SP bets question

Where can you stipulate minimum odds? I know small independents used to do it but you'd have to check them out first

I doubt you can run a bot because the SP is only returned after the off, by which time of course you need to have struck the bet. But you can run one to take the board price x seconds or minutes before the off.

As a rule of thumb 2 minutes before the off used to get a better price about the winner than SP

Sorry .. you're talking about Betfair SP , didnt realise!

Yeah, sorry s&c, my bad.

I've been trying to solve this BSP puzzle for a while.

No bot could guarantee to do this, as you can't do it manually.
If offers are withdrawn, BF will match your bet at the best available price.
So if you back a faller, you get 1000, and much good it does you.
A bot could be written that will only place a bet if the current price is within a set range, and some API products may well already do this.
This is not exactly equivalent to the BSP, as that is calculated at the actual off, and a bot would have no way of anticipating this, it would have to place its bet at a fixed time, or immediately after the off.

http://promo.betfair.com/betfairsp/FAQs_theBasics.html

Hereabouts you shoudl find the definitive info on BSP.

Thanks, Moonlight.

I can see the issues, which are directly related to what one can do manually. So why won't betfair allow you to stipulate an upper limit on a back bet at BSP?

Having additional parameters in the bsp placement would just make things far too complicated when it came to projection and reconciliation due to the match on close BSP bets in the market.

It's easy enough for them to take into account one limit on the bet as they can be ignored if the weight of money forces it past that limit but having a price band could make the bsp calc go into all sorts of loops when calculating if the limit is on the cusp.

No real way round it if you're aiming for a narrow band but it's easy enough to place BSP bets with minimum odds using Gruss now and if you set it place bets say 10 seconds before the off time you'd have a good idea of what the BSP is likely to return

I can totally understand why you would want to stipulate a max - but for them to offer the option would be tantamount to admitting that the sport is riddled with corruption, no?