Hi all!   This blog is a log of my experiences as I teach myself how to build spreadsheets in Resolver One that help me make safe (if not sure) bets on the various betting exchanges here in the UK.

I suppose that leads to three obvious questions:

Why bet at all? While I’ve never been much of a gambler, I’m very interested in the new(ish) exchanges that have appeared over the past few years. Going to a betting shop and putting a punt on an event seemed like a bit of a mug’s game to me, unless of course you had inside information or knew the sport so well that you could be certain that the odds were wrong, but the new open exchanges like Betfair and BETDAQ look much more interesting — all the benefits of the financial markets, but with fewer predatory corporations.

So why use a spreadsheet? Because I’m not really interested in betting on something unless I have a reason to expect I will make money, and I don’t see that happening unless I do some kind of analysis first.

And why Resolver One? That’s the simplest one to answer: I work for the company that makes it, so I use it day in, day out. It lets me build Python code into my spreadsheets, which — for a Python programmer like me — is a huge win, and (as you’d expect) I prefer its programming model. Also, if it needs a new feature to support my experiments, I can add it :-)

A less obvious question: why keep a blog about it? In the past, I’ve found that it’s easier to learn new stuff if I try to explain what I’m learning to a (perhaps entirely imaginary) audience — I’ve done this when learning new programming languages to good effect. So, I’ll keep track of what I’m doing here, and perhaps it will be useful to someone else too. In the meantime, hopefully it will help me keep my thoughts in order.

OK, enough introductory stuff: I need to fire up Resolver One and see if I can get it talking to BetFair! Wish me luck…