LTP Back or Lay Indicator?

[The Squirrel]

Hiya folks. I've been honing my strategies with the Toy (i.e. attempting not to lose a lot) for the last 52 days and playing around with different settings, but there's one thing that has my head going round in circles.

Is there a setting that would indicate on the Ladder whether the LTP was a Back or a Lay bet?

To expand: if I have several ladders open, it's difficult to remember all the amounts in the Lay and Back columns waiting to be matched. So if a bet is placed on one of the ladders I'm not looking at at the time of the bet, I see the LTP flash in the corner of my eye, look across at that ladder and see the highlighted LTP and, say, 10 in the Lay column against it. Is there any way to know whether this was a Back bet that reduced a Lay figure that was previously higher than 10, or whether it was a Lay bet that was 10 higher than the previous Back amount waiting to be matched?

I hope that makes sense! Thanks for any help.

[The Geek]

Is there a setting that would indicate on the Ladder whether the LTP was a Back or a Lay bet?

No. For a bet to be matched it involves both a back and a Lay bet.

[The Squirrel]

No. For a bet to be matched it involves both a back and a Lay bet.

Thanks for the quick reply, Geek. I think, though, that this would be programmatically possible.

The questions are: would it be useful and would it adversely affect program performance?

In answer to the first, I believe so as one thing that has helped my strategy is identifying possible exit points by noting which prices punters are willing to back and lay. I’ve learned not to jump in to a trade as soon as the ladders open, even if there’s an obvious “gap in the market”. Taking time to observe where people are backing and laying horses has paid dividends. So it would be useful, I feel, to know whether the last stake submitted by a punter in a match was a back or lay bet.

As regards the programming, I suppose it would be necessary to hold a copy of one side of each open ladder in memory (let’s say the lay side). When an amount is matched at a particular price, compare the post-match lay amount waiting to be matched at that price with the previous amount waiting to be matched which is held in memory. If the later amount is higher than the old amount, the last submitted bet at that price must have been a lay bet. If lower, then it must have been a back bet.

The old amount waiting to be matched is then replaced in memory by the new amount ready for the next comparison operation.

This could then be shown on the ladder by adding a chevron by the side of the price pointing either left or right to the relevant back or lay column to indicate whether the last match was completed following a lay or back bet. We could then see at a glance whether punters were willing to back or lay at that price. Note that this would only be done for the LTP – it’s obvious from where the money is at the other prices whether punters are willing to back or lay.

Would this affect program performance? Impossible to know without knowing the source code and your methods, so that’s your call, Mr. Geek.

I just throw this suggestion in as a newbie to trading, so feel free to tell me that I’ve got it completely wrong and that I’ve wandered down the wrong garden path. But, as has been said elsewhere on the forum, if nobody made suggestions and shared their learning experience we wouldn’t progress.

The Toy is STILL the dog’s doo-dahs. Absolutely fantastic work, Mr. Geek.

[The Geek]

This request has the same problems as "Where am I in the queue."

There is no 100% accurate way to determine it.

What you suggest would work sometimes, but all we get from Betfair is the last traded price & total traded amount.

Imagine you have money to back at 4.0 and money to lay at 4.1. In between calls, £20 trades @ 4.1 and £10 trades @ 4.0.

All I get from Betfair is £30 traded @ 4.0.

So there is no way to accurately determine this at the moment.

[The Squirrel]

Ah I see. What a pity. And, talking about "where am I in the queue?"..... Lol.

Thanks very much for the explanation. Bit of a shortcoming in the Betfair API then.