwords into the
appropriate area. Your Bet Angel password will always be different from your Betfair
password, this is for security reasons. We do not know or store your Betfair password and
don‟t want any clues as to what it is, so we recommend both passwords have to be
different.
You should also tick the „I accept the Betfair API terms and conditions‟ text. Your access
to Betfair‟s API is reliant on acceptance of these terms.
Connection mode
Additional settings can be created at this time. Leave the connection mode in the default
mode in which you first see it. Do not change the connection mode unless you have read
the connection modes section or are instructed to do so by Bet Angel support. From time
to time you may see advice given on the Bet Angel Desktop screen instructing you to
change this setting.
If you would like to bet or trade on an „Australian‟ market, you will need to log into your
Australian wallet. To do this make sure you tick the „Use Australian wallet‟ feature.
Make sure you have logged into Betfair to transfer funds to your Australian wallet or else
your account balance will show zero.
„Australian‟ events are dictated by Betfair and there are no hard and fast rules on what is
and isn‟t an „Australian‟ market. Check on the main Betfair screen under the rules section
in a market to check which jurisdiction it comes under. If you are logging into Bet Angel
and see no markets it could be that you still have „Use Australian wallet‟ ticked but are
trying to view non-Australian markets.
Logging in
Once you have completed your usernames, entered your passwords and set other log in
features all but your passwords will be remembered by Bet Angel. When you are ready to
start click the „Log in‟ button.
On attempting to log into Betfair you may experience one of a number of common log on
errors. For your convenience we have listed the most commons errors in this section to
provide you with the most common errors and solutions. Most are due to basic
configuration issues with your computers or the permissions you have granted Bet Angel.
Error
“The underlying connection was closed. Could not establish a trust relationship with
remote server”
Reason
For Bet Angel to function correctly it needs to take the current time and date from your
PC.
Solution
Check the time and date by double clicking on the clock in the bottom right hand corner
of your Windows operating system. Also visit the Date, Time, Language and Regional
Options in your control panel and check that the date and time is correctly formatted.
"The underlying connection was closed. The remote name could not be resolved."
Reason
This usually means your firewall isn't allowing Bet Angel access to the internet.
Solution
Try temporarily switching off the firewall or internet security software and restart Bet
Angel to see if now allows you to log in. If so, reconfigure your firewall to grant Bet
Angel full access to the internet.
If you are still experiencing problems then install and run our diagnostics tool and send
the results to [email protected]. The diagnostics tool is available from: -
http://downloads.betangel.com
When you start up Bet Angel you do not immediately go into a market. In order to start
betting or trading you need to read the Bet Angel Desktop, which contains important
information, advice, support material and links to help you activity on Betfair. Once you
have done that you can select a market to trade.
The first screen you will see on logging into Bet Angel is the desktop screen. Rather than
send repeated messages to your email inbox the desktop area is where we have our main
communication with you about new versions and general support messages. Video and
other forms of tuition are available this screen as well as general information about
Betfair and useful links to related services.
At the bottom of the desktop you will see there is an Internet browser bar.
Using this area you can navigate the Internet as normal and this helps you perform other
functions, such as reading your email, from within Bet Angel without the need to start up
your internet browser.
At the bottom right of the desktop screen is a button „Select a market and start betting‟.
Press this button and Bet Angel will display a list of markets for you to select.
If you do not see this button it may be that the screen resolution on your computer is too
low and you cannot see the bottom of the Bet Angel screen. You could also have Bet
Angel positioned slightly off centre and this is hiding the bottom of the screen.
You can also select a market by using the “File” menu at the top left of the screen.
Selecting a market
When you see the market selection „menu tree‟ you can scroll up or down this list to
selection a market you are interest in. To open a particular market click on the “+” on the
side of the market. This will open up all available markets and options underneath that
market. You can also double click on the name of the market to achieve the same action.
In this example you can see we have opened the market tree, then double clicked on the
„Horse Racing – Today‟s Card‟ market. This has expanded the tree to show a number of
selections. We have clicked on ‟17:50 Wolv‟ and in response Bet Angel has highlighted
this and also put the actual market ID in at the bottom of the screen. To select and start
betting on the market you are interested in, highlight the market and click „OK‟ or double
click the selection.
For your convenience the date and time is displayed on the market selection screen. You
also have a „Refresh‟ option. If you are trading repetitive markets such as horse racing
you may want to periodically press the refresh button to purge the market selection screen
of any old markets. We do not automatically update the markets each time you use it. If
we refreshed this on each occasion, this would slow down your market selection. Make
sure you refresh the screen occasionally to keep the markets „tidy‟.
On the top right hand side of the market selection screen is the „G+” button. If you have
highlighted a market you can add it quickly and easily to Bet Angel Guardian for multi-
market trading or monitoring. To learn more about Bet Angel Guardian see the separate
section detailing how to use the multi market trading facility.
When you have selected a market and clicked on OK or double clicked the market on the
market selection screen. You will immediately go to the “One-click” betting screen. This
screen is similar to the main Betfair screen that you would normally use. You are nearly
ready to start using Bet Angel.
Before you start using Bet Angel it is worth familiarising yourself with additional options
available in Bet Angel as well how to navigate through it and select the market you wish
to bet or trade on.
There are occasions where you may not want to use all the
features of Bet Angel. In that situation you can switch off
features you do not need. They will become inactive but also
save on system resources. Use the features menu to select or
deselect Bet Angel‟s main features. If you save settings and have unselected features, Bet
Angel will continue to disable these features until you re-enable them again even if you
switch it off.
If you would like to navigate to a new market rather than using the „Select a market and
start betting button‟ you can also use the „File‟ option on the
top left of the Bet Angel screen. Clicking on this option will
display several options. If you click on select market or press
„ALT+S‟ on your keyboard you can select any market from
all those available on Betfair. On the Bet Angel Desktop you
can also select a market if you wish but most users will use
the main menu to navigate. This menu will also display the
last five markets you have looked at. If you want to skip quickly
between markets then you can use this menu to jump quickly
between the most recently viewed markets.
One you have selected a market you will arrive at the „One-click‟ trading screen. To
move to other Bet Angel functions simply click on the function that you wish to use.
Additional sounds can also be played during critical moments and timings during an
event. Click on the „Sound Alerts Configuration‟ option in this menu to set these sounds.
The default mode is for all these sounds to be switched off. There are four countdown
alerts and additional alerts for „in-
play‟ and „suspended‟ status.
The default audio sounds are spoken warnings such as „This event starts in one minute‟.
You can modify any of the sounds to what ever you wish by changing the source path of
the sound. To do this click on
the „Browse‟ option on the
sound you wish to change. This
will bring up a file explorer and
you should „point‟ this to the
sound wish to use instead of the
default sound.
It is possible to navigate around Bet Angel using your keyboard. This has been
implemented so that you can gain quick and easy access to several functions almost
instantaneously without the use of a mouse. Some of these options are also highlighted on
the main menus.
Keyboard Result
CTRL & N Jump to the next market on the market selection list
CTRL & P Jump to the previous market on the market selection list
CTRL & SHIFT & P Jump to the next horse racing market
CTRL, SHIFT & N Jump to the previous horse racing market
F1 One click trading screen
F2 Ladder trading screen
F3 Automation screen
F4 Charting screen
F5 Manual bet screen
F6 Dutching screen
F7 Bookmaking screen
F9 Matched bets
F10 Saved bets
F11 Bet Angel activity log
F12 Bet Angel rules
CTRL&F1 Set force open to „None‟
CTRL&F2 Set force open to „Back‟
CTRL&F3 Set force open to „Lay‟
CTRL&F4 Set force open to „Reverse‟
Be careful when you use any screen in Bet Angel. Large areas of the software are
„active‟. This means that clicking on them will put a bet into the market.
There are several features you should immediately set on reaching this screen. Ticking
the „confirm bets‟ option will prevent Bet Angel from placing any order into the market
until you have approved it and the „Maximum liability‟ prevents you from putting too
large a bet or trade into the market on this screen. When learning to use Bet Angel tick
the confirm bets option and set the maximum liability to a tolerable amount.
Please be aware that if you are trying to trade and positions are not acting as expected,
for example offsetting positions are not firing. Then you may have set your maximum
liability setting too low and Bet Angel will not be able to complete your counter position.
It is important to note that these settings only apply to your initial bet rather than any
subsequent bet triggered by your initial trade or by any automatic features in Bet Angel.
Therefore if you used offsetting to put two orders into the market these settings will only
apply to your initial order.
Betfair do not currently offer streaming prices but ticking the „auto refresh every‟ box
will make Bet Angel „poll‟ the Betfair market you are on and refresh the odds according
to the settings you have specified. You need to do this so the most current odds available
are displayed. If you click on the drop drown box in this section you can change the
speed at which Bet Angel polls Betfair‟s servers to
retrieve the odds data.
Click on the drop down box and select the refresh period
you want. There is no perfect or recommended refresh
period. If you refresh too quickly then the market can
seem a little more erratic and trigger stops losses quickly.
If the responsiveness time to Betfair is slower than your
refresh period then Bet Angel will be asking for
information from Betfair before it has the chance to collect it, this is also not
recommended.
At the other extreme a refresh rate that is too slow will not allow you to view the market
accurately and render the information out of date and useless. Experiment and make sure
you choose a refresh rate that you are comfortable with and one that reflects your trading
style. To start with we recommend a general refresh rate of 500 milliseconds.
On the right hand side of Bet Angel you will notice additional features of Bet Angel. The
first is a general calculator and you can use this to perform quick mathematical
calculations without having to scramble around your desk.
The second is Bet Angel Guardian and has an entire section dedicated to it in this user
guide.
The third group of icons represent the Bet Angel trade calculator, a sophisticated trade
exit optimisation tool. Again, an entire section is dedicated to this particular function.
The meter icon on the far right will open up the Bet Angel Market Overview screen. This
is explained later in this manual.
And finally there are the specialist tools. Tennis Trader and Soccer Mystic represented by
a tennis ball and a soccer ball. See the sections later in this guide.
The main difference between this screen and the normal Betfair screen is that you only
need to point and click your mouse on a price to enter a bet or order into the market. You
can do this because you preset the stakes you wish to use. This means that when you click
Bet Angel already knows how much you want to place in the market.
The main screen is colour coded so you can see at a glance what type of order you are
placing in the market. If you see a blue shaded price and click on it Bet Angel will place
an order into the market on that selection at the price you clicked at. The amount it placed
is determined by the stake value on the far right of this screen. In this example if we click
on the row containing „Montana Gold‟ at a price of 3.7, Bet Angel would place an order
into the market by backing „Montana Gold‟ with £3 at 3.8. Because the current best
market price is better than 3.70 to back, the exchange will fill your order at the best
available price. In this case your order would fill at 3.8.
If you click on the red / pink areas instead of placing a back order Bet Angel will place a
lay order into the market. If there is not enough money to fill your order the remaining
portion of the unmatched bet will appear in the unmatched bet area of Bet Angel below
the main one click trading screen.
There are other numbers, functions and columns on the screen that display
information or perform specific functions. In the middle of the rows is a
percentage number, this number represents the weight of money in a
market on the selection. If there is £2500 to back and £5000 to lay the
weight of money will show 33%. This is indicating that there is more
money on the lay side than the back side. If we assumed, theoretically, that
money was arriving in the market at the same rate on both sides then would
hypothesise that the back side would be „eaten‟ through first. Therefore the
price would likely come in and the price will get smaller. Therefore when
this number is less than 50%, indicating more money on the lay than the
back side it shows in blue. If the price is higher than 50% it will show in red
indicating pressure on the price to drift.
The figures at the top of the list of selections are the book %
value. This is the total value of the book on either the back or lay
side. Layers could make money by laying a book above 100%
and backers by backing below 100%. This number will give you
a feel for how much money is „lost‟ to both sides of the book and how efficient the
market is. If a situation occurs where the book slips under or over 100% the column
number will turn green to indicate that you could have performed book arbitrage on the
market. Read the book making or dutching section to learn how you can do this.
The chart on the right is the implied chance graph; this is the inverse of the odds
available. If a selection is trading at digital odds of 2.00 on the implied chance chart it
will be display at 50%. The calculation is 1/2.00 = 0.50 or 50%. The implied chance,
unsurprisingly, is telling you what chance this selection has of being a winning bet. At
least this shows the markets interpretation of that chance. If you felt is was more than this
then there is value backing the selection, if you think there is less you would lay it. From
a trading perspective you should use these graphs to instantly asses if there is any long
term trend, what that trend is and how much the price has been moving. This is a good
way to understand the general market movements.
To the very far left of this section there is the Bet Angel
Graphing button. Clicking on this button will take you to the
dedicated streaming charting area of Bet Angel. This allows you to plot custom made
charts based on a variety of prices and indicators. If you would like to know more about
this function please read the dedicated section later in this document.
In traditional financial markets „market markers‟ are often recruited to provide liquidity
for illiquid company shares in order that there is a free market for people to buy and sell
those shares. To achieve this market markers quote prices to people wishing to buy and
sell in the market. However, the prices they quote to buy and sell also include a spread.
This spread includes margin for the market maker. In financial markets you would quote
a price to buy and sell, say 1.74 to 1.75. People looking to buy shares would buy at 1.75
and sell them at 1.74. If they bought and sold instantly they would make a loss as they are
buying at a higher price than they can sell at. That difference in price goes to the market
maker in profit. A market maker makes money purely by offering prices to buy and sell at
in the market with some margin in between these prices. They don‟t really care about the
underlying asset they just quote two prices to buyers and sellers and move their prices to
reflect market demand.
The concept behind introducing the make market button was to allow people to price a
market with little effort, in a similar manner to a traditional market maker. Laying an
entire book to the market in the same way traditional bookmakers would, is a difficult
strategy. This is because with big fields you have many orders to manage and the
possibility of many unmatched bets, all of which need some sort of management. Failing
to get these orders completed may result in a loss or a potential loss. The make market
button was introduced to allow you to „make a market‟ on a single selection in a sports
events thus giving you an excellent chance of profit without substantial risk or
management of unmatched bets. Using the make market button you can be a market
maker.
The „make market‟ button is useful in markets where you expect to see little price
movement in either direction or lots of rapid price movement around the same price. One
click on the „make market‟ button allows you to place two orders in the market
simultaneously with just one click. The „make market‟ function is located to the far right
of the screen on the selection you are viewing selection.
When you click on the make market button it place two orders in the market, not only this
it places both orders on the „wrong‟ side of the book. By „wrong‟ we mean it will lay
at the current back price and back at the current lay price. It does this because if both
these orders are filled, taken by other market participants, you will create a profit by
netting the spread in between these two prices. Bet Angel will place these orders at the
prevailing stake in the stake boxes so if you use the make market button make sure both
stakes are set at the same level.
Advanced charts
button
The settings at the top of the one click screen control the layout and appearance of the
columns used.
This will hide or show the column headings. Hiding the headings will allow more
market selections to be shown on the screen.
This will toggle one click betting on and off. When 'off' the pointer becomes a
selection tool for the manual bet layout.
*In the ladder, you will need to tick 'Use Global Settings'.
Now I will be able to place a bet at the specified odds with a single click even if they are
outside of the normally currently available prices.
Click on this button will allow you to give a unique name to your customised grid
layout.
For example, I have a custom layout here I have called 'My Grid Layout'
If sorting by values that are dynamic then be aware that the order can rapidly
change. Take a horse race win market for example. If you have selected to sort
by price and there are two or more runners at the same price then these can
rapidly flip position making it possible to place bets on an unintended runner.
These toggle the global settings on and off for the one
click and manual bet screens. If you wish to place a
one click bet using offsetting, greening and other
global settings then make sure this is on.
This button will save the current grid layout so that it will be available when you next
start Bet Angel.
The other options here allow you to customise the columns and layout as discussed on
page 31.
Clicking here will reset the toolbar. Global settings and one click will be turned off.
Concept
Usage
The unmatched bet area is present in most parts of Bet Angel. If you do not wish to use it
you can undock it and forget it or minimise it to be very bottom of the screen you are
working on. To do this „grab‟ the horizontal bar above it and drag that bar to a suitable
position. Whenever you place an order using Bet Angel, regardless of where you place it,
it will appear in the unmatched bet area. If you place an order on the ladder, via Excel,
automation or any of the functions in Bet Angel all unmatched bets appear on this area.
Main buttons
At the top of the unmatched bet area there are four main buttons. „Save all‟ manually
saves any unmatched bets to the „saved bets‟ area. „Cancel all‟ will cancel all unmatched
bets. It is important to note that if you modify bets in the unmatched bets area, except for
the nudging feature, you will need to use the „Submit changes‟ button to submit these
changes to Betfair. Just modifying the odds or stake on an unmatched bet will not
automatically change these odds, you need to use the „submit changes‟ button to achieve
that. „Cancel all‟ will cancel all unmatched bets. If you have made a mistake when
modifying your orders „Reset‟ will reset any amendments to bets that you have made but
not submitted.
Using the main title bar in the unmatched area you can also sort your unmatched bets
by Name, Bet reference, date placed, odds or your outstanding stake. You can sort in
either ascending or descending order.
You will also notice that there are plus and minus buttons to the right of the unmatched
bet odds. These buttons allow you to quickly and easily amend an order by nudging the
price up or down by one „tick‟. A „tick‟ is the next price point available in that odds
series. If you had a bet priced at 5.7, nudging the odds up one tick will push the price to
5.8 or nudging it down would push it to 5.6.
Sometimes, rather than modifying or nudging a position, you may wish to just exit you
position immediately. If you click the close position button Bet Angel will attempt to
close your position at the best available price at the current stake value. Bet Angel will
place this order slightly outside the best available prices, the third best price, in order to
ensure you have an excellent chance of filling your closing position and exit from the
market.
You need to be aware though that „best available price‟ could be anything. Bet Angel
will always place the closing order at a good price and this will generally complete
without issue but if the market suddenly moves that price could be significantly different
from the current best available price at the time you click the button. You may wish to
explore using the trade calculator option to exit trades more effectively.
Awareness
If you modify a bet in the unmatched bets area, Bet Angel assumes that you are taking
manual control of that bet. Therefore any global settings that were applied to this bet will
be lost. Settings such as stop losses, fill or kill orders will no longer function if you
modify a bet manually.
The unmatched bets area allows you to modify and manage unmatched bets but it also
includes the ability to convert your unmatched bets to get matched at Betfair SP at the
start of an event, or to keep the bet through a market suspension and into the inplay phase
of a market.
Usage
If you have unmatched bets you can use two methods to change the status of your bet
when the market goes in play. We have an unmatched bets it will appear on the
unmatched bet area. Also there is a column here titled “At in-play”. By default all bets
get cancelled when the market turns in play but by clicking on this area next to the bet
you wish to modify, you can change what happens to the bet when the market is turned in
play. If you wish your bet to be carried over to the in play market, simply select “keep”.
Alternatively you can make the bet take the SP price by clicking “Take SP”. If you
modifying an individual bet you need to instruct Betfair of these changes and you would
do this by clicking the submit changes button. Bet Angel reminds you that you have
modified but not submitted by changing the status to the colour red. By using “Take SP”
your bet is guaranteed a match, but you are not guaranteed at what price it will match. By
using “keep” you will retain the same price and stakes but you will rely upon the in play
market volatility to get your bet matched.
If you have a series of bets in the unmatched bets area you can globally apply these
characteristics by clicking on “Keep all” or “Take SP all”. All unmatched bets in the
unmatched bet area will modify and adopt the new characteristics; there is no need to
submit changes.
Awareness
The ability to modify unmatched bets to keep or SP bets; is only available in API mode.
This option will not appear if you are logged on in other non API modes.
Concept
Usage
Ticks are useful for managing your risk in the market. This is because they can be used to
adjust your stake according to how much the market is going to move and how you want
to make per successful trade.
When we say an increment of 0.01 we are saying that the odds would move from 1.78 to
1.79, or a percentage move of 1%. The odds are moving at increments of 0.01 and
therefore this move is one „tick‟. If you set your tick size to £10, when you trade
successfully for one tick, you will make £10. If you are unsuccessful you will lose £10.
Your risk and reward is now carefully framed for you.
At an increment of 0.10 it would move from 4.40 to 4.50. If you were looking to trade a
position in the market and had a stake / trade value of £1000, placing this stake in a
market that moves at 10% increments means you will only be 10 ticks away from losing
your entire stake. Something moving ten ticks against you is a possibility so this is a
riskier trade than at lower odds increments. At increments of 1% you are 100 ticks away
from losing your entire stake. Of course this works the other way around as gross
profitability is directly related to movement but the essence of staking with tick sizes is to
manage your risk carefully. At lower odds your stake in generally not under threat and
Because our focus is on capital preservation and risk management it is best to set a tick
value and use that to determine your stake. When you start trading to carefully judge and
manage your exposure and return you could start with a tick size of £1. The lowest odds
available move 1% at time and therefore your bank requirement will be £1/.01 = £100.
With a bank of £100 you could trade at £1 tick sizes.
In the first example you can see that we have set the tick size
to £1. Because of this tick size Bet Angel has automatically
adjusted the stakes of each selection to reflect the fact that if
any of these selections moves one tick in our favour we would
win £1.
In the next example we have upped our tick size to £5. Again
you can see that Bet Angel has change the stakes to reflect a
£5 win if we guess the next immediate price movement on any
selection.
Usage
When you activate liability staking, Bet Angel will set the back side of the market to a
uniform stake. This is due to the fact that a back bet will always be at 100% liability. The
stake on the lay side of the market will vary though. It will vary according to the current
available lay price. Therefore your potential profit will vary but your largest potential loss
will be fixed at your pre-defined setting.
When you change the tick or liability size the „Auto update‟ option is automatically
switched off. This is to prevent any errors occurring when you change tick sizes. To
reapply automatic updates to the market you must tick this box. If you elect to use „Auto
update‟, Bet Angel will re-calculate your stakes on every market refresh. While this is
useful it also means that your stakes will vary constantly, you need to be aware of this. To
apply the changes just once, click on the „Update Stakes‟ button and leave the „Auto
update‟ un-ticked.
As it is important to be aware that because „Auto stake‟ is part of the global settings, the
tick size setting and the re-calculation of your stake will apply to a variety of functions in
Bet Angel. Auto-staking can apply to several functions including „One-click‟, „Ladder‟,
„Automation‟ and „Charting‟. Double check your individual stakes and setting on every
screen before you start.
The countdown timer allows you to keep informed on the expected start time of an event.
It counts you in to the expected event start time with characteristics to alert you that you
are near expected. This allows you to exit all open positions before the event starts and
switches to „in-play‟ or „suspended‟ status.
Usage
The countdown timer is always present on Bet Angel professional. It is located at the
bottom of the software and to the right of the
screen. To expand and bring up the countdown
timer to the full screen, double click on the countdown timer. When you do this a box
will appear which you can re-position around the screen at your convenience. You can
use the pin function on this box to „pin‟ the countdown timer to the top of your current
screen.
Countdown status
In its normal mode the countdown timer shows the time remain to the start of this event.
Awareness
Less than 30 secs.
Events can start without warning or before the time that
they are schedule to start. The countdown timer is only an
indicator of the expected start time. Do not rely upon it
as your only indicator. You should also take steps to
ensure the time you are seeing relates to that which you Just gone in-play
expect. For continuity Bet Angel takes its time from the
Betfair API but the timer also relies upon your computer
system clock. Make sure that you synchronise this clock
regularly to ensure the timer works correctly.
In-play time
Concept
General usage
To use the trade calculator you need to click on the trade calculator icon or look
in the ladder tab where it is always present. You can open and use three trade
calculators simultaneously on different selections within the same market.
It is important to note that in order for the trade calculator to function correctly it needs to
work out your net position on a selection within the market. It can do this if you have
only backed or laid that selection in isolation. If you have used bookmaking, dutching or
a similar tool on a market Bet Angel will not be able to work out your net stake and you
will not be able to use the trade calculator reliably. The trade calculator can be „pinned‟ to
the top of the screen to ensure that all the relevant trade information and the ability to exit
your trade is available all the time in an area convenient to you. You can „pin‟, „unpin‟
and move the calculator where you wish on the screen. Use the pin option on the top right
of the trade calculator to do this.
A good way to experiment with the trade calculator is to use it on an „in-play‟ event. This
is because the odds move quickly and you will see the immediate impact of this on the
trade calculator. Try laying a small stake in a horse race before the off and use the trade
calculator to close this position in running.
Concept
An important aspect to understand with Bet Angel is the „global settings‟ bar at the top of
the Bet Angel interface. This controls how orders reach the market and how they behave
when the reach the market. Global settings aid your ability to trade the market profitably
by automatically applying order management functions to orders whether they be actions
to exit or enter your trade into the market. Using Global settings you can „tag‟ these
automated characteristics to your orders. If you have a market in „Guardian‟ Bet Angel
will automatically manage the global settings in the background for you.
Usage
Global settings can apply to one-click, automation, manual bet, ladder and charting
screens. In some of these of these areas global
settings will apply automatically, in other
areas you will need to specify that you wish to
use the global settings. There are also some
functions where global settings definitely do not apply, they do not apply in bookmaking
or dutching. Please check on each screen whether the global settings are switched on.
Failure to do this could lead to them being applied to orders where you did not wish them
to apply.
Where global settings are an option you will usually see a tick box to indicate that the
option is available. If the bar is switched on, as in the first example, then this means that
the global settings are active. Where global settings are not active or not available, the
global settings bar will be „greyed out‟. In this state you will not be able to click on or
activate any options and they will not be applied to your orders.
The Global settings toggle button is on the one click and manual betting screens. The
charting & automation screens will have global settings applied EVEN if the one click
screen toggle is OFF . The Ladder interface has its own global settings and can be
applied by ticking the „Use global settings‟ tick box.
Offsetting
Offsetting is the process of placing two orders in the market at a pre-defined “offset” to
create a potentially profitable trading position. The first order you will initiate and the
second order, the offset order, is automatically placed by Bet Angel. If the second order is
matched then you will make profit.
The offsetting order is defined as performing the opposite function of your opening trade.
If you back first to open a position then offsetting will place a lay order in the market
automatically, if you lay first offsetting will place a back order in the market
automatically. If you are offsetting please ensure you are familiar with the offsetting
modes in the rules section and also how settings such as fill or kill change the
characteristics of offsetting.
The „offset by x ticks‟ function allows you to define how far apart your offset orders are.
If you place an offset of one tick, Bet Angel will place your opposing order just one place
different to your opening order, at the next available odds that would generate a profit for
you. If you offset by one tick then you will stand the greatest chance of getting your
orders filled. You can offset by as many ticks as you like but, obviously, the larger this
offset the less chance you have of getting the offset filled.
(1) If you set fill or kill to zero it will attempt to place an order, fill what it can at the
current price and then cancel the rest of your order. If there is nothing available to fill
your order then it will cancel your entire order.
(2) It also works by holding your order in the market for a pre-defined time period. It will
hold this order in the market and when the time you have specified expires it will cancel
the remaining part of the order, if any. If you have applied global settings, such as
offsetting, it will offset the filled amount, whether full or partial, for you automatically.
This will also only take place after the pre-defined time period is up.
In short summary: -
If you set „fill or kill‟ to zero, this tells Bet Angel to only place any other order if the first
order filled, either partially or fully. If you set it to 60 seconds it will hold the order for
one minute, 3600 seconds will hold the order for one hour! Typically in the stock market
where time limits are placed, these orders are called „time in force‟ orders.
Most Bet Angel users set the fill or kill function to a second or so if they
are scalping so the market can catch the order in a reasonable time frame
but not expose their position to the market. If, for example, you are trying
to scalp by reversing the book and looking for a speculative fill, it‟s worth
setting the fill or kill to a much longer time period. For safety, you should
make sure this fill or kill time is below the current time left before the market goes in-
play.
If you are looking to trade the market it can make a lot of sense
to „reverse‟ the book. This means that rather than taking a price
available in the market you simply put open orders into the market instead and wait for
them to get matched. By open orders what we mean are orders that are open and in the
market and waiting to be filled. If you reverse the book you will see that any order you
place is immediately unmatched. It gets held in the market waiting for somebody to take
it.
To reverse the book selected the „Force open‟ drop down menu. When you
click on this menu you will see several options. None means that the book
remains normal as you would expect to see on Betfair with the back side of
the book on the left and the lay side on the right. Back means that the entire
book becomes a back only book; any price you click on this screen will place only a back
order into the market. Lay means that the book becomes a lay only book; any price you
click will only place a lay order into the market. If you lay at a lay price that is available
on Betfair your order will fill instantly. If the price you lay at is not available it will enter
the market as an unmatched order and will wait to be filled.
If you select the reverse option the book will „flip‟ over and now the screen will offer
you the chance to back at the current lay price and lay at the current back price. Any
orders placed will most likely be unmatched when they reach the market. The reason you
may want to reverse the book is to enable you to get your order filled at a better price.
Using these
stake values
for both orders.
Offsetting effectively allows you to put two orders in the market with a spread between
them. Bet Angel allows you to put a numeric value to that spread, this value is based on
ticks. If you enter a numerical value next to the „offsetting by‟ function this will make the
offset bet enter the market at a value „X‟ ticks away from your opening bet. If you back at
2.66 with a 2 tick offset then Bet Angel will automatically place a lay bet into the market
two ticks away at 2.62. To learn more about tick values, read the auto staking section.
Entry
+2 ticks
price -2 ticks
+2
Entry
-2
Typically the process of placing orders and hedging the profit are two separate processes
but the „with greening‟ function automatically adjusts the value of the offset bet to allow
the book to balance to a „green‟ value without any further intervention.
There are certain situations in a market where you need to achieve a hedged profit across
the entire book instantaneously. Using offsetting with greening allows you to achieve
this. This function can be used at any time but it is particularly useful in running when
prices move so quickly you are often unable to square off your positions and hedge your
profit quickly enough.
Example
If the following example you can see we are scalping the market by reversing the book
and looking for a one tick offset. We have entered the market by laying £100 at 4.3; we
are trading at a £10 tick size. We enter the order into the market and it is matched, which
triggers a one tick offset order to back at 4.4. Despite laying for £100 you can see the
corresponding offset bet has actually entered the market with a stake value of £97.73. At
first this looks like an error but moments later the order is filled and the balance between
the two becomes your „green‟ value. You do not need to worry about the value of the
offset order as Bet Angel automatically sets it from the offset value. Please be aware that
the offset order stake will always be fixed so closing a position either manually or via a
stop loss could leave an unequal position. If you wish to have more control on the closing
value you can use the trade calculator.
If you enter the market by backing at 2.66 and you arm the stop at 2 ticks. The stop will
trigger if your subsequent lay order breaches 2.70. Because you have backed first it will
place a lay order to close your position.
Entry
price -2 ticks
Place stop at
The „place stop at‟ function has been designed to ensure that the stop orders fires at a
reasonable price. If a stop fires and seeks to close your position at the best available price,
it is possible the best available price at that moment in time is actually a false price, a
price significantly different from the standard market price. By placing the stop order
within a reasonable distances of the actually stop trigger the „place stop at‟ function
allows you a good chance of your stop executing and also ensuring that the execution
price is near the current market price.
Following on from the previous example, if the stop is triggered at 2.70 the stop is
executed by Bet Angel by placing a lay order at 2.76. By placing the lay order this far out
but not too far out it virtually assures that the closing position is completed, but at a safe
price.
Current price
„Normal‟ stop
With a conventional stop order, the red line, your stop order is fixed on its exit trigger
price. It never moves and therefore when a position moves in profit it has to move back
some way before the stop loss is triggered. In effect if your stop is triggered in this way
you are ensuring a loss.
If you use a trailing stop, when your order moves into profit the trailing stop, the blue
line, is pulled up behind your order to ensure that as the order moves into profit the stop
order guarantees that profit. If the trend fails and starts to retrace, Bet Angel will close
your order. In a strong trending market it is likely that your trailing stop will have moved
some distance and therefore you catch the predicted long term trend in price movement.
But if that trend reverses and ends you trailing stop will cut you out immediately locking
in your profit.
Concept
Setting up
On the first visit to this page you will be presented with a display of vertical odds across
the screen. Each of these represents the first three selections in the current market you are
viewing. In order to change any of the selections, simply
click on drop down menu with your selection. To the right
of the selection name there is a small chart icon, clicking
on this will bring up the current Betfair charts for this
selection.
Using the ladder style option you can change the way the interface is
represented on your computer. You are able to adapt the ladder display
to either normal or large rows. Not only does this make the screen more
useable it will allow you to adjust the screen to your monitor size. The
„normal‟ row size fits the odds and match bets total and allows more
cells per screen. The „large‟ row size puts empty space around the
current data. This means it is easier to view each cell and the chance of
clicking on the wrong one is minimised. There are a range of options
how the screen can be display and all are available from this drop down
menu. If you have a larger screen with a high screen resolution you will
be able to fit more rows on. Experiment with this menu until you find a
setting you are satisfied with.
You can also define how the ladder behaves when you click on it.
Using the „force open‟ option you can force orders on the ladder to enter on
back side only, on the lay side only or you can have back orders on the left
and lay orders on the right or the opposite of this. Each method has plus and
minus points depending on how you wish to trade the market and what Bet
Angel features you aim to trade with. For more information on „force open‟
read the dedicated section.
Before you start using the ladder interface you need to be aware of six major settings.
These are held in the area to the top of this screen.
If you tick this box Bet Angel will highlight the last traded odds in a market. Last traded
odds are different from last available odds or last price. Last traded odds represent the last
price matched in a market as apposed to the last available odds or odds movement. When
money is matched, taken, from a certain price Bet Angel will display one of three colours
for a short period of time.
Green – The price just moved up, Drifted (I.e. 6.00 to 6.20)
Yellow – The last traded price was the same
Red – The price just moved down, Came in (I.e. 6.00 to 5.90)
If you see no price movement then there is no current activity on this market. If prices are
moving without any colours appearing then check you are in an API connection mode
and if you are then it is likely that you are seeing orders pulled form the market and that
is making prices move rather than bets being matched.
You should make sure you check whether you have global settings switched on. Global
settings can apply to this interface just the same as other areas in Bet Angel. If the global
settings option is switched on then features such as fill or kill, offsetting or stops losses
will apply to the trades you make in the ladder interface.
When you look at a market before it turns in-play, money held in open orders outside of
the current price can be there for a number of reasons. Seeing the range and scale of this
money will allow you to get better understand what is happening in the market. Money
„lurking‟ outside of the current price creates pressure or resistance to price movement by
default, it also leaves a footprint of positions that people have left open perhaps because
they have been only been partially filled or they are waiting for the market to return to its
mean. People still leave large open positions out of the money; monitoring this is a
definite advantage.
Full market depth is also for useful for understanding volatility. If the range of matched
prices is wide this suggests the market is more volatile. While you may get larger price
swings you also need to be cautious of any moves that start to go against you. If you see
even amounts of money matched across the market then the weight of money will likely
move prices quickly in either direction. In contrast, large amounts of matched bet volume
at narrower price ranges will create a less volatile market. Large amounts at certain prices
are likely to mean that the price has hit resistance and may struggle to break through that
price. It is likely that the market thinks that value is held above or below these points and
people are acting on that by backing or laying when value is exceed in either direction.
Full market depth is excellent tool to give you a much deeper understanding of the
market.
Using this tick box will add an extra column to each ladder showing your position should
you close at the prices indicated. If you also tick „Greening‟ this will show your position
greened.
Click here to
request price.
Unmatched
bet.
In the first illustration we can see a lay bet has been placed at 3.55. The trading profit
column (indicated) is telling me that I can close the trade at 3.55 for net ZERO. Closing
at a lower price will result in a loss (red number). Closing at a higher price will result in a
profit (green numbers).
I want to realise a profit of £1.50 from this market and I can see from this column that the
price needs to move to 3.75 in order to do this.
If I click on the green „1.50‟ in the trading profit column, Bet Angel will place a bet in the
exchange of the correct amount to realise this profit. You can see Bet Angel has done this
in the second illustration.
If using greening, Bet Angel will automatically calculate the stake required.
If you tick the enhance ladder option then the ladder screen is instantly transformed into a
multi function, multi display trading tool. This is a significantly more detailed interface
than the normal ladder. The display combines several elements of different Bet Angel
screens all in one component. This allows you to monitor and trade with the maximum of
efficiency. The downside is that there is only one selection that can be traded at any one
time. However, you are able to switch dynamically to other selections in the same market
using the drop down menu or by clicking on the grid control on the right hand side of this
screen.
Tick size
crossover
point
For most of these functions you should simply refer to the dedicated section in the user
guide to learn how to use them. One change though is in the match and unmatched bet
area. On the enhanced ladder this has been compressed to a much smaller size and all the
matched and unmatched bets related only to the selection you have on the first selection
on the ladder.
Placing an order on the ladder interface is simple and easy. With your stake values preset
all you need to do is point and click your mouse to place, cancel or amend orders.
If you place an order on the ladder and it is unmatched it will appear in the white area. In
the next example we have clicked to back £200 at 3.60, but because that back price is not
available in the market our unmatched bet appears on the left white area, the back side, as
an unmatched order for £200. You can see from the market depth all £200 is ours. You
can also see that we quickly put another order in the market to lay at 3.55. All but £42.96
has been matched and the remainder shows as an unmatched order. If an order is partially
matched the unmatched amount appears in the white
area and the net stake area is automatically adjusted.
To cancel all unmatched bets in the left column press the „Z‟ key. To cancel all
unmatched bets in the right column press the „X‟ key.
Using the ladder interface can be fast and furious and the ability to make quick calls,
close trades and select stakes is an advantage.
With Bet Angel Professional we have introduced several hot keys for use in conjunction
with the enhanced ladder.
These are:
As we have seen on previous pages placing an order on the ladder interface is quick and
easy and mainly uses a mouse to place or amend orders. If you have opened a position
and it looks like it is heading for a loss, you can use your mouse to quickly drag and drop
the order to close your position. You can also click on an open order; hold it, in
anticipation of using it to cut out of a position. This also allows you to then drag it off the
interface if it is no longer needed. Being able to do this allows you a lot of flexibility in
how you cut a position if it is not working.
There are more efficient ways of cutting a losing order; you can use an automatic stop
loss order. Using an automated exit gets over one disadvantage of dragging and dropping
to cut a loss. When dragging you may find the market moves quicker than you can,
resulting in you having to take a larger loss. Also the benefit of getting Bet Angel to cut
your order out of the market is that it removes some of the emotion of cutting for a loss
and it can also cut an order quickly in a fast moving market.
To set a stop order in Bet Angel simply right click on the back or lay side of the ladder.
Bet Angel will automatically work out your net trading position in the market and what
closing trade is required to remove you from the market. If you set a stop on the wrong
side or you already have hedged your position or closed your trade, Bet Angel will do
nothing and show “0.00” as the odds.
In this example, you can see I have placed a stop order by right clicking on the back side
of the ladder at 3.1. If the price moves to this level, Bet Angel will automatically exit the
market by placing a closing trade.
When using the one click stop loss on the three ladder view, if you change to
the enhanced ladder view or change a selection in the ladder, the stop loss
setting will be cleared. This is so you can always see a stop loss that is
applied.
It is possible to apply stop losses even when you don‟t have any open positions in the
market. When you do this Bet Angel will realise you have no open positions which
require a stop order and will, if the price in the market „hits‟ that stop order, do nothing.
This means that you can experiment with different stop positions without fear of a false
trigger. You can also place stop orders even before your opening trade has been filled.
We right clicked on the lay side to place our stop order as we clicked on the back side to
initially open the order. Bet Angel shows the opening trade in the Bet History area, the
current position of the trade in the trade calculator area and finally the potential loss if the
stop loss order is triggered at 2.10.
Automatically hedge
View Betfair charts
your profit across the
market with the green
up button, no matter
Preset all your stake
how small your profit.
amounts for quick
selection.
Concept
Usage
Please be aware that orders placed via the automation area automatically assume the
settings in the „global settings‟ area on the top of the screen. Please check all settings
before you use automation as orders fired into the market will take on the characteristics
you have specified. If you switch between areas it is possible that you could „inherit‟
unwanted characteristics unless you have switch of these settings. For safety make sure
that you switch off any unwanted settings before your use the automation area.
The first thing you need to do is set your stake. If you have the „auto stake‟ option on
then your stakes will automatically adjust themselves. This can be dangerous for example
on an in running horse race as the odds move very quickly and by large amounts. Make
sure you have unticked the „auto stake‟ option if it is not required.
You can set the stake across the entire field or by individual
selection. You have can also set the stake for differnet
values on the back or lay side of that selection. Click in the
blue boxes on the left to set the back stake or the pink boxes
on the right to set the lay value. If you want to back or lay
the field you can use the „stake all with‟ box. When you tick
this box any stake values you have put in the either boxes to
The rule set in the example above says the following in plain English: -
“If the current digital odds are higher than or equal to 2.00 and the digital odds are also
lower than or equal to 5.00 and the weight of money is less than or equal to 100% then
place the bet at digital odds of 2.00.”
In this example we simply want the odds to drop to somewhere between 2.00 and 5.00.
When this happens Bet Angel will automatically fire a bet into the market.
We have set weight of money to lower than or equal to 100% on the back side. We did
this because we wanted a bet to fire into the market at the pre-defined odds only,
regardless of the weight of money. Weight of money will always be equal to or below
100%, so by putting the weight of money at 100% we are saying „ignore the weight of
money‟. To achieve this on the lay side you would make this setting “>=0%” this has the
same effect on that side.
All prices on Betfair match at the best available price, so by using the „place at‟ rule we
really say “place this bet at a minimum price of 2.00”. If the price in the market is higher
than this at the moment the bet reaches the market it will always be matched at a better
price.
This back bet will trigger a back bet when the price of a horse has a value between 1.3
and 1.5, it will place the order at 1.20. If a horse is at this short a price in running then it
is likely that it is near the front or close to winning. By placing a bet at these odds you
stand a reasonable chance of backing the winning horse.
Lay two horses to guarantee a profit across the all horse whoever wins
This lay bet does something really interesting. It triggers a lay on any selection at odds of
1.95 or lower. Why would you possibly want to lay a horse in running at odds on? Surely
this horse has a good chance of winning? Well it does but if the price weakens and
another horse trades at odds on and you lay it, you will guarantee a profit on all horses in
the race.
When you have set up the rule go to the automation area and click „all lay‟. All the
selections in the market are now primed to fire to this rule. If you arm the rule before the
race has started bear in mind that when the race is suspended all triggers will be reset.
This is so that you do not accidentally carry over triggers to an „in-play‟ market.
Therefore, when the market starts to repopulate with a good range of odds you should
make sure you tick the „Lay all‟ box. If your trigger now lays two horses in running, at
lower than 2.00, you will make money.
This trigger will automatically trade a market. By using the automation along with the
global settings you can get Bet Angel to automatically place positions in the market and
exit them also, though you will need to make sure you tidy up any unmatched bets before
the start of a race. Set you rules as shown.
On the automation, both rules have been set to fire at whatever odds are available but
because we are trading a selection price at 1.5 we have pulled the „place at‟ price to
somewhere in this range. We have set the odds range to 1.01 and 1000. This is because
we want the bet the fire whatever the price. In this example we have set the weight of
money to <=30% on the back side and >=70% on the lay side. This means that the bet
will be fired at any price when the weight of money is favourable on either side. If the
weight of money is not favourable then no bet is fired.
On the global settings we have switched on offsetting and also the stop loss settings, we
have also used fill or kill. When a bet is fired into the market the global settings will
automatically apply offsetting. If this bet is filled the offsetting bet will reach the market
also and if this matches then you will make money. If this bet is not matched Bet Angel
will monitor the position and close it automatically if it moves too far against you. It does
this using the stop loss feature. If your bet is unmatched but never reaches the stop loss
you will need to close the position yourself to stop yourself having unmatched position
and the market then going „in-play‟.
Concept
All the familiar one click trading buttons and all the global settings are available for use
on the charting screen. These functions work
in exactly the same way you would use on the
one click trading screen and don‟t required
additional explanation here. This means you
can watch the charts and trade at the same
time. In the main charting area there are three
charts displayed at the same time. If you wish
to display a different selection you can use
the drop down menu to make a different selection. Bet Angel caches chart
data from the moment you reach the market and therefore the new chart
will display instantly.
To the right of the main price chart you will see eight coloured boxes;
Tick or un-tick these to display lines on the chart. Hovering your mouse
over these boxes will confirm what each line the tick box represents.
You will also see a set of tick boxes that allow you to change the default settings you see
when you first change to the Bet Angel charting screen. Ticking one of these boxes will
mean that when the charting tool is used it will default to display this set up. In this
example we have elected to show all the available lines on and derive these lines from the
„back‟ price. When we first use the charts next time all available lines on the back side
will be displayed.
You can also set the moving average line values from this section. The default settings
are 21 for the „fast‟ moving average and 50 for the „slow‟
moving average. A setting of 20 will display the average
price for the last two price updates. Moving averages are
often used in financial markets as a signal to indicate a
change in price momentum. As you move down this
section you will also see colour and indicators for the lay side of the book, for the volume
graph and also the weight of money. All of these can be modified in the same manner.
The final setting on this section is the „X axis interval‟. This setting allows you to specify
how often the charting is update. If you are refreshing the market at a very fast rate you
do not want to charts to update at the same rate. If they did the information would be
useless and it would disappear off the charts almost as soon as it arrived. Therefore this
setting allows you to specify how often you would like the charts to update. Click on the
drop down box to modify this setting.
Being able to „feel‟ what direction the market is going and why is a valuable tool. The
clear and obvious benefit of graphing is that it clearly displays activity in the market and
it allows you to feel what is really happening in the market and why. Whether you use it
directly or not it, having graphs available is an invaluable tool. Using graphs you can not
only see immediately what has happened and why, but you can also see very strong
indicators of where things are going. This is invaluable in terms of improving your
understanding of the market and making you a much more effective trader. If you have a
position you want to fill, looking at a graph can easily tell you if your chance of a fill is
high or low. If you want to take more than a tick out of market then charting can tell you
if that is a realistic target.
Within side this band are three additional lines. The green and yellow lines represent
moving averages of the price action. This gives you an indication of the current price
trend. The main blue line moving between all these bands is the current market price.
Below the main price graph is the volume in the market. This can help you identify
outsized order volume and it‟s affect on the market. The bars represent the individual
matched bet volume and the maximum bet size matched is displayed on the far left of
these bars. All charts represent around 100 data updates. The update rate is set from the
chart settings are and can represent anything from one tick to one minute.
Weight of money is
important because it is how
prices on Betfair are formed.
All prices on a betting
market are formed by the
weight of money. If more
people are willing to back a
selection then the price will
fall, if more people are
willing to lay it the price will rise. On Bet Angel the weight of money graph will tell you
where the money is in the market and plot accordingly. You can see in this example that
the weight of money was persistently below 50% indicating pressure on the price to come
in, the price would get smaller. The price did indeed get smaller and then the weight of
money shifted in the opposite direction and was persistently on the lay side. At that point
it went back in the other direction. You can clearly see the turning point on the weight of
money graph as it reached a clear exhaustion point where nearly all the money was
backing this selection and no money laying it. Without knowing anything about this
selection we could tell that the market felt that there was no value in backing this horse at
a lower price because at that point people started laying it and the weight of money
started to move in the other direction. You can actually see that the shift in weight of
money occurred quite a few bars before the price started to react. Again, this has pretty
clear origins as a shift in the weight of money has to force a price change eventually.
Weight of money does not work, generally, in-play. This is because the price activity in
the market becomes directly linked to the activity in the underlying market. No amount of
money can force a horse to stop two furlongs out or reverse a Manchester United goal.
All price activity in play is tied to the underlying event. Before an event starts all activity
is formed by opinion and that opinion tends to show up in the weight of money.
Concept
To activate the charting function simply click on the chart graphic on the far left of a
selection. On other screens, where this function is available, click on the appropriate icon
on the screen.
Clicking on the icon will bring up a chart with default settings. You can click on
additional icons and bring up multiple charts on different selections and display all these
charts at the same time. Each chart windows can be pinned to the top of your current
display and resized to suit your trading style.
When you first use the advanced charting you will be defaulted to the first chart in the
list. By clicking the drop down menu you can select other pre-defined chart setting
options. You can switch to different charts at any time by selecting the drop down menu
option and selecting a new chart setting.
Bet Angel stores information on the market as soon as you switch to it. If you switch
between selections in the market Bet Angel will have automatically started collecting
information on those selections as well. If you want Bet Angel to collect data over much
longer time periods you should populate Bet Angel‟s “Guardian” feature with the markets
you are interested in. Make sure you pay attention to the refresh rate you have set in
Guardian as this will ultimately determine the rate at which it is collecting data. For
example, if you have ten markets available in Guardian and set it to refresh at 1 second,
each market will be on a ten second cycle. This means it will collect data to populate the
chart every ten seconds. If you want it to collect data faster, simply speed up Guardian.
To edit the chart settings click on the „settings editor‟ button on the top right hand corner
of the chart window. Clicking on this button brings up the charting profile editors. This
editor will allow you to modify the default settings or create completely brand new
charts.
To edit an existing chart setting, click on the name of the chart setting you wish to
modify. These are displayed on the left of the editor. When you click on any one of these
the main editing area fills with the settings you have assigned to that particular chart. To
modify any of those settings simply click on the tick box next to the item you are
interested in showing or wish to unselect.
There are hundreds of possible combinations you can chose from based on the data you
wish to show and how you wish to see it displayed. If you want to create variations of
each chart with slightly different data, simply create the variation you wish to see, rename
it and save it to your list.
General - Name
If you custom create a chart then use this dialog box to name your chart. All charts are
listed in alphabetical order so bear than in mind when you name a chart. You may also
want to use a name that helps you remember what the settings were.
Chart Style
Line chart
OHLC Bar
The top of the vertical line represents the high of the period while the bottom represents
the low. A small horizontal line on the left side of the line shows the Opening price while
the one to the right gives the Closing price.
With all charting methods there are an immense amount of strategies you can put to use
in the markets. As there are already substantial amounts of information available on this
we suggest you Google each method to research your preferred strategy.
X Axis
Interval
The interval is the time between each refresh on the graph. You can set to the lowest
value to one tick / one price movement. Generally this would make too volatile so people
tend to use time intervals. The time intervals range from 500ms to 10 minutes. Time
intervals are best used when plotting bar or candlestick charts.
On the advanced charting you can plot up to 200 data points on the chart. By data points
we mean the number of intervals plotted across the screen. Plotting more data points
allows you to see much longer term price activity on your chosen market. Less data
points means that the chart effectively expands to fill the same area but with less data
giving you sharper focus on the time period you are looking at.
Both the interval and data point settings are down to your own personal preference.
There will be occasions when manual betting in a market will be preferable. Bet Angel
Professional provides the ability to place multiple simultaneous manual bets and also
green up on selections within a market where stake calculation needs to be quick.
Note that the manual bet screen is simply an alternative layout of the one click
grid. The 'one click' option can be turned off and the mouse pointer then becomes
a price selection tool to populate the manual odds column.
Usage
If you would like to back or lay the entire field in a market you can check the boxes at the
top of the manual bet section marked „Set all odds to:‟ and „Stake all with:‟ and enter
values in the relevant boxes.
For example, if I would like to enter a back bet of £2 but at odds of 1000 across the field I
would set it up as follows:
This will place multiple simultaneous back bets across the field at my requested price of
1000. These will sit in the unmatched bet area from where I can further manage them if
required.
A similar use might be if you want to place a lay bet of £2 at odds of 1.01 across the
field:
Be careful when using this method. Carelessly clicking on „Back All‟ when
you intended „Lay All‟ could prove costly.
Type in the green up value and Bet Angel will calculate stakes based upon the current lay
(or back) price by using the following formula:
Actual stake = Green up stake/current price. With the current price being the current
lay price if the green up stake is positive or the current back price if negative.
This enables us to fine tune a book and alter our potential position on individual market
selections.
Concept
In its conventional use you could place a „dutch‟ bet to cover the front three selections in a
market. You would decide that you want to win £100 whichever one of those selections went on
to win. You are pretty sure one of those three selections will win but you are uncertain about the
ability of a couple others in the event. Using dutching you could cover those as well to ensure
you win regardless of which one of three actually win the race. By using this strategy you have
covered not only your key selections but also the chance of an upset as well. Dutching works by
effectively creating a position
The downside of dutching though is that you will accept a bigger liability if your bet does not
come in. Unfortunately that is inevitable, as the profit generated on your selections is a result of
you effectively creating a book by backing below 100%. By that we mean that the entire market
will be priced at or near 100%, this is because the chance of any one horse winning in a field of
10 is 100%, one of those ten will win. When you place a „dutch‟ bet you create a position in the
market under 100% and spread your profit across your selections and the liability that created this
profit is spread amongst the remainder. What you have to do when you place a „dutch‟ bet is
strike the balance between your winning „dutch‟ selections and the possibility of the loss coming
in.
There are certain circumstances where if you dutch a market and have failed to account
for the impact of withdrawn selections you could face a substantial loss. Please make sure
you understand the market you are dutching and make sure you clearly read the rules of
the market to asses any possible impact.
Your overall objective is to create a position below 100% in book value; there are many
ways to do this. In order to create a position below 100% you have to exclude selections
from the market or put some unfilled orders into the market. Using Bet Angel you can
choose whether you back at the current back price, at the current lay price or whether you
nominate your own price.
Your first task when dutching is to select a staking method. Click on either of the
methods to decide what your objective is.
If you “back with a stake of” your liability
is fixed but your profit varies according to
the margin in your book.
Another setting you should pay attention to is the „winners‟ box. If you
are a making a book or performing book arbitrage on an outright market
your target book % is under 100%. If you are in market with two possible winners your
target book is actually any value under 200%. Therefore if you set the winners to two,
Bet Angel will adjust the book % figures to go green if the book dips under 200%. You
need to be aware that the winners box does not influence predicted profit calculation at
this moment in time.
Once you have decided what your stake value will be set at you need to create your
dutching position. To dutch the market you need to decide what selections to and what
prices to give each individual selection within the book. Rather than
pricing each selection manually we have included a series of tick
boxes which allow you to create your position quickly and easily. If
you click anywhere within the row of this tick box you will
automatically make a selection decide its price and Bet Angel will
work out the stake for you. You can see the columns are headed
„back‟, „lay‟, „manual‟ and „margin maker‟. If you click on the
„Back‟ box you will create your position by backing at the current back price. If you tick
„lay‟ you will create your position by backing at the current lay price and so on.
If you tick the first three boxes on the screen with a stake of £100 you will see from the
book% figure in this screen shot that the book is at 61.3%. This value is green, it is green
because if all your orders in this market are filled you will be backing the total of your
selections at 61.3%, below 100%
and you have a potential profit
scenario. If the book% figure goes
above 100% then you will not
have a potentially profitable
position and your book will
display zero predicted profit.
In this screen shot you can see that we selected the front three selections in a horse race
and dutched them. You are not restricted to any number of selections you make but you
need to be sure you balance the reward you want with the risk that you take that none of
your selections win the event. If any of your three selections goes on to win you would
win £100. However if they don‟t win you would face quite a large liability.
In this example you can see that we have backed a book but ticked the margin maker
function. This is telling us that if we want to make 5% margin on this match, the price on
England would need to be priced at digital odds of 3.30. How do we know that the odds
could reach 3.30? This will happen when the match goes in play and there is not an
England goal before half time. Of course you will need to make a judgment on whether
this will happen or not, so there is more risk with this strategy but your stake value is
massively reduced.
Of course you can see you can do this with any sports event not just soccer. We have
picked a race at Ayr and applied the same selection criteria. Here you can see that if
„Bijou Dan‟, the odds on favourite, drifts to 4.00 in running we will net a £5.45 profit.
We don‟t need to worry about the favourite winning the race we just want to see that the
horse is out of contention at some point during the race. If he does we will make money
not just if the favourite wins, but if any horse wins the race!
In small fields the margin maker function takes on another characteristic. If there are only
two selections you can use the margin make to automatically price the entire market
quickly, easily and effectively. This allows you to enter a double trade in the market with
just one click and a good chance of filling. In the following screen shot you can see we
are on an inplay tennis market. We have back the field, all two of them, at the current
back price with 5% margin. „Ivo Karlovic‟ is the likely winner of this event and we have
chosen to take his current back price. As „Jonas Bjorkman‟ struggles to get back into the
game we would expect his price to drift or stay at a similar level. As we have ticked
„Bjorkman‟ as the margin maker Bet Angel has worked out that as we backed „Karlovic‟
at 1.17 we need to back „Bjorkman‟ at 10.5. Currently he is priced at 5-12 so we sit right
in the unmatched lay area and stand a good change of getting filled. If both orders are
filled we will make 5% profit.
When you dutch you are generally using the available or expected prices to make money.
But why not wait for exactly the right opportunity and not only nominate what prices you
will accept but what margin you think is acceptable? The best way to explain this is to
look at book arbitrage.
Book arbitrage using dutching is the process of backing the book at less than 100% on the
back side. In theory this shouldn‟t be possible but, because the market wobbles,
sometimes the book will trade below 100% and it is possible to back the entire field and
make money. These aberrations in the market only occur infrequently and therefore it is
only possible to take advantage of this incorrect pricing using the automated dutching
feature in Bet Angel.
Go to the dutching area on Bet Angel and click on the back all tick box.
When you are ready to set Bet Angel in motion click the auto bet tick
box. When Bet Angel sees a book% of under 100% on the back side it
will automatically fire a back all order into the market at the correct
odds and stake needed at that split second in time. Unless you are fortunate you are likely
to get unmatched bets using this strategy so make sure you think about what you will do
with unmatched bets or which events are more suitable for situations where the entire
book will get matched easily.
You can also use the auto bet function in your normal dutching activities as well. It
always makes sense in busy markets to ask for a certain margin or better prices rather
than try to enter the order manually.
The art of bookmaking has always been to create a balanced book. You need to take
money from backers in equal proportion to the odds you have offered, with some margin
yourself. If you can‟t do this your risk is out of proportion to your potential payout and
you could face a large loss. For traditional bookmakers their role was pretty clearly
defined, they needed to split opinion. If they split opinion they would nearly always have
a balanced book and therefore make money. In modern betting markets splitting opinion
is no longer an option. The market is free from your influence and people pick and
choose their own prices. Therefore you need to price the book at a level that ensures that
you can get all your bets matched as quickly as possible. Any unmatched bets will leave
an „unbalanced‟ book.
You do need to be aware not to make a book in a false market. If you lay a book and have
failed to account for withdrawn selections you could face a substantial loss. Please make
sure you understand the market you are laying a book into and make sure you clearly read
the rules of the market to assess any possible impact. Any withdrawn selections will
severely damage your account balance.
On opening the bookmaking screen you will see the market that you have chosen along
with a list of selections in that
market. You will also see a reminder
that bookmaking only places lay bets
in a market. When you make a book
you only lay selections to the market
you do not perform any other task.
We put this reminder in because
there are actually several options
available for you to lay orders into
the market. You don‟t need to lay at
the current lay price.
Your first task when making a book is to select a staking method. Click on either of the
methods to decide what your objective is when creating a book. If you “lay with a stake
of” your liability is fixed but your profit varies
according to the margin in your book.
Bet Angel is able to place books on Betfair for small values but in order to ensure you
comply with your betting exchanges terms and conditions you can set up a book to „lay
for a minimum stake of‟. This ensures you do not place bets on the exchange below the
minimum value specified in your terms and conditions. If you choose to create a book
with bets below the minimum value stated by your terms and conditions we can not
guarantee that these bets will enter the market without error or complications as the
process to achieve this is complex. We do not condone any abuse of your terms with the
exchange and suggest you always try and comply with these terms.
Once you have decided what your stake value will be set at you need
to create your book. To create your book you need to decide what
prices to give each individual selection within the book. Rather than
pricing each selection manually we have included a series of tick
boxes which allow you to create your book quickly and easily. If
you click anywhere within the row of this tick box you will automatically price the
market and Bet Angel will work out the stake for you. You can see the columns are
headed „back‟, „lay‟, „manual‟ and
„margin maker‟. If you click on the „Back‟
box you will make a book by laying at the
current back price. If you tick „lay‟ you
will make a book by laying at the current
lay price and so on.
In this particular example we have let the bets run and there were matched a little later.
As previously discussed as soon as the book is complete our balance is available to use
again. Now this order has completed we can make another book and increase our profit
on this event while at the same time lowering our overall risk.
It is possible to create a book in any market but obviously the more selections there are
the more potential you have that your book will not be completed fully, i.e. your bets will
not be completely matched. In the example we have detailed you can see we have laid
two of three prices at the current lay price and only asked for one order to be matched at
the current back price. Despite this there is still margin available for us on the book.
While this has allowed us to create a book that is likely to fill profit maximisation is
usually the best route to follow for book creation.
In the following example I have selected an evening soccer match from the Portuguese
league and made a book on that match. I have no idea who Maritimo are or what there
form is, but then I don‟t need to as my anticipated position isn‟t relying on this
knowledge. All I am looking to do is „sell‟ 100% probability for more than 100%. In this
case you can see I have „sold‟ my book to the other punters on the exchange for 101.2%.
For a £500 stake we would net £6 for our efforts if all our bets get matched. Doesn‟t
sound a great return from a traditional betting perspective but obviously this isn‟t
traditional betting.
If you want to nominate a profit target then you can also do that in Bet Angel. In the next
image you can see we have „asked‟ for a £10 profit. Bet Angel tells us that we would
need to stake £828 to get this profit! That doesn‟t so that appealing so what can we do
about this? There are some useful tricks on exchanges you can use to achieve the same
profit without the same risk.
The first method is deceptively simple. One of the unique characteristics of the exchanges
is the ability to recycle your money through the market. Say we placed our first position
In this example you can see that we have laid a book but ticked the margin maker
function. This is telling is that if we want to make 5% margin on this match the draw
would need to be priced at digital odds of 3.35. How do we know that the odds could
reach 3.35? This will happen when the match goes in play and there is not a goal before
around 30 minutes. Of course you will need to make a judgment on whether this will
happen or not, so there is more risk with this strategy but your stake value is massively
reduced.
Of course you can see you can do this with any sports event not just soccer. We have
picked the John smiths Melling steeplechase at Aintree and applied the same selection
criteria. Here you can see that if Well Chief, the odds on favourite, comes in to 1.80 in
running we will net a £10 profit. We don‟t need to worry about Well Chief winning the
race we just want to see that he comes into contention at some point during the race. If he
does we will make money not just if Well Chief wins but any horse in the race!
The ability to carry over bets in in-running markets is something never previously
available before betting exchanges came into being. This ability gives us a very useful
way of increasing the type and range of books you make and the possibility of getting
In small fields the margin maker function takes on another characteristic. If there are only
two selections you can use the margin maker to automatically price the entire market
quickly, easily and effectively. This allows you to enter a double trade in the market with
just one click and a good chance of filling. In the following screen shot you can see we
are on an in-play snooker market. We have laid the field, all two of them, at the current
back price with 1% margin. „Shaun Murphy‟ is the likely winner of this event and as his
win gets more certain our order at 1.05 will complete. As John Parrott struggles to get
back into the game we would expect his price to drift or stay at a similar level. As we
have ticked „John Parrott‟ as the margin maker Bet Angel has worked out that if we lay
Shaun Murphy at 1.05 we need to lay John Parrott at 17. If both orders are filled we will
make 1% profit. You can see that we would lay John Parrott at a price that is currently
not available and therefore we are highly likely to get this order filled.
Book arbitrage is the process laying the book at more than 100% on the lay side. In
theory this shouldn‟t be possible but, because the market wobbles, sometimes the book
will trade above 100% and it is possible to lay the field and make money. These
aberrations in the market only occurring infrequently and therefore it is only possible to
take advantage of this incorrect pricing using the automated bookmaking feature in Bet
Angel.
First you need to set the target margin in Bet Angel. To do this you need to visit the
„rules‟ tab and set the required
margin. If you are performing
book arbitrage you need to set
this to 100% as the instruction in
the rules tab is telling Bet Angel
to fire orders to the market if the book% is higher or equal to 100%. In reality you may
want to set this to a value higher than 100% as you would like to get something from this
strategy. When you have set this margin trigger you need to visit the bookmaking area to
set up your book. In this case we are looking for the lay side to go over 100%.
Go to the bookmaking area on Bet Angel and click on the lay all tick
box. When you are ready to set Bet Angel in motion click the auto bet
tick box. When Bet Angel sees a book% of over 100% on the lay side it
will automatically fire a lay all order into the market at the correct odds
and stake needed at that split second in time. However, unless you are fortunate you are
likely to get unmatched bets using this strategy so make sure you think about what you
will do with unmatched bets.
You can also use the auto bet function in your normal bookmaking activities as well. It
always makes sense in busy markets to ask for a certain margin rather than try to enter the
order manually.
If you use offsetting with greening try laying a price to the market and carrying over the
back bet in-play to green up to experiment with this function.
Usage
The two key options on the saved bets tabs are listed as tick boxes near the top of the
screen. The unmatched bets are held at the bottom of the saved bets screen for your
reference. This section can be undocked or re-sized to hide it.
If you tick the 'save unmatched bets on suspension' tick box, then any bets that are in
the unmatched bet area will automatically be saved by Bet Angel. When the market is
marked as suspended Bet Angel will transfer the unmatched bets to the top of the saved
bets screen. At this point you can choose to
delete all, some or none of the unmatched bets.
If you click the place all button it will
automatically place all the saved bets back into the market. If you want Bet Angel to
automatically re-submit bets into the market you should tick the 'Resubmit saved bets
when in-play' tick box.
Make sure you also set a reasonable „clear saved bets after‟ time period. This clears down
saved bets to stop them being re-introduced, for example, during a dead heat in a horse
race.
Limitations
You should be aware that the saved bets function only works on the market that is
currently active. If you switch away from the market your saved bets will be lost. This is
because neither Betfair nor Bet Angel has the ability to submit saved bets that are not
currently held in the active market, your saved bets are only stored in temporary memory.
If you want Bet Angel to re-submit or store saved bets do not switch away from your
current market. There is no reason however, subject to system resources, why you can not
open multiple copies of Bet Angel to achieve multiple saved bets in different markets.
By linking to Microsoft Excel with Bet Angel you are able to create your own custom
trading tools, trading algorithms or your own trading robot. This will give you massive
flexibility in interacting with Betfair. At its simplest level, you can create simple
templates to view the market or create custom buttons to aid your trading style or at its
most complex you can custom write complete trading algorithms.
Before you can link Bet Angel to a spreadsheet you need to select a market. Once you
have selected a market you will be ready to send that market data to a connected
spreadsheet.
To connect to Microsoft Excel, click on the browse button. Locate your custom
spreadsheet or locate the templates area and Bet Angel will display a list of spreadsheets
available for use in Excel. Double click on the spreadsheet you have selected to bring the
location into Bet Angel.
It is important to note that there is no need to store all your spreadsheets in the default
folder; you can store them where you wish. The first spread that you will see when you
first use this function is the default spreadsheet called “BetAngel_1.xls”
When you have located the spreadsheet you wish to use click the „Open workbook‟
button on the Excel. This will open up Microsoft Excel and the Bet Angel spreadsheet.
„Bet Angel‟ templates are denoted by the name „Bet Angel‟.
Once the spreadsheet is open it will display a blank template. In order to use this
spreadsheet you need to connect Bet Angel to the spreadsheet. By default the origin cell
is set at A1. This means that Bet Angel will start populating data to the spreadsheet from
spreadsheet cell A1. You can change this going forward but the basic template we supply
has been constructed so that data will populate from cell A1. To connect data to the
spreadsheet simply click the „connect‟ button on the Bet Angel Excel tab. You should see
the „Connect‟ button grey out and the „Disconnect‟ button become active. If you wish to
work on the spreadsheet at any time without it update, simply use the „Disconnect‟
option.
It is important to note that the spreadsheet is effectively split into three areas: -
Data fields
The multi coloured area are the „data fields‟.
These represent the area on the spreadsheet
where data is transferred from Betfair via Bet
Angel to your spreadsheet. The data fields
contain information such as the selections in
your chosen market the current odds, money
available at those odds, your P&L, market name and amount matched.
Reporting fields
Reporting fields represent the area where Bet
Angel reports what is actually happening in
the market with bets that where triggered
from your spreadsheet. Items such as the
price your trade was matched at, the amount
matched and the resultant reference number
and time of execution.
Instruction fields
The alternate green and white areas are the
instruction fields. These represent the area
where Bet Angel will look on each refresh to
see what functions you want it to perform. It
scans these fields and if you enter any
instructions here it will pass an instruction to
Some important cells are not immediately obvious at first glance and should be
highlighted as they contain important market information. These cells are: -
In order to clarify how to issue commands from Excel we will isolate a selection on the
spread sheet and give you a step by step guide to how to initiate commands from the
spreadsheet. It may be helpful for you it disconnect Bet Angel from the spreadsheet while
you are editing or experimenting. This will stop you firing in positions automatically
without realising it!
Here you can see we are looking at a horse called „‟Tiradito‟. It is currently trading at
3.65 to back and 3.75 to lay.
At its most basic level you can fill in the rules manually to initiate a position. You simply
enter the odds, the stake you require and what you would like to do: -
This isn‟t a particularly effective use of Excel though. Ideally you want to automate some
or all of the commands and functions. Fortunately you are able to enter traditional
spreadsheet commands via the Bet Angel spreadsheet that will replicate functions you
would perform manually or use similar commands to make decisions on your behalf and
trade away automatically.
Let us take our use of the spreadsheet forward a step and get Bet Angel to automatically
seek a price target and fire a bet into the market when that price target is breached.
Excel contains many „logical‟ commands that can be used to decide the contents of a cell.
One of the simplest commands to use and understand is the „IF‟ command. You can see
in the next example we have created a „IF‟ command.
If you enter this command into the spreadsheet in exactly the same manner you see here,
then press enter something curious happens, nothing. Let me explain why.
If we break this command down to plain English it is saying the following. “If cell
reference G9 is higher than 4 then display the word BACK. If it is not higher than 9 then
display nothing. At the moment cell reference G9 equals the value 3.65 so it is displaying
nothing; your cell will be empty. Click on the cell however and press F2 and your
formula will re-appear for you to edit.
If you now connect Bet Angel to the spreadsheet, your spreadsheet will now sit their
patiently waiting for the odds on “Tiradito” to go higher than 4, as soon as that happens
the word “BACK” appears magically in the bet rules area and Bet Angel will fire an
order into the market by placing a back order at 4 with a stake of 10.00 in your local
currency.
If you wish you could replace the word “BACK” with “LAY” it would lay instead of
backing automatically. But you could also make the stake, the odds in fact you could
make anything conditional on anything else. While there is no need, in the following
example we have asked Bet Angel to vary the amount we will stake based upon the price
it sees in the market.
In this example what we are saying is “If the back odds (in cell G9) are higher or equal to
5.0 then change the stake value to 5, else the value should be 10”
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Hopefully by now you will be getting an understanding of just how powerful this tool is.
But the fact is that all these functions are at the very simple end of what is fully possible
with this Bet Angel function.
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Fully automatic trading using the Bet Angel Spreadsheet
If you want to elevate your spreadsheet to the next level then you should try putting
multiple IF statements in your spreadsheet. But you should also consider better use of the
data part of the spreadsheet.
In the next example we are asking Bet Angel to automatically trade the market it is
pointed at.
Cell L9
“If all the money on the back side (cells E10 to G10) is higher than all the money on the
lay side (cells H10 to J10) then put a LAY order in the market, else do nothing”
Cell M9
The current lay price
Cell N9
If this spreadsheet is active, when our criteria are met, a bet will be fired into the market.
This will happen without our intervention and fully automatically. However the „Status‟
cell will change, in the event of a trigger, to „PLACED‟. It is important to understand that
when the status cell is empty an automatic trade will reach the market, if however, this
cell contains any text; a bet will not be placed. The reason we have implemented this is to
stop the software from placing multiple bets. If there was no stop trigger the software
would rapidly place multiple positions in the market until your account ran out of money.
Obviously this is not an idea solution! Therefore you need to re-arm the bet by clearing
the „Status‟ cell next to your rule by deleting its contents. It is popular to create arm and
re-arm buttons using excel macros. You can pre-record keystrokes and save then to a user
Bet Angel Reference Guide © 2010 Optic Limited Page 102 of 147
defined button if you wish. To learn how to do this search on the internet for „Excel
creating macro button‟
The last example we have used does leave us with a couple of problems. All this
spreadsheet does is put an order in the market; it doesn‟t cut out if the position goes
against us. You will have noticed in previous tools and functions that Bet Angel has
many automated order features; you can also use these in Excel. Rather than just
nominating a back or lay order you can specify Bet Angel specific automated order
functions.
Simple rules
BACK
LAY
OFFSET : X
FILL_KILL : TRUE
FILL_KILL : FALSE
KILL DELAY : X
STOP : X
STOP_PLACE : X
TRAILING_STOP : TRUE
TRAILING_STOP : FALSE
WITH_GREENING: TRUE
WITH_GREENING: FALSE
CLOSE_TRADE – This will close a position using net stake on selection at currently available price
GREEN – This will close a position by invoking the built-in greening routine within Bet Angel on the
selection. Any profit or loss on the selection will be evenly spread across all selections.
CANCEL – This will cancel individual unmatched bets with the Betfair bet reference detailed in cell Rx
CANCEL_ALL
CANCEL_ALL_BACK
CANCEL_ALL_LAY
Example rule
When you script a rule you include characteristics that you would like the order to adopt.
The following rule will place a lay order in the market; hold it in the market for 60
seconds to wait for it to be filled. If it is not filled it will be cancelled, if it is filled it will
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apply „with greening‟ to the offset order one tick above and apply a trailing stop against
the order which will exit the position moves three ticks against us.
Global Commands
Cell L6 allows us to use the bet persistence options offered by the Betfair exchange. In
certain markets bets are allowed to remain on the exchange once the event is turned „in-
play‟. On the Betfair web interface we can choose whether to „Take SP‟, „Keep‟ or to
„Cancel‟ the unmatched bets once the event has been suspended and then turned in-play.
Here we have asked the exchange to accept the SP on all unmatched bets once the market
has turned in play.
We can also ask the following:
[KEEP_ALL]
Here we are asking the exchange to keep all unmatched bets available in the market once
the event is in play.
[CANCEL_ALL]
Here we are asking the exchange to cancel all unmatched bets once the market turns in-
play.
Note – not all events offer bet persistence options. Refer to Betfair for details
of which events do or do not accept these options.
[GREEN_ALL]
This will invoke the greening routine within Bet Angel and would be equivalent to using
the greening column on the one click screen with the „Green‟ checkbox ticked. All open
positions on any selection will be closed and any profit or loss will be evenly spread
across all selections.
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Advanced Excel integration
Linking multiple spreadsheets
There is no obligation to
only operate functions
only from the Bet Angel
section of the standard
spreadsheet template. In
fact you can operate and
link multiple
spreadsheets back to the
Bet Angel data source in
Excel. This gives you the benefit of viewing information in a way that you would like to
see and that is unique.
In this example we have linked the spreadsheet to a race and can see the selection
„Romany Princess‟ is in cell B9 of the Bet Angel spreadsheet. Bet Angel has populated
the spreadsheet with this data so what we are seeing is the output of data to the
spreadsheet by Bet Angel. It is possible to dynamically link to this data from within the
same workbook. Doing this allows us to change how the data is represented and how we
instruct Bet Angel to act on that data. In the next screen shot we have set up a new
spreadsheet in the same workbook by clicking on the „Sheet2‟ tab at the bottom. By
clicking somewhere on this new spreadsheet we can import data across to the new
spreadsheet. In this case I have entered the formula ='Bet Angel'!B9 into the cell. By
doing this Excel reads data from cell B9 on the „Bet Angel‟ spreadsheet. As we have
already seen this is the name of the selection from that sheet, therefore the new
spreadsheet displays the name. By copying and pasting this reference you can pull in the
other data as well, whether it is the odds, the names, your P&L or any other detail on the
main Bet Angel spreadsheet.
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Creating your own market interface
Once you have the data in the new spreadsheet you can move and manipulate the data at
will by dragging and dropping cells. You can see here that we have copied across cell
references that are reading information on the current available odds and also the current
totals available at those odds. This has had the effect of turning the „normal‟ Betfair
screen into a vertical display. This has been achieved by, not copying the content of the
cells, but by making a relative reference to those cells. You can see in this example that
the odds of „3.65‟ come from „Bet Angel!G15‟. If the odds or the money available change
on Bet Angel they will now automatically change on your new spreadsheet.
Once you have the general look and feel you like you can apply formatting functions of
Excel to make the display more pleasing. Right clicking on a blank area on the Excel
main toolbar menu brings up the toolbar options list. From this list you can select and use
the many formatting options in Excel. They allow you to change the appearance of text
and also the colour, add pictures and other items. If you are unsure of where the
formatting options are in Excel or how to use them, press F1 in Excel for help.
Now we have formatted and changed the look of our data we can start adding some more
complicated functions and interpretation of this core data. To do this we will use
predominately Excel based commands and formulas.
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Creating your own market indicators
When we have completed that we can sub total these values into another cell and
calculate the weight of money percentage. Here you can see I enter a formula that divides
the amount of the back side by the total of both back and
lay side. Excel now represents these calculations as
percentage figures for you to quickly asses the weight of
money on either side of the book.
We have enhanced this further by using the conditional formatting option in Excel. This
allows you to highlight, colour and emphasise text in Excel according to its underlying
value. Here you can see that we have set it to turn red if it is greater than 50% or turn blue
if the cell value is lower than or equal to 50%. There are many „tricks‟ in Excel that allow
you to change the way text and information is
displayed, ensuring you are familiar will all of
them if you want to get the best experience from
the Excel integration.
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Standard Excel tools are also able to be applied to your spreadsheet as well. You can see
that we have used the graphing tool to plot a pie chart of the weight of money. This will
update automatically as the market progresses. Pretty much anything is possible in Excel
with some ingenuity and a grasp of Excel functionality.
We now have a spreadsheet that has pulled information from the main Bet Angel
spreadsheet. It has displayed this information in a manner that we would like and it is also
displaying supplementary information based upon our automatically translated
interpretation of that data. The one problem with this spreadsheet though is that all it is
doing is displaying information; you are not interacting with it or placing orders through
it.
The next step in learning to use Excel fully is to create functions that will allow you to
activate a bet or process, to place a bet from your spreadsheet.
It is possible to write completely automatic trading tools for Bet Angel using Microsoft
Visual Basic for applications. This tool is included in Excel and can be used to elevate
automation to another level with Bet Angel. However, VBA, is beyond the scope of this
document and of our support team as it is a complex and detailed language. It is
something that you will need to learn and write independently and seek specialist advice
if you are interested in pursuing this level of sophistication.
It is possible to write very complex spreadsheets even without the help of tools such as
VBA though and a lot of Bet Angel was first created by implementing the concept on a
spreadsheet before putting it into the actual product. Creating automatic trading functions
can be achieved in a non complex manner
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Creating automatic trading functions
Because Bet Angel uses a scripting language, before you can create a button or auto
trading tool you need to „parse‟ the instruction to place in the instructions fields of Bet
Angel. By „parse‟ we mean that you need to construct a „sentence‟ that Bet Angel will
understand. Parsing is usually hidden but for demonstration purposes we will list all the
details on the same area of the spreadsheet we are designing.
We create a final IF command to check the status of the two conditions and if that is met
it populates the order instruction cell with the word “BACK”. If the criteria are not met
then nothing is displayed in this cell and Bet Angel will do nothing. With these
conditions and this text in place Bet Angel is now in a position to execute an order
automatically. Orders, as previously discussed, are executed from the „Bet Angel‟
spreadsheet and therefore we need to link from our spreadsheet to the instruction area to
issue our order.
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Creating buttons
If you wish to create a button to trigger a bet or action in Excel you can do so quite easily.
To create automation in Excel you need to create a macro, sounds scary, but it isn‟t. A
macro can be programmed using some sort of coding skill but for those people who have
even thought about writing code on a computer there is a much simpler solution.
Let us assume that we want to
produce a very simple piece of
automation. We want a button that
will place a back order when we click
it. We will use the same spreadsheet
we created before but instead of
using a formula in the order
instruction cell we will use just plain
text. If your spreadsheet was active and you
wrote in the order instruction cell „BACK‟ it
would place a back order into the market.
What we are going to do is use a simple piece
of automation to simulate the same thing. First
you need to record a macro.
Go to the tools menu on Excel and select, „Macro‟, „Record New Macro‟. You
will be presented with a box which asks you to name the macro and assign a
shortcut key. At this stage you do not need to assign a shortcut key but you
should name the macro. Once you click the „OK‟ button on the record macro
dialog box it will immediately hand control to you. At this point the macro is
recording your every move! Click on the „order instruction‟ cell and type
the word „BACK‟. When you have done this locate the „stop recording
macro‟ box and click the stop button. You have now recorded your first
piece of automation.
Now locate the forms toolbar in Excel and click on the button icon. Drag your mouse
over the area where you
would like to see the button.
When you have done this a
button will appear and you
can name the button and
assign the macro you
recorded to this button. If you
want to modify the button
simply right click the button.
You have now created an
automatic trading button tool.
When ever you left click this
button your macro will be run instantaneously.
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Soccer Mystic Price Predictor
Concept
Soccer Mystic is the first ever application designed specifically for Betfair soccer
markets. It has been created specifically for these markets in order to give you the best
chance of profiting from one of the fastest growing markets on betting exchanges. If you
bet or trade on soccer getting an edge in the market is critical, soccer mystic is the tool
that will deliver an edge; soccer mystic is your unfair advantage!
At the top of the screen you will see the specialist tools area. If the current market loaded
into Bet Angel is compatible with Soccer Mystic, you will see that the soccer icon will be
available to click on.
It takes a few seconds for the price predictor to gather data and form its prediction. When
that has taken place the price predictor is ready to use. The most important thing to do
initially is to quickly look at the signal strength indicator in the top right.
This indicator is designed to give you an idea of how well the market is formed and how
well the Soccer Mystic can model it. If the market is ideal for Soccer Mystic it will
display five bars on the indicator. If the market is poorly formed it may not display any
bars at all.
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Starting The Predictor
In this particular example the bar indicator is showing five bars and if you click on the
“match odds” tab on the price predictor you can see the market is reasonable well
correlated. The values on Betfair will always have an over round book, i.e. there is
always margin for the layers on Betfair. Therefore it is highly unlikely that the two sets of
figures will ever perfectly match. This is because the price predictor always prices at
100%, whereas the Betfair market is very unlikely to be priced at 100%.
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Goal Area
If you have not used the goals area, then when you use the forecast time area you are
merely predicting what will happen to the odds if the score remains 0-0. To simulate what
would happen if a goal is scored, use the „goal times‟ area. If you want to simulate a goal
that has been scored, simply enter the time of the goal in this area by typing in the boxes.
If you right click in this area you can also use a slider to quickly set the goal time. If it is
an away goal simply click the Away
goal tick box.
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interpret. This also allows you to see how the odds move in proportion to each other. If
you un-tick the „display probability chart‟ option the chart will display in decimal odds
and allow you to limit the decimal odds to a reasonable number so as not to distort the
display. To practice we suggest switching the 3D off and remaining on the probability
charts until you get familiar with using the charting capability.
In this example we have switched off the data lines for the home and away win and just
left the draw plot on the chart. We have also switched off the 3D display. If you move
your mouse over the chart you will see that a set of cross hairs appears and this allows
you to pin point how the odds move, how much and over what time.
As the match starts the draw gets more certain and therefore the price of the draw has
come in to around 2.66. At that point the goal is scored and the price on the draw jumps
out as expected. If we use the cross hairs we can point and click at any two areas and the
bottom of the chart populates with the price and time data at the first click, then the price
and time at the second click and also the difference, the potential profit, between the two.
You can see from this example that the price jumped out quite a bit when the goal was
scored. As the match progressed and there were no more goals and the price continued to
drift right out. Of course, by then, you would have made your money and be long gone
from the market!
It is highly unlikely that you would have been active and in the market just before a goal,
in fact you are more likely to have taken a position before the match started. If we were
laying the draw and looking for a goal to be scored, that is a much more likely scenario.
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The Soccer Mystic profit line allows you to see at a glance just how a scenario like this
could play out. When you switch on the profit line, Soccer Mystic draws a line across the
entire chart to illustrate to you periods when a backing or laying strategy would make
sense. In this example you can see that for the vast majority of the match the draw is
trading at a price much higher than it started at. Therefore you should lay the draw as you
get plenty of time to profit from this scenario. When you use the profit line a useful
reminder appears in the bottom left of the charting area indicating which scenario is the
best to adopt given your scenario.
You can use the profit line on the Over / under area charting area also and just „playing‟
around with different scenario using the charting is a good way of getting an idea of
which strategy you should adopt in a match.
In this chart of the over / under market you can see that we are in profit for the whole of
this match what ever happens and despite the fact that there have been two goals scored!
If you wish you can change the target number of goals required on the chart and Soccer
Mystic will instantly recalculate the chart for you so you can dynamically decide what the
best strategy will be.
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Using charting in-play, synchronising the predictors clock
If you intend to use the Soccer Mystic price predictor in-
play, it is critical to align both the goals and the time to
match exactly the underlying characteristics in the match.
To do this set your goals in the „goal times‟ area and then
set the time by clicking on the clock „SET‟ icon. A dialogue
box will appear with settings for the elapsed time and the
estimated full time. Use the sliders, the boxes or right click
to set the times.
When the time is correct then click to the left of the „SET‟ clock and Soccer Mystic will
set the clock in motion and ensure that it is fully synchronized. This ensures that the
prediction is automatically adjusted for the amount of time already gone in the match and
the amount of time left in the match.
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Bet Angel - Tennis Trader
Concept
Now, thanks to Tennis Trader, you can have all the answers in real team right in front of
you on your trading desk. Using this unique software you can answer fundamental
questions like: -
Tennis trader is specialist software that has been specifically created to allow you to
carefully manage your in-play positions in each market. It is a profiling tool that will let
you know where the odds will be whatever happens next in the match, whoever wins the
next point, game or set. Modelling Tennis odds is notoriously difficult thanks to the
almost infinite variety of ways a match can end. Tennis trader solves that problem by
bringing unique odds modelling functionality straight to your trading desk. If you bet or
trade on then Tennis trader is the tool that will deliver you an edge.
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Starting Tennis Trader and linking to a market.
Starting Tennis Trader is easy. At the top of the main Bet Angel screen you will see the
Tennis Trader button to the right of the Guardian buttons.
Click on the tennis ball button to start the tennis trader interface.
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Application Buttons
You will see the following buttons across the
top of the Tennis Trader interface.
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Setting Up for a Tennis Match.
Go to Bet Angel and select a tennis „Match odds‟ market.
Here you can see that I have entered the current score above. Hewitt is trailing by 2
games to 3 in the first set but the games have gone with serve. Hewitt is next to serve so I
click on the server column against his name.
This will allow Bet Angel to study the market and choose the best algorithm to use to
approximate future prices for your game modelling.
Do this just before the start of a match or during a break in play. Make sure you don‟t
calibrate the software during periods of play or when the server is about to offer up a
second serve. Only use the calibration tool before the start of a match, during a break of
play or before the first serve in a point has been struck. You may also wish to calibrate
the software again during a match as market conditions change. A change in market
conditions may be something such as an injury occurring, or where the odds are slightly
out of sync with the software or where a fundamental change has taken place. Calibration
works better when you are not at very short odds on either player.
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Updating the current score
Clicking on the „+‟ next to a player‟s name will register a won point for that player. From
here we can model certain scenarios. If a point is argued or over-ruled then you can click
on the „undo‟ button to step back a point.
When you call up Tennis Trader you will need to set the current score. In this illustration
you can see I‟ve just linked to a game.
This match was halted overnight so I need to set the current score. I do this by typing
directly into the score fields or by using the up and down arrows . I can also set the
current server by clicking against the correct player in the „Server‟ column.
When the game commences I can update the score by clicking on the „+‟ button next to
the relevant player.
This will add one point onto the score and automatically update the games and sets scores
as the game progresses.
If at any time I leave the game and miss a few points I can enter the correct score as
above by typing the correct values into the relevant fields.
Please note: The scores will not Auto-update. There is no service available
that would keep the score up to date fast enough to provide a reliable model.
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Built in Predictor Scenarios
Underneath the „Current Score‟ area you will see some built in predictor functions. Here,
TennisTrader will tell you the likely Match Odds prices for the following for EACH
player:
At the bottom you will see „Custom Score 1‟ and „Custom Score 2‟. These will allow you
to set your own scenarios by adjusting the number of sets, games and points won and
seeing what it will do to the predicted odds.
For example, we can see in the following game that Hewitt is currently leading by a set to
and is leading the 2nd set by 3 games to love. Chardy is serving for the current game in
play.
But what will happen if Chardy turns this set around and goes on to win it?
We can see this in the „Wins Set‟ predictor section for that player.
So we now know, BEFORE IT HAPPENS, what the likely match odds prices will be
should Chardy win the current set.
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This enables us to see what risk will be involved in opening up a position. For example,
you could place a lay bet on Chardy at the current price knowing that if he goes against
play and wins the set your risk is still manageable.
Arranging Scenarios
If you wish to keep your favourite scenarios close to the top of the screen you can place a
„tick‟ in the check box as in the illustration above. This will move that scenario to the top
of the screen underneath the „Current Score‟.
You can see in the illustration below I have selected to use a custom score scenario and
the „Andy Murray Wins Game‟ scenario by placing a tick in the relevant boxes. This
enables me to easily keep an eye on what will happen if the game goes to Andy. The
custom box enables me to quickly enter a „what-if‟ score and see what the likely odds
will be if that circumstance arises.
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Bet Angel Guardian
Concept
Usage
If you are using the market selection tool, select the market you
are interested in and just click on the “G+” icon on the top right
of the market selection tool. This will automatically add the
selected market to Guardian and confirm this action with a text
indicator at the bottom of this menu. When the confirmation text
appears you should also hear a sound. This means your selected
market has been added to Guardian. Do not double click on the
market or click OK as this will jump straight into the market in
Bet Angel in isolation instead.
If you are in Bet Angel and currently viewing a market you can add this
market by using the Guardian buttons. Click on the “G+” icon again to add
the current market that you are active on into the Guardian module.
You are also able to drag, drop or multi select markets quickly and easily once you are
inside Guardian. Please read the next section to understand how to do this.
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Starting Guardian and selecting additional markets.
Starting Guardian is easy. When you are in a Bet Angel market simply click the “G”
button and you will transported to the main Guardian screen. This will automatically be
populated with the markets you have previously selected and added to Guardian.
The main Guardian screen is split into four sections:
Ribbon Bar.
This is the top area of the screen and contains three tabs.
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In the market selection tab you will see a market list familiar to the one found within
Betfair or Bet Angel. From here, click on the sport type you are interesting in until you
see the market you would like Guardian to monitor. Highlight the market by and click on
the „Add‟ button.
You can continue to add markets using this method and Guardian will begin to monitor
from the moment the market is loaded.
In the „Market Quick Picks‟ tab selecting additional horse racing or greyhound markets is
even easier.
Using this tab enables you to load the entire day‟s card into Guardian for UK, Irish,
Australian and US horse racing. You can choose whether to load the win markets, place
markets or both types.
You can also choose to select the days greyhound races by checking the tick boxes.
Once selected, click „Add‟ and the chosen markets will automatically load into the main
Guardian screen.
The markets will now begin to cycle through at the rate selected in the „Refresh interval‟
selected at the top of the screen.
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Note that Guardian will store chart data based upon this interval. For
example, if you have 20 markets within Guardian and the refresh rate is set
to 1 second, Guardian will gather data from a single market once every 20
seconds. Once the market is the focus of the main application the charts will
gather data in the settings specified from within Bet Angel.
Market Search
To find a market and add it quickly to Guardian you can use the search
facility. This can save time when looking for a particular market in a long
list; for example, Saturday afternoon football markets.
In this example to the right, the search term „AFC Wimbledon‟ has
delivered all markets that mention the term.
If you use a generic search word such as „Tennis‟ this will deliver all the
Betfair markets under „Tennis‟
Soccer Search
Guardian will allow you to search for football (soccer) matches
quickly. You can also elect to search for game supported by the Soccer
Mystic predictor tool.
In this example, the search for „England‟ and only show the matches
supported by the predictor.
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Main Window
This contains details of the markets selected in the top window with details such as log,
current market prices, matched and unmatched bets.
Currently
selected
markets
Market details
type options
In the main Guardian window you can see all open markets and bets in the markets you
have selected and how many open positions are matched or unmatched. You will also see
the current market status such as „in-play‟ or „suspended‟ along with the last time it was
suspended as well as the last time that Guardian visited the market and due event start
time.
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If you click on a market in the main list above, the lower part of screen allows you to
view and switch between matched and unmatched bets that are present in that market and
also a market specific log, you can also view all available odds in that market. The
market specific log will tell you when Guardian detected market specific activity such as
a suspension or when bets were placed in this market. The time between suspension and
detection may vary slightly because of the way that Guardian cycles the markets.
Clicking on the drawing pin in the top right corner of the market details section will make
this window auto-hide. This can be useful in freeing up valuable screen space.
In the top menu area you can also choose whether or not you wish to show or hide the
market selection side bar.
Once you have found a screen layout that suits you save the layout by clicking on the
„settings‟ tab. From here you can restore a previously saved layout also.
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Functionality of Guardian
Any order placed via the normal Betfair interface will show in any market being
monitored by Guardian as will any order placed anywhere in Bet Angel. Any order
placed using order management features which are set via the global settings, such as stop
losses, trailing stops and timed fill or kill etc, will also be managed and executed by
Guardian. Guardian is designed to work predominantly with unmatched bets or positions
which have been opened or created by the user in Bet Angel or via automated Bet Angel
functions but it will monitor all other open positions.
If you fire a bet with Offsetting, timed fill or kill and stop losses, or any variant thereof,
from any tab and have the market present in Guardian, Guardian will manage these open
positions across all these markets even if you are not currently trading or viewing the
market in the main Bet Angel interface. For example, if you visited each market fired in a
reversed book order on several selections, offset with a 120 second timed fill or kill order
with stop losses across 15 markets then Guardian will manage each of these orders in
each market as though you were active on each market.
It is important to note though, that if you set functions such as automation, bookmaking,
dutching or other similar functions it will not cycle and apply these capabilities through
Guardian. To clarify, this means that if you make a book, dutch or fire bets via Bet Angel
to Betfair it will manage the subsequent bets that were fired into the market from each tab
but if you specifically set up the bookmaking function or automation to fire to pre-set
criteria and add it to Guardian then switch to another market; Guardian will not scan or
monitor each market according to the settings you have in that specific module, it will
only scan the current market that those settings apply to. In summary, only orders that
have global settings applied to them are managed automatically in the background by
Guardian. No other features are managed automatically unless you are actively pointing
the main Bet Angel interface at that market.
Scanning / Cycling
In order to operate, Bet Angel Guardian cycles through each market in the Guardian list
at a preset interval defined by the user. Only upon reaching a market will Guardian
perform any particular automated function in that market. Bet Angel scans each market in
turn because it is the software on your computer that is monitoring the markets rather
than a remote server.
With cycling in any form, whether server or client based, it is possible that a suspension
or other market activity could occur during the time that Guardian is waiting to return to
that market. Therefore you could find that a function is not complete before a market
activity is completed or recognised. This obviously does not apply to open positions that
are entered in the market waiting to be filled as these are held on the Betfair server. This
only applies to stop losses, timed fill or kill orders etc, which are managed by Bet Angel.
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The refresh cycle period can be user defined to minimise these issues. Typically the only
time you would notice this would be during a very short market suspension. Most market
suspensions are fairly long and therefore wouldn‟t be missed by a Guardian cycle but
obviously missing a much shorter suspension, if you are not cycling the market quickly
enough, is possible.
Please note that because Guardian is a client based process. If your internet connection
fails completely, rather than temporarily, or your system crashes Bet Angel Guardian will
be unable to monitor any open positions.
Note that in order to link the multiple markets held in Guardian to Excel you should use
the Excel feature within Guardian and not the main Bet Angel application.
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Using Excel integration with Guardian.
By clicking on the „Excel‟ tab within Guardian, we can link to an Excel workbook to
manipulate and monitor data as described in the Excel section earlier.
However, Guardian allows us to monitor multiple markets within Excel and execute bets
or trades based upon triggers set within the Excel spreadsheet within one or more
markets.
For example, if we wish to monitor both the win and place market of a particular horse
race we can now do this within Excel. Or maybe you wish to look at and compare a
soccer match odds market with the correct score market from the same game.
The ability to monitor multiple markets in this way enables Excel to be used to write
exotic triggers based upon multiple market data or to submit bets to multiple markets in
sequence.
Follow these steps to load several markets into Excel by using the supplied Excel
template „BetAngel_Multiple.xls‟.
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Hint – You can move the „Excel‟ column header to be closer to the market
name to make this easier to follow by dragging and dropping. In fact you can
do this with any of the column headers.
6. Now click on „Connect‟ in the top area and Guardian will begin to populate the
worksheets.
Note that the worksheets will populate at the same rate as Guardian so wait for Guardian
to complete a full cycle of events before all your worksheets are populated with data.
Using the supplied multiple markets spreadsheet we can see the different sheets within
the workbook at the bottom of the Excel screen. And we can switch to the markets
selected within the same workbook. Using the Excel functions mentioned earlier in this
user guide we can now submit orders to multiple markets.
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Market Overview
Concept
Betting exchanges make lots of information available that could be useful when deciding
how to trade a particular market. Bet Angel Professional can now display a wide range of
information from last traded price to volume percentages.
Arrange columns by
drag and drop
Sort by column
heading order. For
example, click to
sort by price
Time remaining
to start of event
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Customising
The column headings can be re-arranged in any order by using drag and drop. By clicking
on the „Columns‟ menu item you can add or remove columns to show or hide the
information you require.
The chart window and the information window can be undocked and re-arranged. For
example, the meter can be detached and floated above your trade window by moving
across and clicking on the drawing pin icon -
Double click on the window to detach and move. See illustration below.
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Once you have arrived at a screen layout you wish to keep, click on the „File‟ menu item
to save the layout. This can be restored by choosing „Restore Screen Layout‟
Column Headings
Hovering over each column heading will bring up a „tool tip‟ with a brief explanation of
what each column means.
Column definitions:
The selections can be added or removed from the chart area by checking or un-checking
the chart tick box. The colours can also be altered to your own choices by clicking on the
drop down arrow.
Overview Chart
The chart contains a long view of the market based upon last traded price. The chart can
auto zoom to frame the selected prices or can be manually zoomed by using the slide
controls on either side of the chart area. Use the mouse to adjust the sliders and
familiarise yourself with the use of the charting area.
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You can highlight each selected runner by hovering the mouse over the chart line. The
price shown next to the horse name will be the historical price traded at that time and is
not the current price.
Risk Meter
The meter has been developed after analysing data for thousands of races over several
years. Bet Angel can now detect if a market is behaving „normally‟ or is behaving in a
manner that is not consistent with the usual make up of that market. It does this by using
complex calculations and our own algorithms developed over that time.
You can choose to use this to your advantage. A higher volatility may mean higher
profits may be available from the market but at greater risk. A lower risk reading may
mean smaller profits are available but may be available many times over.
Be aware that the meter does not take into account loose horses, sudden
withdrawals or other market anomalies which could affect the reading.
The Risk Meter is not available for all markets and will only work for UK Horse Racing
Win markets on Betfair.
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Settings area
The settings govern certain characteristics of Bet Angel
and the way it interacts with the market. Most of the
settings are covered in the respective areas of this
document and are specific to very certain functions and
capabilities. This section summarises each rules that
are not mentioned elsewhere in this document.
On each screen in Bet Angel, Bet Angel automatically shows the amount of money
matched per refresh. This helps you establish how liquid the market it but the amount will
vary dramatically. By setting the volume moving average you can „smooth‟ out the per
refresh amount to a moving average over a period of time. This will activate two figures
in Bet Angel, the amount per refresh and the more indicative figure over the average
amount per refresh.
Stake
This function simply specifies the default stake available in each Bet Angel screen when
you initially start the software.
Offsetting Method
The offsetting functions are a legacy of the very first version of Bet Angel. Selecting
„force offset‟ is the preferred setting as this ensures both orders reach the market. Using
this in conjunction with functions such as fill or kill ensures some control over how offset
orders reach the market. „Offset only initial fill‟ will only offset only part of the initial
opening order that is filled and no subsequent fills and only exists for older users that still
use this function instead of the more modern equivalent „fill or kill‟.
This setting allows you to shift how the weight of money is represented in percentage
terms on each Bet Angel screen. Applying 100% to the inner weighting and 0% to the
other weightings means that Bet Angel will only look at the money in the innermost part
of the three best prices. There is no „correct‟ setting for this and you should experiment to
find a setting you feel comfortable with.
Save settings
Use this to store your standard settings and set them as a default for the next time you
start up Bet Angel.
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System Settings
Colour Preferences
If you have Windows Aero graphical settings this can be turned on or off for the Bet
Angel window.
Ladder
The various graphical elements of the ladder can be set to your own colours if you wish
here.
Popup Charts
If you would like Bet Angel to update the charts when switching markets then ensure this
is ticked.
Green Up Restriction
When using the dutching or bookmaking features of Bet Angel, you are trying to realise a
profit by taking advantage of a book over-round or under-round in your favour. You are
not realising a profit by closing a trade.
The greening column on the one click screen will close trades in order to realise a profit
or loss for each selection in a market - a different strategy to bookmaking or dutching.
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Improving Bet Angel‟s performance
Dynamic Connection Mode
Concept
During peak or even during normal periods, Betfair can become periodically unstable. It
is possible to occasionally witness problems with the Betfair web site, the API or your
internet service provider. We run and measure performance in the office on most days
and because we actively test and trade the markets we often able to see major issues
immediately and inform users via the Bet Angel Desktop. However, every user has
slightly different routes to Betfair and those routes can be subject to traffic shaping or
other vagaries which we are unable to test or see first hand. The connection mode setting
gives user the flexibility to modify the way they connect to Betfair in order that they may
get the best possible experience if they experience underlying problems.
Usage
Typically you would only switch connection modes if you think there is a problem or you
are unhappy with the connection you are seeing. If your machine is performing to
expectations, then there is no need to switch. “To expectations” is really your own
definition. Once you have used the software for a while you
will know what your expectation is.
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Connection mode settings: -
Zero “0”, is the default mode in Bet Angel Professional. In mode zero, Bet Angel will use
the default settings contained within Bet Angel. From mode zero you use additional
connection modes.
Mode Result
Zero “0”, is the default mode in Bet Angel and is the recommended mode of operation. If
you select mode 7 this is also recommend, this is because they are full API modes. This
means that if you connect to Betfair using these modes they should be the most stable and
also contain the most features. It is important to note that some of the features in Bet
Angel are API only. You should also note that if Betfair change their website the non API
modes could fail or malfunction. So overall the API mode is the safest to use.
The hybrid modes contain specific characteristics that are variations of API and non API
functions. This allows you to „play‟ around with connections that may best suit you.
Some data is pulled from the API while others are pulled from alternate methods. The
primary objective of the hybrid modes is to get the best possible connection and
performance.
*API stands for Application programming interface and is the default and most reliable way of communicating with
Betfair. The API provides dedicated servers and protocols for connecting with Betfair. Non API usage does not have
standard protocols and is therefore subject to issues that surrounding unscheduled modification of the Betfair web site
or underlying substructure.
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System Settings
The dynamic connection tuner is a unique Bet Angel tool which further enhances your
ability to get the best possible performance from Bet Angel, your internet connection and
Betfair. You will find the dynamic connection tuner on the „rules‟ tab.
When you are logged in via an API or hybrid mode you can use the connection tuner to
further enhance your connection performance to Betfair.
Usage
There is no right or wrong usage of the connection tuner, each machine and Internet
connection will exhibit different and unique characteristics. Your objective should be to
adjust the refresh rate in Bet Angel to a reasonable level and pull the connection tuner to
the lowest number possible.
If the connection tuner is too low in comparison to your refresh rate you will see that Bet
Angel is unable to refresh and the responsiveness indicator will stall or freeze. This is an
indication that your setting is too low. If this happens move your refresh rate up or the
tuner down. If your setting is too high you will not notice or see any characteristics that
will indicate this as Bet Angel will continue normal operation and the tuner will have no
effect on the operation.
The limit on calls per second is set by Betfair. Any calls over this limit are chargeable.
Bet Angel has a built in „throttle‟ or limiter on the number of data request calls made per
second by the software. This is found in the „Rules‟ tab towards the bottom of the screen.
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You will need to reduce this if you do the following:
For example, if running two instance of Bet Angel you will need to reduce the limiter to
10 data calls per second or less.
In normal use, with the limiter set at 20 or less, you should not incur any charges.
Refer to Betfair for the current number of calls per second. At the time of writing, the
limit is 20 calls per second. You will also find details of the charges on the Betfair
website under the „About Us‟ link.
Transaction Counter
The number of transactions made in any one hour is counted by Betfair. The transaction
counter at the bottom of the screen will allow you to keep a track of how many
transactions have been made by the software.
The limit on transactions per hour is set by Betfair. Any transactions over
this limit are chargeable. Currently, this is 1000/hr. Check with Betfair for
latest information.
Other Settings
The top menu bar has additional settings for using Bet
Angel. For example, you can hide or show your balance or
user name, disable the sound alerts. The features menu item
allows you to disable unused items. For example, if you do
not use the dutching feature, you can disable this and save
some system resources.
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Your connection to Betfair
Understanding local performance
Concept
Monitoring your position and maximising a connection will improve not only your ability
to trade the market but also allow you to spot if there are any potential issues.
Excessive response times can cause potential risk to you trading position in the market
and cause your software to malfunction. By logging and constantly displaying your
responsiveness to Betfair in Bet Angel you can asses whether your connection to Betfair
via the internet is performing in line with your expectations and take appropriate action if
it is not performing as expected.
Usage
Responsiveness indicator
The first and most obvious are the responsiveness indicators at the bottom of the main
Bet Angel screen that you will be using. To verify what you are looking at just hover
your mouse over the number which is constantly updating. Theses numbers measure the
response time in milliseconds to Betfair for either odds retrieval or bet retrieval. There is
no default correct response time. This will be very specific to your set up but by keeping
an eye on the response time you will quickly come to understand what is a right or wrong
response time.
If your screen „freezes‟ and there is no apparent communication with Betfair then click
on this option and it drop all current communication and will attempt to reconnect to
Betfair. This is more helpful if you have an unstable Internet communication rather than
if Betfair is not responding but it is usually worth trying. Using this function will
terminate processes underway within Bet Angel. Therefore after this and when a
connection is re-establish you should double check all your open positions.
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Ways to test and improve your responsiveness
Close down all additional applications including task bar and background tasks
Remove task bar and background tasks and check that you do not have any software open
that may access or attempt to access the internet such as an email client or remote access
tool. Background tasks are very common in Windows and several background tasks can
cause poor performance even though you can‟t actually see any applications running.
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Awareness
We run and measure performance at our offices on most days and because we actively
test and trade the markets we often see major issues first hand. Every user, however, has
slightly different routes to Betfair and a variety of system configurations and these can
affect your system performance. Internet traffic can be subject to traffic shaping or other
issues whether they are local or related to third parties.
If you experience performance issues and we have not highlighted any specific action or
known issues then it is likely that there is a change in your operating system, internet
provision or connection to Betfair that has changed and affected performance. Often these
changes are subtle and may be related to something that has changed without you
noticing, such as a background update. We have noticed graphics drivers, routers and
system settings can interfere with the performance of the software and / or connections to
Betfair.
If we receive persistent reports of specific issues we always check our software and make
recommendations to users if necessary. If we see a more general deterioration in
performance that is related to a third party issue we will also publicise this and
recommend action. Unfortunately, of a lot of PC issues are very difficult to diagnose and
we can‟t help resolve very specific issues. We can only help resolve or suggest generally
resolutions. We always test the software and make general recommendations based on
reports from our users. If you see no recommendations then it is likely that you are seeing
a „local‟ issue.
There are many possible reasons why your connection to Betfair is experiencing poor
performance. Some will be clear but unfortunately, due to the vagaries of your specific
computer system, the internet and of the host server at Betfair it is impossible to always
tie down why performance has deteriorated.
While we can make general recommendations it is very difficult, if not impossible, for us
to carry out very specific forensic investigations. It is also very difficult for us to make
any sensible specific recommendations especially where that involves providing support
for products which we are not familiar with. Therefore we will always make general
recommendations if we see general issues but individual performance will always remain
the domain and responsibility of the individual user.
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Future developments of Bet Angel
The team here at Bet Angel are committed to continuing to develop our product to
address the needs of our customers and this ever changing, competitive, market. Since
Bet Angel was first created we have continued to push forward with new developments
and features which benefit our customers and break new ground in the market. Our
development team is unique in the fact that we use our products continuously on the
market in our efforts to improve performance and deliver new features and ideas.
We have a very strong background in financial and betting markets and we have plenty of
ideas and opportunities to develop the product but the implementation of these ideas will
always be guided by our customers. If there is a feature you would like to see in Bet
Angel please send your request to Bet Angel support who will put it forward to the
development team. Any commons requests will push the feature up the development
roster.
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