Been scratching my head and come up empty

I'm toying with an idea of automatically backing all longshots over a certain price. Anyone got an answer on how to back only say $1.00 or less at BFSP by backing the minimum $5.00 stake and employing another strategy to reduce the stake?

a) It's automated, so I won't know what the price will be or close to.
b) I cannot lay these big prices because until the market goes in play, to try and lay bolters for $4.00 stake would be way too much liability on my bank, considering there will be hundreds of qualifiers a day. Also by automating, I won't know which horses fit the price cutoff.

Quite a conundrum.

It's impossible to watch each race with this method, I'd have to sit there 24 hours a day

Any ideas?

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I have not tried this but you could try:

Put on your $5 at $1000 as "Market on close". Make your amendment in a separate bet through the API to $6 at $1000. You now have your 2 bets so cancel your first bet leaving you your $1 at $1000.

As I said I have not tried this but I would have thought this would work.

http://bdp.betfair.com/docs/PlaceBets.html

Thanks UB, but this won't work for SP placed bets.
Also Betfair have been known to close accounts for this tactic.

Of course the obvious solution is to lay the rest of the field, but then you are limited by market percentages and lose the overlay advantage of particular odds overlays. Ran this scenario on Excel, the advantage definitely disappears!
This is a case where laying the other runners is not the same as backing a few.

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Betfair will warn you first. If you have never had a warning you will be fine. I do this in between other systems when testing and I am yet to get a warning.

I don't use SP as I liked fixed price and knowing my odds. I'll try an run a test tonight for you to see if this works.

Thanks UB, I can't see how this will work for SP though. The minimum is still $5.00 but you can't cancel an SP bet or any portion of it, it goes into the "pool". Unlike live market bets where you can get away with it.

The only solution I have come up with is to go into the live market and use the above strategy, however, this isn't practical as these bets are at huge odds with very little liquidity. Getting matched in the live market will be a problem and I can't monitor the markets live, way too many of them.

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Chrome,

I am certain you can put the bet on in the live market (fixed odds) and leave it at $1000. You then mark it to go to SP if not matched and to go to Market.

You just cancel your $5 in the mean time before the market goes to SP. That leaves you with $1 that will go to "market" in the SP when the market is suspended.

Im 95% certain it will work but I need to give it a go. I'll try tonight but I need to write a separate program to do it so it may need to wait a couple of days.