Recording Betfair Prices for Dummies

Here at Punters’ Paradise, we recognise that not everyone is an expert gambler or has years of experience with computers. The explosion in online gambling, fuelled by tax regime changes, cheap computers and the birth of betting exchanges has attracted punters of all ages and experience. It is those gamblers who perhaps have limited experience with computers that we aim this article at.

"Gary is to be applauded...for the quality of his work which puts many similar but expensive commercial offerings to shame"

To record Betfair prices we need two tools, Microsoft Excel and the Betfair Trader from Gary Russell. The latter is a free tool and can be downloaded from: http://www.gruss.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/.

Gary is to be applauded for both his generosity in making the tool available free of charge and for the quality of his work which puts many similar but expensive commercial offerings to shame.

In addition to allow us to record prices in real time, Gary’s software also offers the following features:

• One click betting on all 3 back and lay prices
• Continually updated display of potential profit
• Option to take profit (or minimise loss) with one click (stake will be auto calculated)
• Dutching stakes automatically calculated (just enter profit required)
• Real time update of prices in Excel spreadsheet
• Triggered betting from Excel (future release)

If you have not installed the Betfair Trader before please read the instructions on the site. Ok, so now you have the Betfair Trader installed and running alongside Excel and are ready to start.

Let’s say we want to record prices and volumes for a football match, Rangers v Celtic. First we will prepare the spreadsheet that we intend to store the recorded data in.

Open a new spreadsheet and save it as, e.g. Rangers-Celtic-Prices.xls. Now rename each tab (right-click over the default name Sheet 1,2 ,3-) to -Rangers-, -Celtic- and -Draw-. Note t
hat Excel needs to be running with an open workbook before the Betting Assistant can connect to it.

Now select your required market in the Betting Assistant and set an appropriate refresh rate. Excel will allow just over 65,000 samples to be recorded so the refresh rate chosen should ensure that this limit will not be exceeded before the event starts. Refreshing ever second will consume 60 rows per minute and will give about 18 hours of recording time.

"The selection box allows you to select the runner and should be displaying the first entry in the market. "

From the Betting Assistant menu select Excel and then - Log Individual Price- A window will open with three drop-down lists. The selection box allows you to select the runner and should be displaying the first entry in the market. In this example that would be Rangers. The Workbook name box should be displaying the name of the workbook you prepared.

If not, open the list and select that workbook. This will only be necessary if you have more than one workbook open. Finally select the correct sheet from the worksheet name box. Again this should already display Rangers (if that is the first sheet in your prepared workbook. Click Ok.

The window is dismissed and it would appear that nothing has happened but if you go to your workbook you will see the market data appear. If you have set a longer refresh rate, e.g. one minute then it will be approximately one minute before the first row of data appears.

And there we have it. Simply repeat for the other selections in the market as required.

With the application of a bit of formatting, your sheet could look like this.