Ask Bob Help

The three tabs

On mobile, open Ask Bob and use the tabs at the top of the chat panel to switch mode. Each tab keeps its own conversation — your Question chat does not appear on Review or Backtest, and vice versa.

Question mode

Type a plain-English question and press Send. Bob searches BotBlog articles plus indexed manuals for BF Bot Manager, Geeks Toy, and Bet Angel.

• Good for: “How does green-up work?”, “Which Betfair software runs on Mac?”, “What free calculators do you have?”
• Answers include source links so you can read the full guide.
• Not for: picks, profit guarantees, or live bet placement — Bob will not tip selections.

Review your strategy (Strategy Snapshot)

Switch to Review your strategy, paste your rules in the box, and press Analyse. Include as much detail as you can:

• Entry — when you trade (e.g. lay the draw at 0-0, odds 3.2–3.8)
• Exit — green-up on goal, time exit at 75 minutes, stop-loss rules
• Stakes — flat £10, % of bank, recovery plan
• Sport / market — football LTD, pre-race horses, dutching, etc.

Bob returns four risk bands (automation fit, liquidity, discipline, guide fit), strengths and gaps, and suggested next steps with links to relevant guides.

Optional: enter your email to receive the full Strategy Snapshot report (double opt-in where required). See our Privacy Policy for retention.

Backtest tab — step by step

The backtest wizard uses option cards in the chat area. Work through each step; use ← Change sport or strategy at the bottom if you need to go back.

1. Sport — Horse racing or Football.
2. Strategy — Pick a playbook (e.g. Lay the Draw, Back favourites) or choose Describe your own rules and type filters in plain English.
3. Tune — Accept playbook defaults or adjust odds bands and filters.
4. Bankroll & staking — Starting bank, flat stake or % of bank, recovery method if applicable.
5. Period — Football: pick a season (e.g. 2024/25) or custom dates. Horse racing: pick a year or custom range. Dates are clamped to what exists in the database.
6. Confirm — Bob summarises your rules. Press Run backtest or Edit rules to change them.

After the run you see a results card: yield, P/L, strike rate, bet count, and an equity sparkline. You can refine and re-run from the chat input (e.g. “tighten odds to 3.2–3.6” or “£5 flat stake”).

Email report: enter your address on the results card to receive a CSV of bets plus an HTML summary.

Built-in playbooks

How to read backtest results

• Yield — Profit ÷ total staked. +7.5% ≈ £7.50 per £100 staked. -5.6% is a loss on stakes.
• P/L — Total simulated profit or loss in pounds. Losses show a minus sign (e.g. -£250.28).
• Strike rate — Percentage of bets that won under the backtest rules.
• Equity line — Green trend = bankroll up over the period; orange down = down. Hypothetical only.

All figures are simulated on historical data. They do not include Betfair commission, slippage, or liquidity unless noted. Past backtests do not guarantee future results. See our football statistics and horse racing statistics posts for methodology context.

Data sources & credits

Ask Bob backtests run on historical datasets BotBlog licenses or subscribes to — the same data behind our horse and football statistics guides. None of this is Betfair exchange data. Results show hypothetical performance on historical prices, not what you would have achieved on Betfair live.

Horse racing — RacingFormBook

Provider: RacingFormBook (racingformbook.com) — independent UK and Ireland racing results, racecards, and form data.

Coverage at a glance

What each race record includes

Every race in the database carries enough structure to filter and simulate pre-race strategies:

• Venue — course/track name (e.g. Wolverhampton, Newmarket, Curragh)
• Going — turf going (Soft, Good, Firm, Heavy) and all-weather Standard
• Discipline — Flat (~62% of races), Hurdle (~23%), Chase (~14%), NH Flat/Bumper (~1%)
• Race type & distance — race class, distance, field size
• Runners — horse name, trainer, jockey, finishing position, SP per runner
• Favourite flag — which runner was market favourite (used in Back/Lay favourite playbooks)

Our horse racing statistics guide breaks down volume by year, course, going, SP band ROI, and trainer/jockey strike rates — all from this same dataset.

Filters you can use in Ask Bob

The backtest wizard lets you tune playbooks step by step — odds bands, course and going where the playbook supports it, staking (flat £, % of bank, recovery), and date range (calendar year or custom dates clamped to the DB window). The underlying database also supports richer filters (trainer, jockey, field size, discipline, and more); Ask Bob applies the subset relevant to your playbook or plain-English rules.

More context: Open Ask Bob · Horse racing statistics

Football — API-Football & odds feeds

Match data: API-Football (api-football.com) — fixtures, full-time scores, league metadata, and season structure for top European competitions.

Market odds: Third-party odds-provider feeds bundled with the backtest engine — not Betfair exchange prices. Real exchange odds, lay availability, and liquidity will differ match by match.

Coverage at a glance

What each match record includes

• Result — home goals, away goals, full-time score
• League & season — competition ID, season year
• Teams — home and away (for home/away win and form-style filters)
• Markets modelled in backtests — match odds (home / draw / away), Over/Under 2.5 goals, Both Teams To Score, Correct Score, Double Chance, and related pre-match selections (12 strategy types in the engine — see our football statistics guide)

Important limitations for football

• Settlement-style backtests — e.g. “Lay the Draw held to full time” shows a loss in our data; real LTD traders green up on goals. The engine does not replay in-play price paths.
• No Betfair-specific data — no BSP, no exchange volume, no cross-matching.
• Odds are indicative — sourced from API-Football / aggregated feeds, not your live Betfair ladder at kick-off.

More context: Open Ask Bob · Football statistics

What we do not have

• Betfair exchange historical prices, BSP, or order-book data
• In-play / live odds paths (football LTD green-up, horse in-running scalping)
• Non-UK/IRE horse racing; lower-tier football without fixtures in the DB
• Tennis, cricket, golf (not in Ask Bob backtests today)
• Guaranteed profit or tips — backtests are research tools only

The wizard always shows the actual date range available in the live database (anchored to the latest loaded results). If you pick custom dates outside that window, Ask Bob clamps to what exists — or shows “no data for this period”.

Question mode & Strategy Snapshot

Question tab — answers are retrieved from BotBlog articles and indexed official manuals (BF Bot Manager, Geeks Toy, Bet Angel, Market Feeder Pro where applicable). No external racing or football DB is queried for chat.

Review tab — OpenAI analyses the rules text you paste. It scores automation fit and risks against our guides; it does not run a historical backtest unless you switch to the Backtest tab.

Licence note: RacingFormBook and API-Football data are used under their respective terms. BotBlog is not affiliated with Betfair, RacingFormBook, or API-Football. Reuse or redistribution of raw data is not permitted through Ask Bob — use the providers directly if you need a commercial data feed.

Free tier & fair use

• 5 full backtests per day per IP (midnight UK reset). Previews in the wizard do not count — only confirmed runs.
• Question mode — reasonable use; automated scraping is not allowed.
• No account required for chat or backtests on the site.

If you see a daily-limit message, wait until the next UK day or refine your last run instead of starting duplicate full runs.

Troubleshooting

• Backtest tab empty? Refresh the page and click Backtest again — the wizard should load sport cards in the chat area.
• “No data for this period” — Choose a different season/year or narrow custom dates to the range shown in the wizard.
• Strategy too short — Add more detail (odds, sport, stake, exits). Minimum length is enforced so Bob has enough to parse.
• Email report missing — Check spam; confirm you completed any consent checkbox. Reports send from BotBlog — not the newsletter list unless you subscribed separately.

Still stuck? Contact us or email support@botblog.co.uk with the strategy text and screenshot if possible.