Fairbot – Betfair Trading Software – Review

There are quite a few “trading software” programs on the market. They all have differences, but the common factor of them all is the speed that bets can be placed and the frequency that odds are displayed.

We’ve all experienced the frustration on the Betfair exchange where the odds displayed are not met when we try to place a bet at those odds. And we are all familiar with the delay between when we place a bet and finding out if the bet has been made.

When you are placing a bet before “the off” this is not so much of a problem, although horse racing odds do move quite quickly close to the off time. But if you want to trade, that is back and lay or lay and back to secure a profit, then it becomes fairly vital to use software that refreshes the odds quickly and places bets equally quickly.

Those of you who are familiar with Betfair software interfaces will probably already be familiar with the basics and probably will already have your favourite software. So I will aim this review at those of you who are not so familiar with using trading software in place of the standard Betfair interface.

I’ve used about half a dozen programs over the years and one of my favourite trading platforms is Fairbot by Binteko software. I particularly like this program because it resembles the Betfair Exchange platform and is particularly easy to configure, yet has a wide range of features.

So what is Fairbot? To quote the software publishers: “It is software which provides an enhanced betting interface to the leading Betting Exchange, Betfair. FairBot considerably enhances the services provided by Betfair through the incorporation of real-time price movement charts, market analysis, information displays and trading tools. All of this combines to deliver a level of service far superior to Betfair’s.”

It allows you to place single bets, or trade, on Betfair instantly, using just one mouse click. There is no need for waiting for the bet to be matched, no need for bet confirmation or changing of prices or amounts, although when first using Fairbot it is advisable to switch off this “one-click” feature, until you are used to using it.

Fairbot’s wide range of sophisticated features will give you an enormous advantage over other Exchange Users and should enable you to turn that advantage into a profit.

FairBot lets you automatically refresh the event information, including the odds, as often as every 0.1 second to stay on the top of the market.

For traders FairBot offers so called “Smart Bets” that allow you to trade on with ease and with the maximum possible speed. Using “Smart Bets” FairBot generates the required bets to make a profit, (if matched), regardless of the result.

Some of the many features of Fairbot are:

• “Keep bets” support. (this allows the user to have unmatched bets automatically transferred to in play bets);
• “Greening Up” feature (this allows you to equalize a current profit or a current loss across all selections);
• Price movement charts directly on the main screen for each contender;
• Advanced Charting (Candlestick, bar and line charts with various customizable technical analysis indicators;
• Conditional betting – place opposite bet (Back or Lay) only if a previous bet was matched.

Fairbot comes with a good on-screen manual and video tutorial to help you get to grips with the vast array of features.

Here is the basic screen.

It’s a fairly uncluttered screen, showing the 12:20 at Uttoxeter with the odds displayed in grid format with three back odds and three lay odds displayed. The first odds column shows the most recent odds that have been traded.

The market can also be displayed in ladder format:

It is largely a matter of preference which display you want to use. The market odds are refreshed just the same in either format. The Ladder format lets you cancel unmatched bets immediately and you can drag your unmatched bets up and down the ladder to alter the requested odds instantly. You can also cancel or change the odds of unmatched bets in the grid interface, but it is a little slower.

Below I have used the grid format and clicked to place a default bet of £2 on the favourite at odds of 4.4. I’ve shaded out the background so that you can see the bet dialogue box more easily. But you can see the potential loss and profit both in that box and in the grid of runners.

One click on the “submit” button and the bet is placed. You can set the option to not have this confirmation box and for the bet to be placed instantly with one click on the odds on the grid or ladder  display (by unchecking the small “confirm” box up near the top and to the left of the screen). This feature is vital for quick trading, especially in-play when the odds change rapidly. But you should only use this feature once you are well versed in the operation of the Fairbot software. I also have the program set to “simulation” mode so that real funds are not used while learning the interface.

Here we see the bet has been placed

On the list of runners it shows the liability if the backed horse loses and the profit if it wins. The little green number in its own box shows the profit or loss if you “hedge out” the bet. As the current lay odds are 4.4 you can see that laying right now would result in zero profit or loss.

These numbers are refreshed constantly and are one of the key tools used in trading.

Clicking on a horse name brings up a useful graph of how the runner has traded, which is similar to the graph available on Betfair’s exchange site:

But be warned this graph is not updated as regularly as the odds on the grid or ladder interface. are updated

Another feature that I like with Fairbot is that behind each runner on the grid interface you see a graph of prices for each horse, so at a glance you can see which horses are coming in and which are drifting out.

With our bet placed, the race now goes in-play and during the running of the race you have the option to trade out at any time:

Here you can see that towards the end of the race our backed favourite is still in with a chance, but that the fourth favourite is now favourite to win the race. However the odds of our backed horse are now such that we can trade out for a £0.95 profit whichever horse wins. With “Confirm Greening Up” switched off you can take this profit more or less instantly.

The above is an example of how you can trade on Betfair using Fairbot. The refresh speed and speed of placing bets makes trading simple and effective, something which is more or less impossible using Betfair’s standard Exchange interface.

There are many advanced features and there is not enough room in the review to cover them all. I hope I have interested you in using a Betfair interface like Fairbot. In the next articles I hope to demonstrate how to use Fairbot for effective trading and how to use the Strategy Editor that comes with Fairbot.

You can get a free 15-day trial version of Fairbot and registration costs $99 or currently £67.53 plus vat for one year and registration comes with a money-back guarantee. I highly recommend Fairbot for reliability, ease of use and effectiveness.