Advice

Should You Automate Your Betting

Automating your betting is the ultimate dream. This is where you setup your betting bot in the morning and let it place your bets during the day. You come home in the evening and count your profits. In fact it may be that you don’t even have to set it up, you just run it on a server remotely and everything else is taken care of, except spending the profits!

What could be better?

Unfortunately the reality is not quite that simple and in fact, for most people, automating their betting is not something that should be done.

Of course the sales pages of commercial betting bots don’t say this, they show you the ideal world where you walk away and come back to a mountain of cash. While that can be true, it is for the small majority.

I want to share with you why automating your betting may not be for you, how to know when it is something you should be doing and make sure you are aware of the risks involved.

If you are currently thinking about using betting bots and taking part in automated betting, then there is one question you should ask yourself?

  • Have you been profitable for a minimum of 6 months to 1 year on the selections you want to automate?

If the answer to this question is no, then you shouldn’t be considering using a betting bot. A betting bot is a tool, and like any tool it is designed to assist you. If you can’t make a profit betting manually, then a betting bot is simply going to speed up how quickly you lose your money.

You MUST be profitable before you start to use a betting bot, otherwise how do you know what to tell the bot to do!

Betting bots are perfect for when you have a profitable strategy that is now taking you some time each day to place the bets on. You then begin to use a betting bot which will automate the process of placing your bets and (in some cases) recording the results.

This frees up your time so that you can spend it developing more profitable strategies.

At this stage in your betting you will know exactly how your selections perform, their ups and downs and the bankroll requirement. You should set up the bot with a small bankroll to start with and start using it while still placing your bets manually. This gives you time to learn how to use the software you have chosen and make mistakes. You don’t want to make a mistake on your live bankroll and come back to find you have lost £500 because you put a tick in the wrong box… and believe me this will happen!

Once you’ve made the mistakes and you have been successfully running the bot alongside your manual betting for four to six weeks, you can then move your main betting across on to it.

But, there are some things that you must be aware. As with everything, by reducing your workload you also add some potential issues. These are more than manageable but you should know about them before they appear, not discover them after!

  • The betting bot can crash

Betting bots are pieces of software and software can crash. If the software crashes then in the best case scenario you have simply missed out on a days betting. In the worst case scenario you are left exposed on a bet that would have been closed out and it has lost. No commercial software that I am aware of has a built in function to send an email or text message when the software crashes so you may want to consider investing in a remote computer access app for your phone so you can periodically check it is still running if this could affect you.

  • Your internet connection drops

Like software, it is also possible for your internet connection to drop and if it does you will be in a similar position to above. It is much rarer for this to happen if you run the software on a server but the server can still go down.

  • The software malfunctions

This is very rare but occasionally software can get confused. This can cause bets to be placed on the wrong horses. There is nothing that we can do to safeguard against this, it is just something that we must be aware is an outside possibility.

Betting bots can be incredibly powerful tools if used at the right time and correctly. Be aware that you need to have a profitable strategy to start using them with and then use a small bankroll while you get used to the intricacies of the software and you will find them incredibly powerful.

Michael Wilding

Michael started the Race Advisor in 2009 to help bettors become long-term profitable. After writing hundreds of articles I started to build software that contained my personal ratings. The Race Advisor has more factors for UK horse racing than any other site, and we pride ourselves on creating tools and strategies that are unique, and allow you to make a long-term profit without the need for tipsters. You can also check out my personal blog or my personal Instagram account.

3 Comments

  1. I had some serious thoughts about using a bot ages ago but sat back and thought my brains out what “could” go wrong and it is nice to see my own conclusions here in print. I enjoy backing and mainly trading now for a few hours a day and use ratings to help with my bets which brings me enough to pay the bills and keep me off the dole i very much doubt a bot could do that. I would not let a bot near my account EVER. ’nuff said

  2. Hi,

    I am not totally in agreement with this perspective as I use automation and have done so for several years now.
    Yes, systems can fail through careless automation and banks can vanish all too quickly if not monitored, but also, automation gives very good records for testing and tweaking in situations where you might not explore otherwise.
    For example, if you think you have an angle, you can penny trade it using automation on betfair for a few weeks, have absolutely minimal risk yet have accurate records of performance to help develop your angle into something profitable.
    Automation need not be a full blown betting attack, it can also be used as defence and for me, is invaluable in my ongoing strategic development.

    Tony

Back to top button
Close