Improvements to the Excel add-in

I would like to see a couple of improvements to the Excel add-in. 

If you try to lay from Excel some, but not all, of the runners in the race, the trigger will not execute at all. An interim solution that I use is to have a placeholder bet on the runners that I don't actually want to bet on. So they get bets at $1.02 on 0.01% of the bankroll, with the bets cancelled at in-play. Those bets never get on.

It would be better to be able to lay on only some, but not all, of the runners in a race.

The other improvement I would like to see is to add two columns to a spreadsheet, eg for both back and lay triggers. I have found that trying to add a second column doesn't work. The numbers get put all over the place.

David

a couple of points on this one, firstly have you tried using a notepad file to run with your triggers, I used to use excel all the time and had a lot of issues and also limitations on the fact that you could only add three columns (if memory serves) for your own parameters. If you use a notepad you can have many. I use 15 columns at present.

I use excel to build the file and then just paste it into notepad, and import that for my selections.

If you use excel, I know you had to look at how it imported the data into the sheet then specify the columns past that so that the data you want is not overwritten by the data MF is storing itself.

I paste below an example sheet to show how I present the data in excel, I then just paste the rows into notepad and import that, but I have left them in so you can see how to define and call the various values I need.

I use an x so that the software knows there is nothing in that column but can still find data in imp_15 etc, then in the trigger I just reference if imp_x and whatever conditions you apply to that.

Hope this helps

here is attached view, note that normally the different length of horse name means the x and values appear out of line, but it all still works, I have just amended it for now to make the example clear.

Hi Shirtless,

Do you have an example of how you might "Call" the various imported_indexes in a trigger file please?

Many thanks

Hi Shirtless, Do you have an example of how you might "Call" the various imported_indexes in a trigger file please? Many thanks

Hi
Perhaps I can answer as shirtless has not been on the forum for a little while.

The text file format is tab separated values.
For each selection the values are represented as variables: imported_1, imported_2 etc
The text file is imported using "Import selections for auto-trading" procedure. Instructions are in the help file section "Auto-trading". This can be automated to import the file periodically.

Once the file has been imported, you can use trigger conditions e.g.

selections lay price is less than imported_1
selections rank is between imported_7 and imported_8
selections weight in pounds is less than imported_5

etc    

@MarkV Thanks for responding in my absence.

Yes that is essentially it, I find this approach gives you much more flexibility and as you construct the model on paper you realise how much you can do.

To give you an example referring to the above screenshot


I have many different systems/triggers, some  win, some ew and some lay, and give each a different system number, that is imported_15 in the above example., so I can have my triggers broken down into different blocks and just pick out the one I want to apply to each horse in the list by using imported_15, within those triggers I can have stake value imported_14 and max (or min) odds imported_13.

In my case, I have also created doubles and trebles which I can call, imported_1 shows which horse is in double1 11=first leg, 12=second leg and if there is a third leg its 13, then I just repeat that for other doubles and trebles. So all of these can run at the same time and just place single bets and/or parts of a multiple as and when the conditions apply.

This means on busy days you can insert a long list of horses - I paste from my excel into the notepad document, and if the bet alters I just paste from my excel into the notepad again, as the document auto updates, marketfeeder will just capture these changes at the next update.

referring back to your original statement, it is not clear why not all lay bets are being placed when you try this via excel, but if you try to recreate your approach via this method, it should be more clear, and if you are still hitting issues reviewing the program and trigger logs and checking the status of the various triggers involved should help identify any other issues you may have