First Impressions of Juice Trading

Juice trading (JT) is actually one of the more novel arbitrage alert programs I have used. It seems like every other alert system uses XML feeds which the bookmakers make available for odds comparison websites to access and create traffic for the bookmakers, instead it logs straight into the bookmakers from your login details and collects the odds that are displayed to you should you be surfing the pages. After using many alert services, I can certainly see the advantage of using the displayed odds in this way. There are too many times I have had an alert service report odds only to go there and have them distinctly different, and yet the alert service continues reporting the wrong odds. In some cases I have seen services report odds on a sport which the bookmaker doesn’t even seem to be offering odds on! I suspect that some bookmakers may ‘display’ odds differently to what odds they have set in order to remove odds which are errors, or odds which they have decided to take no more action on, or for whatever other reason they might want to stop receiving bets on. I believe this is one of the failings of XML feeds (although there are many other advantages to using them).

How JT use this method of collecting odds, is to log in, scan the relevant pages for each individual bet type, collate the odds and pick the best odds for each side in each game and bet type, then list all of the results with the best return up the top. When I saw this output, I was impressed. I liked the fact that you could at a glance see the instant ‘best odds’ of each bet type in each game of NBA. And on the next refresh, the best odds for NCAA, and so on. Juice Trading provides a very good odds collection and comparison service for the purpose of finding arbs, and even more beneficial, good Bonus Hunting odds (as it also displays the negative arbs). I feel confident that when Juice Trading presents me with odds, I can go straight to that bookmaker, that game, and that bet type, and I can be confident that those odds will be accurate. I like that.

Unfortunately there are still a lot of bugs in the program. It is only early days for Juice Trading, and I expect these to be purged very quickly (mostly because they are critical). For instance, the most obvious one is that their calculator (which reports what percentage the arb is) doesn’t convert odds. I am not sure how this was overlooked in the development stage, but most of the results show -2% or so on the return, but some go to -50%, and that is usually because you are getting European odds against American odds. For example Canbet had the best odds at 1.714 for team A and BetCRIS had the best odds at +177 for Team B. The arbitrage there is actually -4.43%, but it was reported as around -30%. This calculating error held true for their calculator too.

So obviously I expect this error will be corrected before this post is even made, but other errors and tweaks really need to be made too. For instance, I don’t yet understand what determines how long the results are displayed for, but for some reason they will disappear randomly. For instance, the JuiceTrading software will collect the odds for NBA from each of the selected bookmakers and display them. It will then start collecting the odds for NCAA. At some (seemingly) random point in between the NBA results will disappear without warning, and you will be left with a blank screen while you wait for the NCAA results to be found. It is frustrating just how often I flick over to JT only to find a blank screen. Which raises another point, there is no audible alert, pop-up or any indication that it has finished collecting its odds and they are being displayed. Perhaps this is only the case because there have been no arbs so far, but even so a simple beep to indicate that there are more odds to look at (certainly an optional one!) would help. I’m quite certain no arber wants to sit at his computer watching software waiting for arbs. I certainly prefer to be doing other things and waiting for my software to TELL me when I need to be busy. So I certainly hope to see JT have some sort of an alert for positive arbs, some sort of option beep to alert people to new lines finished being collected, and having the previously collected odds at least displayed until the next set are displayed, preferably keeping them on the main screen, perhaps displayed below the current odds. Something, anything so that you don’t spend you time with zero information.

That, in short, is my initial impression and comments on JT. I am still to see an actual arb found though, so perhaps some of my concerns on alerts and the disappearance of odds is not a problem when actual arbs are found, but as I mentioned above, I really think that JT could be a very helpful tool for the new wave of Bonus Hunters that are entering the arbitrage marketplace. Getting the perfect arb while bonus hunting is not always possible, but having a complete list of all of the ‘almost’ arbs could help a bonus hunter find exactly the right odds for their bonus rollover without costing too much in losses.

Shane

Author :Aegist

Date posted:February 8, 2007Post Category :

• Arbitrage Alert Services
• JuiceTrading
• Uncategorized