Betfair Trading Techniques: Trading Models, Machine Learning, Money Management, Monte Carlo Methods & Algorithmic Trading

I am a big fan of the author's first book on programming bots for Betfair. It was my introduction to coding and was very concise and clear and set me on the path to developing many of my ideas for automated trading on Betfair. This book is the perfect follow up, and whilst there is some useful coding and applications included, the primary focus is on giving the reader a better understanding of market dynamics, analysis (fundamental and technical) and how to build your own ideas. This is supplemented with plenty of work on how to test the validity of these ideas through simulations (Monte Carlo etc.) and best practices on money management when / if you do find a potentially successful automated / algorithmic system to trade.For me the tone of the book was perfect as it starts from some basic ideas that many will already be familiar with (market efficiency, general explanations of fundamental and technical analysis etc.), but gives a solid recap / grounding on these topics and then starts moving into more detailed and advanced areas (machine learning and genetic algorithms etc.) that I would think would give most readers of all levels plenty of food for thought, deeper mathematical insights and practical ways of following up and developing these themes in your own time.It's a unique book in the market place and certainly doesn't promise any magic formulas to make you rich but this and the author's previous book are the perfect tool kit for people who are realistic about the challenges of making money on the betting exchanges and hungry and determined to find ways of conquering these challenges. Perfect for me and as the sports markets and accompanying technology get smarter I do agree with the author that automated algorithmic trading is the future and these books have set me well on the path to getting ahead of the game.

Don't waste your money! There's no giveaways here, just a few hints and a lot of code to make the book look thickish. If you want to go down this track, by the time you've taught yourself statistics, probability and coding language, you'll make yourself a lot more guaranteed money as an IT guru working for someone. The over-round plus Betfair fees is a big percentage to overcome as an edge. You're up against syndicates that employ the best IT consultants and have the fastest response time. I've only known one IT expert that makes 6 figures in his day job, whilst his self coded algorithms grind away 24/7 to, yes, eek out a tax free profit that pays for a few economy class family holidays each year. Never enough to live on. Apart from the pro syndicates, the only people making a consistent return, are those flogging books, tips and software to the dreamers.

If you are a beginner in coding it is unlikely you will understand parts of the book but that doesn't really matter and he does explain excel alternatives, what is more important are the concepts, obviously not everything he mentioned is new to me, but it does what it is suppose to do, it stirs the brain giving me new slants, ideas and concepts, seriously there is no other book like it on the market. Thank you James.

print quality in sections of the book is very poor. so feint as to be almost unreadable. Rubbish - do not waste your money.

As described. Quick delivery

A nicely written book but with tight limitations. Between 25-30% of the pages are dedicated to written code for those trying their hands at creating their Betfair bots. Most of this will be a waste of time for most readers and those who are interested have a wealth of info available on the Betfair Developers site and forum. I'm a great fan of arbitrage which would include cross-market and 'synthetic' as James calls it. He covers this fairly well but strangely doesn't mention the sticky subject of Betfair commission which will evaporate most of the intra-Betfair market arbitrages. And on that topic, I've always felt it highly unfair that some of the big players have done deals with Betfair and pay virtually no commission, as well as many not paying data charges that would otherwise have to be paid by the rest of us. He also has a few mistaken beliefs about certain types of trades that I can assure him can and do work.All the shortcomings aside, this is one of the few books about Betfair trading that isn't for noobs and that treats the subject in a reasonably serious and professional way. There are a few interesting ideas but no ready made algos if that's what you're looking for. Like all trading however, in every marketplace, the winners are the ones with the unique ideas and the ability to put them into practice. And you are the only one that can provide those things.

Great book for any beginner looking to get in trading with different techniques explained. Well written and understandable compared to other trading books I have read

good book

James covers a lot of topics ranging from statistics to predictive modelling and programming too. He is very factual but it is merely stating the facts without any connection between concepts in his writing. This makes his work going from heel to branch, without conveying the message (if there is any at all). I get what he is saying but he is not properly bearing the point home.For instance in chapter 2 he is mentioning web scraping, albeit webscraping is not a very solid technique to collect data; the whole section is completely irrelevant. His core message is something like this: "you can scrape the web with visual basic (very ugly tool), and here is some fancy code to do it".His writing styles comes off a bit pretentious and dandy to me. It seems the writer is more interested in showing off his knowledge then to offer a solid piece of practical knowledge.Tedious writing without any practical value: don't buy unless you are only interested in very very abstract gibberish mumbo jumbo.

muy teorico, no lo recomiendo