I’ve always enjoyed placing a good bet. Horses, dogs, football or poker, I’ve probably put money on most things. I stumbled across Betfair about a year ago after reading about some people making good money laying favourites on horse races. It seemed like an interesting concept but at the time i wasn’t very interested, I’d never really thought you could make a regular income from gambling.
I started playing Betfairs exchange turbo blackjack for a bit of fun, i enjoy playing blackjack in casinos and have a good understanding of basic strategy, although i don’t profess to be a card counter i understand the principles of hi-lo strategy. I found that when i was playing turbo blackjack i could take what i had learnt in casinos and with patience regularly make £10 – £15 profit a session.
I am a programmer by trade so it wasn’t long before i was thinking about automating my play. From playing online poker for a few years i knew that a lot of sites didn’t like you automating your play with software, Betfair on the other hand seems to actively encourage it. Betfair provide a developers API which allows programmers to tap into the game feeds as well as place bets on the exchange, it couldn’t be more perfect!
Betfair is a not a bookmaker like William Hill, Ladbrokes or Paddy Power, it is in fact a betting exchange. When you place a bet at a bookies the liability falls on them to pay should you win. Betfair on the other will match you up with another party who is prepared to take the liability while taking a small amount of commission for themselves. This means it is in Betfairs favour to have as much activity on a market as possible, boosting bets matched and therefore boosting their commissions.
My intentions are to develop an application which will play exchange turbo blackjack for me using the Betfair API to analyse the game and identify hands which i would normally play if i was sat at the computer. Placing continuously i should be able to build a steady stream of wins, which over time will amount to a decent regular income.
This blog is me documenting my progress. I hope you enjoy it and if you have any questions then let me know.
Tom
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