Betfair Watchwindow

Can you explain what it did?

It allowed you to monitor a given event in a small window, with auto-refresh every few seconds.

E.g. if you were unmatched on a footie team to win, or a particular horse to place, or anything else you can think of, you just put this into the watchwindow and carried on with other bets. You can have multiple, related or unrelated, events in the watchwindow, so if you have several unmatched bets, or if you want to watch the odds on several unrelated events in one place, it's all nicely there in a small window which floats on top of all other windows if you so desire. You can click-through to the appropriate market to place / amend your bets as and when appropriate.

It was basically the bees knees for anyone betting intensely. And it would still be if Betfair made it to work again.

There was also a real-time chat with it - - I didn't use that myself but I know people who loved to use the chat.

There also used to be a widget called bet watcher, that made a little sound when a bet you had put up got (part) matched. That was pretty handy as well, and it stopped working.

Oh, never managed to try that whilst it was working. Sounds pretty handy.

Somehow Betfair seem to be missing a trick - superb sandbox developments that get totally lost on the way to develop lots of other things............

anyone who misses it could do worse than say so in the labs chat thread - and maybe take a moment to thank larry for developing it in the first place.

Maybe you could employ someone to write your own bet-watcher. Cant be that hard surely and get a few friends to split the cost.

I managed to get a fantastic arb bot written for less than £1000. I can forward you the details if you want .

Yes, writing own will be the next best alternative. However, it seems bizarre to do that, given that Betfair do have the code virtually ready, and having it working for everyone would benefit everyone - - - users and Betfair alike. Users could be more becuase they have more knowledge at their fingertips, and Betfair could rake in more commission from more bets. So it would be a win-win all round if Betfair made the watchwindow a supported component.

I know a woman in Bolton who markets this sort of application and she could most likely provide it for a small cost. 

Arbing's not my thing, but I was offered something similar to the above poster for £999 by her; it's effectively a scraper that gets arbs from the main UK bookies.  She used to post on the Rpoints website, so that might be worth looking at, although it seems pretty dead these days.  I couldn't justify the outlay but I guess it might be of interest to some.

Let me know if you want the details and I can email you.

a geeks toy is a decent free alternative, that you can use as an effective sort-of watchlist.

you'll need a second display though, because it takes up too much space to use on one screen with the site.