Hello everybody,
yesterday Muxor and me visited German horse racing here in our home city Cologne. We are not experts when it comes to German horse racing, but the principle is the same: Back the winner! :-)
We had a few punts with small money and here you can see how we did:
(Click on image to enlarge)
Overall we had a funny afternoon.
In September there will be another meeting here in Cologne and I am pretty sure we will visit the meeting again.
Cheers,
Loocie
Hello folks,
This month is really a pleasure. So far June is the most profitable month ever. Currently I am looking at a total profit of 384.27 points this month and there are still a lot of days to raise the monthly pl to a new record!
I am making good profits with the system and I have already a few friends using the system, too.
There are still a few places left for other people using the system, so I am looking for people to use my system as well.
If you want to use the system you need to meet the following requirements:
UPDATE 1:
Sorry for any misunderstandings. From your replies I see I need to clarify some misunderstandings.
UPDATE 2:
Thank you very much for this overwhelming numbers of responses. I am really sorry, but I could not add all the people who sent me an email, because I need to protect prices for the subscribers.
If there are again new places left I will contact you again, if you sent me an email already.
Cheers, Loocie
Hello everybody,
Exactly a year ago we started with our semi automated betting bot, so today it is its first anniversary.
What an exciting year it has been. The first three days produced a loss of -1.67pts, -4.25pts and -22.80pts. I was a little disappointed then, but I stuck to it and the next two days produced a profit of 2.25pts and 55.33pts.
There have been good days and also not that good days, but right now with all the experience I got during the year those bad periods does not affect my mood anymore.
Let’s have a look at the stats of the first year:
Total PL 2,230.94pts
Total days 297
Days in Profit 176
Days in Loss 121
Max daily Profit 73.58pts
Max daily Loss -43.50pts
Avg PL per Day 7.51pts
The most challenging part of the year was the bank building process. From 05/29/2010 to 08/02/2010 (60 days!) we only managed to make 7.74 pts. We checked again and again our software and luckily we could identify a bug and solve it.
This really helped, so August 2010 produced a total profit of 305.59pts.
I do not want to have another bank building process anymore. Building a decent betting bank requires a lot of discipline and patience. I think this is the most challenging part for every beginner of professional betting or trading when starting with a small bank. If you lose five quid you might think that is not that much, but percentage wise (if it is 1% of your betting bank) it can be costly. If you lose 5 quid of your bank of 500 quid's – no problem. If your bank is 5000 quid’s you will lose 50 quid’s which might be a problem. Therefore I am always thinking in points rather than in Euro.
Tracking your betting or trading results helps you to stay focused. I am lucky, because I do not have to track my results manually, it is done by the software automatically, but having a look at the graph of the betting bank on a daily basis helps a lot to stay focused.
So what to expect from the next year? I will be really pleased to produce the same profit again. No chase, no run for random numbers and goals, just making profit. It will be interesting to see how the performance will be from today until 08/02/2011, because the bug is eliminated and I am pretty sure the results for this period in 2011 will be much better than in 2010.
Another important thing I need to mention is ‘motivation’. I stay motivated by listening to certain music when the profit comes in. So when I had a really good day I always enjoy those two songs:
I start the day always with this one:
I think this technique comes from Neuro-linguistic programming and is called “Anchoring”. Give it a try.
That’s it for now.
I now I promised you a report about the trading seminar a few weeks ago in Manchester. You will get it, but not today ;-)
Cheers, Loocie
Hello everybody,
I am still alive! A really long time since my last blog post. There are two reason for not posting that often in the moment: Firstly time is really limited. I am still working from 9 to 5 and doing the horses as well, so every free minute is appreciated.
The second one is that I do not have to say anything interesting. I am posting my profit/loss figure on a daily bases on the right side via twitter, just to keep you updated.
The horses are doing really well. March is already with 96.48 points in profit and with Cheltenham in front, I am really excited what March in total will bring.
On 2nd of April Muxor and me will attend a football trading seminar in Manchester. We will arrive on Friday and we will stay there until Sunday. It is the first time that we get in touch in real life with other traders and I am really excited about other people’s background, motivation and ideas about sports trading and betting.
That’s it so far. I will keep you updated about the trading seminar and maybe other stuff, too ;-)
Cheers,
Loocie
Hi,
This is the 2nd post of the series “Creating A Betfair Bot With C#”.
In the first blog post of this series I mentioned all the tools and software I am using when working on betting bots based on .NET C#.
Before I will start I just want to mention that you are using the given information and software on your own risk. I am not responsible for any problems and issues.
Today we will step into development and I will write about the following functionalities every bot of mine has:
You will also see the structure of the bot, but most of the classes are not yet finished, especially the ones which are related to the Betfair API.
It might be useful to download the Visual Studio 2005 project first and look at the source code and the descriptions in this series simultaneously.
DOWNLOAD-LINK Betfair Betting Bot Project
I will now go through a few classes and files first and give information about important things to consider:
Program.cs
This file contains the main entry of our application which means if you start the application the first call is the so called “main method”. Generally this main method calls the first windows form.
To make things easier I always add the following line as the first command in the main method:
AppDomain.CurrentDomain.UnhandledException +=
new UnhandledExceptionEventHandler(CurrentDomain_UnhandledException);
GUI.frmMain.cs
This is our main windows form with all the controls we need to show market information or any information we want. To make it easier I only will place a few controls for debugging information.
GUI.frmLogin.cs
This windows form is the form we are using for login into Betfair. Currently there is no functionality implemented. I will update this form in the next article, which is related to Betfair API.
Data.Betfair.BetfairContainer.cs
This class will handle all the connectivity to Betfair API. Currently it is not yet implemented, but I added it already to give you an overview of the structure of the bot.
I also already added web references to Betfair API. We will need this in the next article.
(web references in project explorer)
I only added a reference to global service (for login functionality etc) and a reference to UK exchange (for getting prices, markets etc). If your bot should also work for AUS markets you need to add a reference to AUS exchange too.
1. Logging Functionality
When developing an application it is always useful to know what is going on in your application. Therefore I am always creating logging functionality in every application I am working on. The logging in this bot consists of two parts:
a) General logging into a console:
This is done via method “LogIntoConsole” in form frmMain.
Use the call
GUI.frmMain.LogIntoConsole(“Testmessage”);
to log something into console. This logging is working non-blocking, that means even if you log many large messages or variable contents the user interface is still responsive.
b) Logging into a log file:
This is done via LoggingTask. To perform a log into a log file use call
GUI.frmMain.LogIntoFile(“Testmessage”);
There will be created a log file in the path where the executable is. For each day you will get another file, so the file name contains a part of the date, something like “debug_11_30.log” for 30th November. This logging is done in a background thread, so again if you are logging huge data the application is still responsive an not blocking.
2. Local Database
Using local databases is really important, especially if you want to be able to load data into your bot from external data sources. For example you can create a bot which places bets on horse racing depending on various criteria from Adrian Massey’s Rating from http://www.adrianmassey.com/28/rating.php.
You can let your bot scrap the webpage or save it manually into MS Excel and save it as comma separated value file and then let the bot read the file and place the bets for you, if certain criteria fit your strategy. For saving data like this you can use a local database in your bot. Therefore I have created a SQL Manager which does all the work for you:
Database.SQLManager.cs:
For demonstration how to work with a database I added a SQL table called “Settings” for saving settings for the bot. So you can save settings like stake, max odds, min odds etc and every time you start the bot all the settings will be loaded from the database.
I only created a sample of this SQL Manager. To get your settings working you need to add some functionality. The same, if you want to save horse racing data. The steps to add something like this are:
1. Write a method for creating the SQL table like I did in method SQLManager.createSettingTable().
2. Call this method in SQLManager.Initialize(). So now your table will be created at start of application, if it is not yet present.
3. Write a method for saving objects into database like I did in method SQLManager.SaveSetting(string key, string value).
4. Write a method for getting objects from database like I did in method SQLManager.GetSetting(string key).
So now you can save settings for example like this anywhere in the bot with
SQLManager.SaveSetting(“stake”, “10.00”);
and get it back with
SQLManager.GetSetting(“stake”);
I am not using a database for saving settings, but just want to give an example. I am saving settings via Registry:
3. Saving Settings in Registry
This is done via class Data.CRegistry.cs. All settings will be saved in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MyBot.
I added a few methods in CRegistry for demonstration. So with this example you can save stake size, min odds and max odds. If you want to add further settings, just copy one of the methods and modify it accordingly. Saving stake sizes for example within registry call CRegistry.saveStakeSize(10.00); and get it from registry call double stakeSize = CRegistry.getStakeSize();.
(Example: Settings saved in registry)
4. Bot Handling
What do I mean with “bot handling”? When using an automated betting system it is always useful to start and stop the bot. Therefore I created an enumeration called BotStatusEnum, which indicates whether the bot is running or not.
Another important thing to consider is, that starting the application via clicking on the executable does not automatically mean, that the bot is running. To start the bot itself you need to click on start button in the top left menu. If the bot then is running you can stop it by clicking on stop button. I also added a closing form handler which means if the bot is running and you click on the X on top right unintentionally, you will always get a message that the bot is still running an can not be closed. The is really important if your bot trades automatically on Betfair. So you can implement rules for automatically closing trades on application exit to keep your liability as small as possible.
Wow, what a huge blog post. Hopefully I did not miss any information. If so, feel free to drop an email or leave a comment. In the next two blog posts of this series we will step into Betfair API handling. This will be really interesting, especially login/logout, market handling (add and remove markets), getting prices and placing bets.
Cheers, Loocie
Hi folks,
Long time since the last blog post. I am still there and working on the betting front.
Generally, when betting related bloggers publish blog posts less frequently than earlier there are two common reasons: Their betting/trading is not successful as expected or everything is fine. Luckily I am one of the latter one.
To give you an idea about the results of the last months here is an overview:
All the profit comes from betting on horse races with the semi automated version of HorstBecker.
The change of the weather conditions and the change into the jump season had an effect of our results for November. During the first week we were 50 pts down but our confidence is still big enough to handle those down swings and currently we are looking at a solid profit of 73.92 points.
I mentioned in the last blog post, that Muxor and me enjoyed a part of our profit with a short vacation in Malta at the end of October. Here are some pictures (Click on images to enlarge):
Our Private Extra-Large Terrace
Looking for a speed boat to hire
The Westin Dragonara Resort Malta – Our Hotel
Blue Lagoon – View from the speed boat
We really enjoyed the trip to Malta. This was our first big reward we had from our betting and I am hoping for more of that.
The move into my new flat is already done, but there are still things to work on.
Today only a meeting in Kempton takes place, so I will have some time to work on the next article of the series “Creating A Betfair Bot With C#”.
That’s it so far. Have a nice Sunday!
Cheers, Loocie
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