For the last five years I have been using a piece of software to automate my betting on Betfair. I did have my own program to do this but about two or so years ago Betfair changed their API and rather than rewrite my software I looked for a commercial product to do what I wanted.
This software (MarketFeeder Pro) comes with a lot of scripts that can be used on Betfair, from simple ones such as back the favourite horse in a race just before the off, to more complicated examples.
I have not tried all of these example scripts because I have my own strategy that I use and I would suggest if you were thinking of using such software that you already have a strategy that you have tested and works that can be automated in some way.
This software monitors the markets you require and looks to implement the strategy you have developed, if the conditions for that to happen exist the script will act, these are called triggers. An example trigger would be to back a horse if the odds fell to below a certain value, this can be useful, as rather than do this manually you can set the software up and it will do this for you whilst you do other things.
I use it for football matches and there is a word of caution regarding the monitoring of football matches, the software can be set up to only monitor matches that contain certain criteria, for example you could exclude all u21 matches if you wanted to. However there are a lot of football matches taking place around the world and each match monitored takes up a certain amount of computer resources, if you monitor too many matches you can run into problems.
I tend to monitor around about an hour before kick off as my strategy involves criteria changes before kick off, however the software works during in play as well. There is one aspect to be made aware of here though, although you are constantly monitoring a match, Betfair limits the amount of requests you can do and there are charges that can be made if you go above that rate. For before kickoff sampling, odds data retrieved every 5 minutes is perfectly fine but in play this may be more problematic and a faster sampling rate may be required.
The other good thing about this software is that you can use it in demo mode, so if you have a strategy that you think is profitable but are not sure about it, you can run it without risking any funds. I would suggest you do this anyway just to make sure you have implemented the strategy in the correct way, mistakes can be costly if they are done with real money.
The software is quite reasonably at £74 per year and there is a free trial for new users. But I must reiterate that the scripts that come with the software, though sound are more for learning, they are not likely to be profitable on their own, you do need some idea or angle on what conditions can make money on Betfair for the software to be useful.
The support provided for the product is excellent and this is very important, the software is regularly updated and the website has a forum and FAQ should you have any other queries. The product documentation is also very good, you don't have to be a programmer to use this software but it would help if you have some basic programming experience.
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