New software

Bankroll $147,09

I've decided to give BetTrader a spin. It looked good on the video's and they have a really good deal for only GBP 50,- for 6 months.

My slight drop in bankroll is of course complete the fault of BetTrader. Couldn't be anything else.

Kidding! I played Aussie markets for a bit again and this time the slowness of the entering and exiting the market (which is just as slow in BetAngel) did it to me. Yet another reason not to do Aussie racing anymore. I did the smart thing and quit for the day. It's just so hard if you're doing the US races and are having fun and the last race ends and there's only Aussie races left and you don't feel like bed yet. But it's got to stop. The slowness is starting to cost me and it's silly. Do any other Euro's play the Aussies and do you cope?

Back to BetTrader.

Disclaimer! I have only tried it for a couple of hours and I might be wrong with some (or most) of the things I say, if you spot a mistake feel free to correct me!

I really like the intuitive feel of the software. It just feels easier and friendlier then BetAngel does. I can't really trade well on my laptop with BedAngel and BetTrader makes much better use of limited real estate. But the other way around is true too. On my desktop computer I have a 24" widescreen and BetTrader leaves a lot of empty screen while I could think of quite some stuff I'd like to fill it with.

Big plus over BetAngel is that I can have all the horses on the left side of the screen, and have three ladders next to it. Even on a smaller screen. Very easy to put a horse in the slot you want, smart GUI work there.

Big minus is that there is no full market view. You can only see the first three backers and layers. Also that you can't see the matched amounts right next to the odds on the ladder makes it a lot harder to see what's going on. Those aspects of BetAngel make it easy for me to see what's going on without a graph and BetAngel has excellent graphs and allows you to pop up the Befair graph and autorefresh it. BetTrader graph (unless I didn't find another option??) is inferior, can't see the prices just the downward or upward trend starting from when you open the race. So I have no clue where the price was coming from when I first open a race. Also with BetTrader the Betfair graph isn't autorefreshable, or able to pin it to the front (so the huge empty bit of BetTrader won't go over it when I click on it) and I found that it doesn't work more often then it does in the first place.

I have read on BetTraders excellent forum (www.racingtraders.com) that a lot of these things will be taken care of in an upcoming upgrade so that would be great. I really use that full market and the matched bet amounts on the side a lot and I feel a bit lost without them. But there seem to be quite some guys who really know their stuff and are doing really well without it so maybe I value it too much.

Hedging is also different between the two. On BetAngel you don't get to see the amount all the time. Only when you have a position open. If you have no position open and you want to see what you can green up for you have to click to grid view and then click back. With BetTrader you just see the number on top all the time. But! Really big but!! I think BetAngel offers you a more realistic hedge price, especially when there are gaps. Once again, I think! Because I was messing around with it for the first time and I'm still learning too. Let's say you place a back bet that get's filled. The way I see it BetAngel quotes you a hedge price based on the best lay available then and BetTrader quotes you a hedge price based on the best back price available then. Especially when there are gaps that's not good for two reasons.

1. it simply isn't a true price yet as there is no market there. if no one is buying it, it's not a price.
2. it doesn't instafill! Most of the time I hit hedge I just want out and move on, not speculate.

Also I thought BetTrader didn't cancell my unmatched bets and made a bit of mess of the bets with the hedge bet in the middle of it when all I wanted is just get out entirely. BetAngel does cancell anyting and offer you and almost instafill.

Somehow I can't imagine that I'm right with the above and I will test this further tomorrow and report my findings. Surely this must have come up more often on the forums if I'm right.

After reading back what I just wrote I realise sounds all a bit negative towards BetTrader but it really is a great piece of software, I'm just overemphasizing (sp?) some small differences that I noticed in the first testing but there are a lot of little things that just look, feel and are more logically done in BetTrader and with the update coming up (June'ish I believe) I hope they improve without losing what makes it such a nice program now.

If you're a new player on a budget I'd go for BetTrader now anyways. GBP 50,- for 6 months is a great deal. Better be quick, runs to the 13th of march or so! You can also download a trial that goes for 200 minutes or so.