Bet software and betting bots have been around for awhile

but do they really make money for you?

What is bet software, otherwise known as a Betting Bot?

An exchange betting bot is either a specially written software interface, or spreadsheet (Excel), that aids in the automation of placing bets on horse racing, football, darts, cricket and all other events Betfair covers. Software bots are also available for poker. Betting bots are nothing new, as similar software has been around for city trading for years, but it is only recently that they have been used for sports betting. Betting bots can be used for trading, hedging, dutching, arbing, automatic betting, and much more.

How do they work?

The betting bot used in my 4 week trial is Auto-BF. Each day the bet software downloads the Betfair details of the top 4 horses in the betting for each race at every UK meeting except for evening cards. The software employs formulae contained in an Excel spreadsheet for which the parameters can be adjusted as desired, otherwise it operates on the default settings.

How much do they cost?

The price you pay obviously varies - some such as Market Feeder Pro can be bought outright for £225. Others that require the vendors to provide an after service will impose a monthly charge e.g. Auto-BF bet software charges a monthly cost of £59.99 for week day trading (nothing at the weekend).

Below is a screen shot of Marketfeeder Pro

The betting bot used in my 4 week trial is Auto-BF. Each day the software downloads the Betfair details of the top 4 horses in the betting for each race at every UK meeting except for evening cards. The software employs formulae contained in an Excel spreadsheet for which the parameters can be adjusted as desired, otherwise it operates on the default settings.

The bet software strikes a bet in the place only market, usually the favourite, using the Betfair interface software Marketfeeder Pro, within a few minutes of the off. There is no facility for in-running transactions. The stake is calculated as a percentage of your Betfair bank. The default is 0.25% but the recommendation is 0.01% The reason for such cautious stakes is that the software relies on a loss chasing system to recover any losses and gradually increase the bank. The main drawback is using the place market where odds are typically around 1.7 although the software default is 1.33%. After only 4 consecutive losses the stakes can become very large and there is a danger of the bank being wiped out if the losing run continues, although there is a facility to provide a cut off point.

Below is an Auto-BF screen shot of a race, showing the first 4 in the betting. A bet has been matched for the favourite Letalus to gain a place at odds of 2.6 and a stake of £0.24

I started with a bank of £150 and let the bet software run on the default settings, which aim to produce 25p profit on each race. Two things quickly became apparent. First that stakes could become very large after just 4 losses, which tempered my inclination to increase the stakes, even though I had increased the bank to £400. Second that although in theory there could be as many as 30 races per day, in practise it averaged only 6 races per day.

There are several reasons for this:

1. The place odds for the favourite are too low i.e. below 1.33 for a bet to be placed

2. The bet software can only move on to the next race if the last bet has been settled by Betfair

3. There may be a delay in the start of a race at a meeting which results in the races getting out of sync

4. The bet software is set to stop placing bets if it becomes apparent that the day may end in a loss if it continues. Usually it stops at least 6 races before the end.

The screen shot below shows the Auto-BF triggers that decide the conditions required to place a bet.

My only attempt at adjusting the default settings resulted in the only days loss. I changed the setting to allow the bot to continue trading to the end of the day. If you do this you have the option for the bot to continue trading the next day where you left off and thus recover any losses. Sod's law of course states that my last trades are losses and I was not sufficiently confident in the system to allow it to try to recover the losses the next day. So I ended the day with a loss of £4.32.

At the end of the trial I decided to check whether the class of race had any bearing on the win ratio. This certainly proved to be the case as the following statistics show:

class 1, 1 win from 3 races

class 2, 0 wins from 1

class 3, 4 wins from 9 44%

class 4, 18 wins from 24 75%

class 5, 11 wins from 21 52%

class 6, 6 wins from 13 46%

All Weather 9/15 60%

Flat 23/38 60%

Jumps 16/32 50%

From this it is apparent that if you restrict the bet software to bet only class 4 races the odds of a win increase to 75%

There were 2 occasions when the stakes rose alarmingly - in the second week after a losing run of four races, the 5th race required a stake of £97.79 to recover losses. In the fourth week after a losing run of four races the 5th race required a stake of £99.07 to recover losses. At the end of the trial the total return was £30.21 resulting in a loss of £29.69 if you include the cost of the 4 week subscription.

Conclusions

Despite the drawbacks to the system, it has to be said that I did not make a loss in trading and if the bank is large enough and bet only class 4 races it would be possible to use suitable stakes to produce a profit without the risk of losing the bank.

Betfair - the Bet Software Exchange