The UK dogs are continuing on as previous weeks. The P&L isn’t rising with Traded Volume, suggesting improvements in other areas are needed to bring greater return.
A nice chart from Aus markets with no great losses.
The US bot is still missing most markets but I haven’t managed to included a start time update yet. I’m not sure my current method of scraping is the most efficient, although if I can get it working in a fashion, it’ll be a start.
I’ve added a short clip showing how to open a remote connection with VPS. Brian from Ivona does the narration, What a guy.
Tony asked about where to start with a VPS so I thought I’d do a short guide to getting the set-up I have.
Here are some previous blog posts on the subject-
VPS – includes Mike’s contribution
VPS active – My initial VPS package and MSOffice
Api delay testing – The improvements measured
From VPS to Cloud Hosting – Another step forward
To get the cloud VPS, go to Tagadab and choose what spec you want by moving the slides This is what I selected –
Then on the next page, I choose Windows server 2012. I don’t know what the difference is between 2008 and 2012 but 2012 sounds better to me. There are some other options on the page but I didn’t select any. This gives a monthly price of £15 including VAT.
Click on the “Create Virtual” button and on the next page, check everything and click “buy”. You’ll get the emails telling you they’re on with it and then one telling you it’s ready. My VPS took about 15 mins to be ready, on a bank holiday. Log into your account on-line and click on your server icon –
Then click on the green connect tab –
In the pop-up you can download the RDP file which makes connecting to your server a doddle. This puts an icon on your desktop. Just open it like any other icon and away you go.
You can open IE to download apps. Files can be transferred by simple copy/paste as the clipboard is shared between your PC and the VPS
Here’s a short video of connecting to the VPS Opening VPS from desktop. Hope this helps.
My intention was to improve data collection but as I struggled along, I decided there needed to be some housekeeping.
Ever since moving all the calculations to VBA I’ve been unable to view any sheets other than Sheet1 whilst running, as the code contained a series of sheet.select lines. This was done initially to overcome lazy referencing.
So where I had Cells(10, 1), I now have Worksheets(“Sheet1”).Cells(10, 1).
I’ve also got rid of some sheet.select-copy-sheet.select-paste-sheet.select routines by simply using full references.
Although this has taken a bit of time and testing, it will result in faster code execution.
Greyhounds traded ok but I would prefer a more consistent trend than that in the chart.
Aus horses were looking like a flat return until a late boost ended the week with a positive result.
First week of US horses has seen a loss but nothing too concerning for now. The main issue is the lack of activity but this is more down to the way the US markets drift away from the start time as reported by Betfair. I’m seeing most activity early on in the racing day when the post times are still close to reality. I’ve been given a good site for start times (https://classic.ebetusa.com/racing_menus/next-race.html) that drops into excel really easy but I’m trying to figure out the best way to use this info with my bot.
Here are Oscar’s charts. The dogs have done well to return 0.079% with volume increased by over 2.5x since January. I want to start adjusting stake to matched volume as I think the effect of it’s current size on smaller markets is negative. I’ve only looked at a few examples so far, so more investigation is required.
The Aus chart is pleasing with a good return. This is in line with expectation after the percentage stake effect I mentioned last week.
(Sorry for chart quality, I’ve been playing around with settings. I’ll try again next time.)
I’ve been working on a few things recently, my own vb bot and my betting bot (bot3). To make it easier to reference each bot in the blog, I think it’s time to give them names. So the first one to get a name is my old faithful scalping bot, previously referred to as my bot or Bot 1.
I name thee – Oscar.
Oscar (Original SCalping Algorithm Robot) is currently working emotionless and uninterrupted in a cloud.
Last week’s charts both end positive. The UK dogs is still going good, the last week in loss was back at the beginning of January.
The Aus markets traded to a profit since being flat (excluding errors) for a month. I’d previously set the Aus stake to £2 to avoid the turnover charge and was thinking that using the same stake may make my bot stand out. Or I may be paranoid. Well I changed it to a percent of bank earlier in the week, so the stake is different most races, if only by a penny or two. I hoped this would provide some cover from bot stalkers/baiters. The proof isn’t here yet but it hasn’t had an immediate negative effect.
Wasted 2 hours trying to get some code to run but, as it’s been so long since I started this, I kept getting a null exception. Every line reread, sometimes twice, then eventually noticed a string I’d written in mixed case. For all the auto correction this Visual Studio does, it isn’t magic, I must concentrate.
A three week period, with the first day on the home PC and the rest on the VPS. The UK dogs performed well, stake is nearly £6 now. The move to VPS has seen a good steady P&L line.
The Aus chart isn’t too far from normal when compared with previous weeks. The bottom chart shows the trades performed on the VPS in red. None of the previous errors have occurred since being on VPS, so can only assume the massive delay on my home PC was the cause.
TRADER247 