A crucial driver in developing specifications for my “Power Trading” systems was feedback from punters that there was a growing disquiet about the distribution of profits amongst the Betfair masses.

Inevitably, there has to be some disparity to an extent between winners and losers in the Betfair arena in that by its very nature for every winner there has to be a loser.

But exactly in the same way that Bookmakers were able to take advantage of punters by setting excessive overrounds, there was an increasing sense that Betfair professionals have an unfair advantage over the novice punter.

Perhaps the primary driving force behind "Power Trading" was a need to empower advanced and intermediate traders with new and innovative betting systems that would enhance their betting strategies and add to existing ones, to provide an increase in profits from their Betfair experience.

Potentially a lot more people should be able to profit through their Betfair betting, and my aim is to offer anyone prepared to invest in their trade or hobby a genuine chance at winning.

I advocate hard work and commitment throughout my work and techniques.

Nobody in their right mind should believe the claims of instant life changing wealth through Betfair. You must know deep down that life doesn't work like that !!

Life changing results can and do happen but not without knowledge, effort and dedication.

Experienced gamblers and horse racing fans will already know that in reality there is NO single racing system that works all the time, throughout the racing season.

Even further from ever being a reality is the possibility of a horse racing system that can be fully automated by computer betting software that will work all the time.

Betfair will be on the scene for decades to come and with gambling being positively encouraged by the establishment in Europe, America and Asia, marketers and unscrupulous companies are literally throwing systems together in the hope of making a fast buck from the constant supply of new and misguided novice gamblers.  

They even refer to them as "mugs"!

I have long been an advocate of studying fundamental form and the greatest horse racing experts make good profits by focusing their predictions around races and race types where they have gathered immense amounts of data and analysis.

Racing betting specialists are those have chosen to become “expert” in a given area of horse racing and it is a sound strategy well known for producing enormous profits over time.

Similarly true, with the dawn of powerful online computer betting software and systems in combination with solid technical analysis and advanced staking strategy, average punters can for the first time shift the odds in their favour without being form gurus.

It’s been several decades since professional bettors first came up with the idea of automated betting systems to increase their overall profit margins.

A major barrier to being able to build “positions” in a betting shop was that tax was levied on all wagers until as recently as 2002. 

Betting shops also maintained the right to act against anyone who was deemed to be in breach of their regulations, put another way, anyone who should have the nerve to attempt to beat them could simply be shut down!!

Bookies and Betting shops were up in arms in 2000 with the arrival of Betfair, and shortly after Betdaq and the other Betting Exchanges.

The revolution that had been needed for years had finally arrived.

Commission was charged by Betfair only on net winnings, and uniquely it presented a 2-sided market, back to win or back to lose (officially known as "laying") thereby placing punters in direct competition with each other, without the interference of the third party bookmaker.

Also uniquely punters were allowed to recycle their money through the market, and build their positions before an event had even started.

City Traders, Betting Professionals, even Bookmakers themselves (after the initial shock and revulsion) saw the opportunities now available to take positions on sporting events in much the same way as you would with equities and other financial markets.

It came as no surprise to the industry that as soon as 2002 the tax rules were finally changed in Betting shops from a tax on the punters wager, to a tax on the Bookmakers profits (Pity the poor Bookie!!).

Scalping, hedging, taking a position and greening up on the betting exchanges were born and have been well documented in dozens of early resources.

Newcomers to the Betfair exchange can quickly learn the basic arts of trading and are usually delighted that you can build winning positions quite quickly. 

I myself am a great proponent of Ladder Trading pre race.

I use Ladder Trading (Betfair API) alongside Supercharting to trade directly on favourites and also to improve profitable positions or reduce liabilities on Dutches or Books that I have made.

In advance of designing my systems I conducted several surveys of Betfair traders and the feedback I was getting was that aiming for £10 profit from trading via the basic Betfair interface was really about all punters could cope with on a daily basis.

Mitigating factors people would talk to me about included stress, anxiety, headaches, computer problems, broadband problems.

A whole range of issues were preventing novice Betfair users from achieving their goals. Of particular concern were badly designed lay to lose strategies and problems with identifying Starting Price (SP) movement in advance of the market.

Successful Steamer and Drifter identification pre race is the skeleton key to success on Betfair.

There are an inordinate number of factors to account for in price movements and this is what makes it such a difficult art.

Problems expressed included:

However, the Betfair databases were opened up in 2004 with the advent of the Betfair API technology. 

Application Programming Interface (API) technology enables external companies to design their own client/ server interfaces and robots as alternative enhancements and improvements to the basic Betfair GUI which is dependent on a flaky web interface.

Robots are often referred to in the trade as simply Betfair “Bots”.

The most advanced collection of interfaces and bots in the industry has been developed by Optic Ltd and presented as “Bet Angel Professional”.

The interface covers everything needed by a financial day trader to make the conversion to trading on sports events and gain a massive advantage over users stuck with the standard Betfair front end.

Bet Angel * Day Trading Features include:

1. Moving averages.
2. Enhanced interface charting.
3. One click trading.
4. Trade calculators.
5. Trailing stops.
6. Stop losses.
7. Offset betting.
8. Matched bets.
9. Fill or kill orders.
10. Saved bets.
11. Timers.
12. Betting logs.
13. A host of other features.

Bookmaking and Dutching are the core “Bots” with an Automation Rules Interface providing the trigger for rule based events across the entire collection of bots and trading tools.

During development of my systems user surveys revealed 3 basic overriding requirements:

1. The systems must provide daily betting opportunities that can deliver an achievable % daily return on turnover.
2. The systems must be totally usable in the field, rule driven and able to be activated in a routine and consistent manner.
3. The systems must include full scenario planning and disaster recovery. i.e what to do when things go wrong.

From an early stage of systems design I was using the entire feature set of Bet Angel’s (Betfair API) trading interface, bots and automation triggers to achieve healthy and consistent profits.

* v3.02 All Power Trading techniques now fully transferable to alternative betting software platforms. (07/05/09)

Continue Reading=>   Semi Automated Betting Systems, Bet Angel Professional, Betfair Bot: Part 2