Product Description

The past decade has seen a technological revolultion in facilities for betting on horse-racing and other sports. Today, the leading betting exchange, Betfair, matches 15 times asmany daily transactions as the London Stock Exchange. Automatic Exchange Betting examines this exciting phenomenon, defining each stage of automating the betting process and looking at opportunities, best practice and pitfalls, and provides a practical guide for any player who wants to explore the potential for automatic betting.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #207311 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Customer Reviews

An Essential Piece of Equipment for the Successful Gambler
The presence of betting exchanges like Betfair and Betdaq mean that today's sports bettor can carry out sophisticated strategies that provide him with at least a half-decent chance of making consistent profits. The difficulty, though, is that the more complex these strategies are, the more they are likely to depend on bespoke software to put them into practice. Although Betfair, for one, do provide their users with some minimal instructions on how they might create this API software, they tend to assume that those doing so will already have some background in IT and programming.

Colin Magee's book provides a thorough course of instruction in how to write such exchange betting software, accessible to even the most computer-illiterate readers. The precise code required to accomplish the various exchange betting tasks - reading market data, placing bets, etc. - is printed in full in the book, and can also be downloaded from the associated website. Although the code is written in Perl and designed to be run on a Linux-based machine, which may be unfamiliar to some readers, Magee provides explicit, clear instructions on how to set up one's PC to run a Linux operating system. Having followed these instructions, the reader is able to download the code and get a basic exchange betting program up-and-running in next to no time.

As well as basic betting software, Magee shows how to set up more complex programs which read and write from a database on one's system, and then carry out betting strategies based on that data. These tasks can be scheduled to run at whatever time intervals the user requires, bringing ever closer the dream of total automation.

Note that the book is designed to show the reader how to automate and, to some extent, test for profitable exchange strategies. As Magee acknowledges, it does not show how to find the strategies in the first place. Nor is it, despite the implication of the title perhaps, immediately suitable for use with exchanges other than Betfair. The code provided is all specific to Betfair, and would require significant adaptation for use elsewhere.

Nevertheless, Automatic Exchange Betting is an invaluable resource for those wishing to learn about automating Betfair transactions. I write as a professional gambler specialising in football markets, and prior to reading Magee's book, had never written a line of code in my life. Within two weeks, I had several automatic betting programs (bots) up-and-running, all pieced together from Magee's sample code. I have subsequently automated a huge amount of my betting strategies, and have significantly increased my profits. For the intelligent bettor wishing to improve their efficiency and profitability, the book is an essential buy.

Delivers everything it promises.
Let's face it. There are very few books about gambling that give information that isn't already available in the public domain. Many are a complete waste of money. I guess it's not hard to work out why. If someone makes a big effort and goes through financial sacrifice to develop methods to make money out of gambling the last thing they are going to do is share them!!

This is why Colin Magee's book is such a revelation. It provides the mechanics of automated betting in such a way that most people can make use of it. Colin has obviously worked very hard to accumulate all his knowledge and techniques, yet seems very happy to share it. It's true to say that to make the best out of it you need to come up with your own theories to gain an edge, but this books gives you the means to put them into practice.

I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in exploring the concept of gambling as an investment rather than a thrill generator.

A more balanced review
5 stars for the approach of automated betting, this is truly the correct approach if you want to succeed, quicker, faster, better than others you are competing with. This is not the beginning or the end of the subject though but a real good primer for those considering it. I take one star away for the "selling something else" not that I think that is wrong in one sense. I take another star off because the it makes the purchaser believe they can do it all with no IT experience. Readers can get up and running but to create the additional interfaces besides the Betfair API, they are going to have to learn Perl and not all people are able to do that. Of course you can buy this service through the authors website. Not sure why the other two reviewers did not mention this in their reviews. Most people who write these books have something else to sell and certainly this is not different in that sense.

I am glad that someone else bought this book to print at least it shows a more intelligent way to approach the whole aspect. If you want to explore the possibility of an automated approach this is definitely worth the money.