Bet Angel Primer

Bet Angel is a trading application that was created in 2004 by Betfair trader Peter Webb. The software was developed to aid his betting activity on the Betfair horse racing markets, providing statistics on how these markets moved in reaction to various situations.

Bet Angel is funded by user subscriptions and provides regular updates to help its customers to develop or retain an edge when betting. Bet Angel includes many tools one of which is called Soccer Mystic. Soccer Mystic provides a representative example of how Bet Angel works. The tool analyses a Betfair football market and will predict where the market will go if certain situations happen in the match. For example, you can ask Soccer Mystic what will happen to the market if there is a goal after so many minutes. The tool will then show where it expects the market to move. You can then decide whether to hold, increase or exit your position – blending your feel for trading with Bet Angel’s number crunching abilities.

The techniques that Soccer Mystic uses are transferable to betting markets based around other sports. For example, there is a similar tool for tennis markets which will tell you what will happen to the odds if say a player’s serve is broken when 40-30 down i.e. if he wins the game the odds will move by 2%, if his serve does get broken they will move by 15%, in which case you might choose to lay that player.

Bet Angel helps its users manage their risk by setting the boundaries for an acceptable win or loss. For example, you might tell Bet Angel that for a correct score market you want £20 if the match result is one particular scoreline or that you a prepared to lose £10 if it finishes up being another scoreline you specify.

Bet Angel replaces Betfair’s web-based interface. You work with Betfair data and markets in Bet Angel. By default, Bet Angel looks similar to Betfair to retain its look and feel for those familiar with the Betfair interface. You can also then customise Bet Angel moving things around to get the screen exactly as you want.

Bet Angel will also integrate with Microsoft Excel for those customers who want to retain a spreadsheet in their betting tool armoury.

If you are comfortable with a fully automated approach then you can use Bet Angel to do the trading for you. Bet Angel can monitor a betting market on your behalf, switch to the next one when the previous one finishes and trade the market for you. For example, you could program Bet Angel to back particular horse if it reaches a certain price or to only place bets in markets where the trading volume rises to a level that you are comfortable participating in.

Bet Angel is a Microsoft Windows application. It runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8. According to the Bet Angel knowledge base, they have no plans to develop an iOS or Android version of the application. (By implication, they have no plans to develop a Linux or OS X version either.)

If you want to use Bet Angel on a mobile phone or tablet, Bet Angel suggest that you access a Bet Angel Virtual Private Server (VPS) with a remote desktop client that’s running on the mobile device or tablet. For example, you might access Bet Angel on the VPS by using Microsoft’s iOS Remote Desktop client on your iPad.

The Bet Angel VPS, also know as Bet Angel Server Edition, runs on a data centre (sometimes referred to as "the cloud") rather than on your computer. You can access the Bet Angel VPS from any device that can access the internet. The main selling point of the Bet Angel VPS are the performance benefits provided by its direct connection to Betfair via a 100Mpbs backbone.

The client-based versions of Bet Angel are Basic, Trader and Professional. They support Betfair only, and therefore require a Betfair account to function. The Basic version of free. Bet Angel provide fully functional trial versions of Trader and Professional to enable you to get to grips with the software and get a feel for whether or not they will make your trading activities on Betfair more profitable. After the trial period expires you will need to pay to keep using the software. Both versions are available on a subscription basis. Bet Angel Professional has more features than Trader and its subscription fees are therefore higher.

For a complete list of the differences between the versions of Bet Angel, refer to:

http://www.betangel.com/trader/compare.php

There is also a version of Bet Angel for trading on BETDAQ. Bet Angel for BETDAQ is free of charge,