How to optimize the load on computer resources
MarketFeeder Pro’s functions can be divided into two groups:
1. Inward calculations and processing of the data
2. Interaction with BetFair
The first group operates the information that MarketFeeder Pro receives from BetFair and from the user. These functions include displaying market information and bets, calculating bet sizes, executing triggers, importing and exporting data from Excel and calculating the values of trigger variables.
The speediness of these functions depends only on the capacity of your computer’s CPU, and the volume of RAM (computer’s memory). It is recommended to follow these tips to avoid overloading your computer:
- Do not start Excel if you are not planning to utilize any sheets and formulas stored in cells. The speed of connection to Excel is extremely low, and the software has to spend substantial CPU resources on maintaining this connection. If you do need to use Excel, think which markets you need to see there, and which can be monitored inside the application only. For example, if you only use Excel for trading in horse races, then there is no point in displaying football or financial markets there.
- While editing triggers, it is recommended to break them into separate files, containing no more than 10 triggers in each.
- Minimize the default market history depth (on the “General Options” tab). For example, if you only analyze the change of price within the last 5 minutes, there is no sense in keeping the history of the last 30 minutes.
The second group includes logging in to BetFair, requesting the amount of funds available for betting, updating account statement, bet history, list of matched and unmatched bets, market prices etc. These are the slowest functions, because they imply passing data to and from the Internet. Besides the performance of BetFair itself matters a big deal. As you know, MarketFeeder Pro is based on the service called BetFair API. This API (application programming interface) accepts the requests for data from MarketFeeder Pro, processes them at the BetFair’s server and returns the response back to the software. This, together with the time required to deliver the request and response via the Internet, may take up to several seconds per request. It is important to understand, that whatever the software may be trying to do, it can’t influence such things as the speed of your Internet connection AND the performance of the BetFair server.
In the evenings, when thousands of bettors come home from work; or when a market turns in-play and the volume of bets increases enormously, the API may start freezing occasionally. This certainly decreases the software’s capacity to maintain fast refresh.
Here are some advices as to how to maximize the efficiency of the second group of functions:
- Unless it is absolutely necessary, do not monitor more than a couple of markets simultaneously. You can add as many markets as you wish to the “My Markets” list. Yet starting all of them at a time will certainly make MarketFeeder Pro put them in a queue, and the average refresh rate may become very low. There are options that allow you to start monitoring markets at a certain time before their beginning, and stop monitoring them at some point after their start. Use these options whenever possible.
- Keep the refresh rate of each market within reasonable bounds. Assign different refresh rate for in-play and idle markets. There is usually no sense in updating a horse or greyhound race once per second at 2 hours before their beginning.
- Edit the frequency of updating the list of bets and account statement. These options are available on the “Betting Options” tab of the “Settings” window. If you are not using any staking plans which are based on the outcome of the previously settled event, set the refresh rate of the account statement to around 5 minutes or more.
- Turn “Retrieve all price offers” off (“General Options”, under “Selection Info”), if you don’t need to use the amounts offered at all prices for each selection.
- Close “Price Ladder” if you do not need it – it consumes much traffic.
- Configure the “UK and Australian Markets” tickboxes (“General Options” tab) – untick those that you won’t be using.
Whenever you see that the refreshing has frozen for more than 10 seconds, you may stimulate it by pressing the manual refresh button available under the “Start/Stop” button in each market.
Analyze the charts given on the “Connection Monitor” screen. They show you the time (per request and average) that it takes to get a response from BetFair. By estimating the peaks and slumps on the charts, you can find out when the software experiences problems with reaching BetFair.
