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Odds And Bets 3 Day Trial Review

Posted by Aegist on April 12th, 2006

My 3 day trial of the service provider OddsAndBets started at precisely 7pm Australian EST (+10) (which was midday by the time set by OddsAndBets, so I assume they are at +3??). The interface consists of a website with very clear text descriptions of each arb. New arbs are displayed with an Orange Highlight for the duration of that refresh. The screen refreshes every 30 seconds.

Part of the trial involves having all bookmakers included. This is obviously good for seeing how many arbs their program finds, however it also means you have to sort through which arbs are relevent to you and which ones aren’t. Paying customers pay more for the inclusion of more bookmakers, however in this circumstance, it is probably better to have less bookmakers, so you know exactly when YOU have an arb and when you don’t. I only actively use 5 or so bookmakers at the moment, so I would happily use their cheapest option.

In order to change account settings you have to email them, which seems to be quite troublesome. I have emailed them simply to ask what I can change. At the moment there is no audible alarm for higher arbs, and no method of screening bookmakers you don’t want.

Watching SBP next to OddsAndBets, the arbs come up at essentially the same time (depending on refresh point, but the same refresh in anycase). SBP consistently has more arbs than OddsAndBets, although this seems to be because 1. SBP has a few more bookmakers than O&B still, and 2. because O&B does screen arbs of less than 0.3%, while SBP shows everything it finds.

I have only been looking at this website for about 2 hours now, and so far my thoughts are that it really needs an audible alarm, an easier interface with the options than email, and a pop-up menu like SBP has… that tool is invaluable. The audible alarm is great for large arbs: when you hear that, you KNOW that you want to jump on it. But having an alarm ringing constantly because you ahve set it to 1% is annoying. But having the window pop up in the lower right hand corner momentarily every minute isn’t bothersome, and allows you to know when there is an arb which you could use if you want to. This window allows you to otherwise ignore SBP while you do other things. O&B though, because it is a webbrowser window really must be on top in order for you to see whether there is an arb or not. Right now for instance, I am writing this post on it, and I have no idea whether there are any arbs on O&B or not (there could be a snooker arb or something!) while I know that SBP has no arbs in my included list that are over 1% because the window hasn’t poped up at all.

That difference is critical so far in my mind. As I continue with this trial over the next 3 days, I will write to O&B a few times, and I will ask them if they can somehow implement some sort of scripting which effects a similar result for their software as the pop-up window (Note: The pop-up window in SBP is not the traditionally hated “pop-up”, but more like the MSN messenger alert window. It slides up in the lower right hand corner and then slides away without redirecting the focus of your windows.. ie: You can keep typing while it happens without your cursor being moved…)

Shane