The right connections
First a history lesson.
A long time ago Betfair offered unfettered access to their servers. You could smash into their servers by requesting price information at will. Back then there was no API and you could only screen scrape information from Betfair. Because of this an arms race developed and Betfair considered banning the bots, but thankfully that never happened. What actually happened was an API was born and Betfair started slowly but surely changing the way their site works. From that simple start the process of connecting to Betfair now involves many hoops through which you need to jump to stay under the strict limits Betfair impose. Everybody has to conform to these limits so that no new arms race develops and Betfair can better control the IT on their side of the fence. Basically this means that Betfair limit the number of calls that API software makes so that nobody gets an unfair advantage, everything operates at the same speed. However there are things you can do to specifically tailor your exchange connection to your trading style to maximise your experiance.
To ensure you get the best connection using Bet Angel we provide you with a raw feed and allow you to tweak connection settings that are most important to you. You can save these settings and quick switch between them for maximum flexibility. For example, if you are trading pre-off you may want to increase the speed at which Bet Angel calls full market depth or reduce it when in-play and increase others, when that call it is less important. Even different locations can ‘feel’ different, so you can modify settings on that basis. Bet Angel buffers calls to avoid you running into horrendous charges, so if you accidentally, or purposefully, have the wrong set up it may feel a bit slow as the buffered calls back up. To avoid this make sure you are familiar with all the settings you can use so you can avoid this happening.
We monitor performance all the time as it is very important for everybody. But the key thing on this, is that I’d be trading toast if we didn’t have it humming. So make sure you take the time to familiarise yourself with this feature: –
https://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/setting-up-bet-angel/147-bestconnection
Category: Betfair, Using Bet Angel
