One-click to MAXIMISING the returns from your arbitrage trade

USER MANUAL

Developed by Cheong Y Koo (Cheong.Koo@gmail.com) July 2006

Copyright 2006

DISCLAIMER: While we have taken enormous care and precaution in developing and testing ArbsCalc, however, we cannot guarantee that the results it produces are 100% accurate. Neither ArbsCalc or anyone associated with ArbsCalc accepts any responsibility whatsoever for any loss incurred while using this software.

Cheong Y Koo Australia 30th June 2006

Dear Arbitrage Trader,

I would like to introduce you to a program that I have written called ArbsCalc. When I first started Arbitrage trading, I was getting frustrated as odds were changing on me after I have made a bet on one leg or a bookmaker would have fixed bets (eg. $10, $20 ) which made it very difficult for me to find out what to bet on the other leg. In fact, my first Arbitrage trade was a loss because I had to round the bet to the nearest dollar and this resulted in a loss. I was so frustrated that I wrote my own program to help me trade quickly and profitably. With arbitrage trading, Im sure that most of us understand the need to quickly make a decision on whether it is safe and profitable to enter a trade. And if a wrong trade has been made on one leg, we need to be able to quickly recalculate our bet to minimise the loss on the whole trade. ArbsCalc can help you to do this. All calculations are done DYNAMICALLY and you can see the result instantly. ArbsCalc has been written by and for the arbitrage trader. I hope that you will find the program as useful and helpful as I have. May the high arbitrages keep on coming in and remain till you complete your trade. Kind regards, Cheong Cheong.Koo@gmail.com PS. If you are using an unregistered version of this software and you find it useful, I would like to appeal to your sense of justice to do the right thing by registering this software. Its not expensive to register. For the cost of a meal, you can receive a registered version of the latest release and support future development and enhancements. Please contact the author at the above email address. Thank you.

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Table of Contents ArbsCalc Features (One click to MAXIMISING the returns from your trade)................................4 Installing ArbsCalc ..............................................................................................................................5 Running the Program ...........................................................................................................................5 Screen Layout ......................................................................................................................................6 ArbsCalc Window Close, minimise, roll-up and stay-on-top...........................................................7 Closing the Application ...................................................................................................................7 Minimising ArbsCalc.......................................................................................................................7 Stay-on-top and Rolling up ArbsCalc Window ...............................................................................7 Display of Lay-odds.............................................................................................................................8 Calculation of odds and arbitrage investments ....................................................................................8 Maximising and Optimising to the nearest $1, $5 or $10.................................................................9 Entering a trade ....................................................................................................................................9 Saving a Trade into a log file .............................................................................................................14 View Log File ....................................................................................................................................15 Frequently Asked Questions ..............................................................................................................16 Question: Trucate, Optimise, Maximise and Best Bets .................................................................16 Question: How do I make AbrsCalc stay on top?..........................................................................18

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ArbsCalc Features (One click to MAXIMISING the returns from your trade)

This program allows the serious arbitrage trader to be able to QUICKLY calculate and tweak their bets to get the MAXIMUM return from their investment. It is designed to be EASY to use, COMPREHENSIVE in features and QUICK in operation. ArbsCalc the arbitrage and odds calculator and optimiser has the following features: 1 Comprehensive display Odds conversion Display of odds in the three formats along with the betting amount, return, and profit in dollar and percentage. At a glance, you can see how much you need to invest and the return from this investment. Accepts entry of odds in the three formats USA (eg. 115 or 105), Europe (eg. 2.15) or UK (eg. 23/20) from which it will be converted and displayed. Enter in an Investment amount and it will be used for calculating the bets on the different legs (bookmakers). However, we were taught to round or truncate the amounts to the nearest dollar. When this is done for small bets, the rounding can actually result in a loss. ArbsCalc will optimise the dollar amounts to give a maximum return (see below). When putting in bets, sometimes the bookmaker will change the odds just as we put the bet in. With ArbsCalc, simply change the odds, and you can retweak the bets (or let ArbsCalc do it for you) to give the best return. ArbsCalc can optimise and maximise bets to the nearest $1, $5, or $10 depending on the user selection. This is especially useful as it doesnt make the trade look like an arbitrage trade to the bookmaker. If you are using a betting exchange, simply enter in the commission value and click on the checkbox to enable it. All returns and bets will be recalculated to handle the exchange commission. Its that simple. You can optimise the bet on ONE leg while keeping the other leg constant. This is useful if you are using a bookmaker that only accepts a fixed bet (eg. World Sports Exchange) or if you want to use up the funds in one of your bookmaker accounts. Sometimes you may want to maximise the return if one leg wins while breaking even if the other leg wins. Simply do this by clicking on the Maximise button on the appropriate leg. You can save your trade into the log file by simply clicking on the log button. ArbsCalc can be minimised to either the task bar or the tray. It can even be rolled up to save space and is just one-click away.

Bet calculation

Dynamic bet calculation Optimise to nearest $1, $5 or $10 Betting exchange handling Optimise bet keeping one leg constant Maximise return on one leg Save trade and comments into a log file

10 Minimise to task bar or tray

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Installing ArbsCalc Double click on the file Setup.Exe to install the program. Note that by default the program is installed in the directory c:\Program Files\ArbsCalc. Setup also allow you to install an icon on your Windows Desktop and/or a Quick Launch icon on your Windows Task Bar. I would suggest to do the latter as well as it gives you one-click access to launch ArbsCalc. Note: ArbsCalc will NOT modify your registry settings or put any additional files in your Windows directory. Running the Program Like any Windows program, you can launch it from the Desktop, Start Menu or Quick Launch menu. Note that when its started, you can minimise it to your Task Bar or System Tray leaving it one-click away.

Click on the ArbsCalc icon on the System Tray to bring ArbsCalc window to the front.

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Screen Layout

Click this button to optimise the bet on this leg while keeping the bet on the other leg constant. Click this button to maximise the return on this leg. Total amount to invest

Click on this to calculate the best bet to the nearest $1, $5 or $10 dollar.

Odds can be entered in American, European or British format

Betting exchange commission.

Enter in description of trade

Return from the trade for this leg.

Arbitrage values are shown in the different formats regardless of the entry format

Dollar profit from this leg of the trade.

Save trade into log file.

Percentage profit from this leg of the trade.

Select to optimise or maximise to the nearest $1, $5 or $10.

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ArbsCalc Window Close, minimise, roll-up and stay-on-top

Window Stay-On Top of other windows Minimise to Tray Read Log file

Read User manual

Roll-up window

Closing the Application

To close ArbsCalc window (ie. terminate the program), click on the button on the top right hand corner of the window. This will close the application. Note that the last settings for description, odds, investment amount and commissions will be saved.

Minimising ArbsCalc
When using ArbsCalc, you have several options on how to minimise ArbsCalc such as: Minimise to Taskbar To minimise ArbsCalc to the Taskbar, simply click on the minimise button at the top right hand corner of the window. You can switch between ArbsCalc and other applications by using the [ALT] and [Tab] keys. button. To minimise ArbsCalc to the System Tray, click on the When you do this, you will see an icon on the System Tray. Clicking on this icon will bring ArbsCalc to the foreground. If you have too many applications running, you may want to minimise ArbsCalc to the System Tray to save some space on your Taskbar.

Minimise to System Tray

Stay-on-top and Rolling up ArbsCalc Window

When you click on the thumb-tack icon , ArbsCalc window will become stay-on-top. This means that it will be in-front of other windows that are opened even when it is not the active window. This feature is very useful when used with the roll-up function. You can roll-up ArbsCalc window to only the title bar so that it wont obstruct other applications. Simply unroll it when you need to use it by clicking on the button. Both and are toggle buttons ie. on and off. Try it and see as it wont harm anything.
Rolled-up

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Display of Lay-odds Lay odds can be displayed by hovering the mouse cursor over the European odds column. See figure below. This option is useful when placing bets on the betting exchange.

Display of Lay-odds.

Calculation of odds and arbitrage investments Note: Only the first two lines of the entry are used in the calculation of the bets to place and the returns of the bets. The third line can be used as a scratch pad to convert from one type of odds to another (eg. from European to American).

Use this line as a scratch pad for odds conversion.

Only the first two lines of entry are used in the calculation of the bets and returns.

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Maximising and Optimising to the nearest $1, $5 or $10 ArbsCalc maximising and optimising calculations can be done to the nearest $1, $5 or $10. Placing dollar bets does not arouse the suspicion of the bookmaker that one is an Arb Trader. Rounding selection can be made by selecting the rounding amount from the radio button. This is shown below.

Select rounding amount to use in optimising & maximising calculations.

Entering a trade Say that you have received an alert from Surebet Pro or some other arbitrage alert service. Quickly launch ArbsCalc application by clicking on the ArbsCalc icon. 1. Then enter in the two sets of odds. For the example below, it is 2.25 and 2.45. Odds can be entered in either American (eg. 125), European (2.25) or British format (5/4). You can enter in different formats for the two lines. The program will automatically determine the format and do the calculation. Sometimes it cannot distinguish between the American and European format. For example 22 can be either in American or European format. If a number is longer than 1 digit and you wish to mark it as European format, simply enter a point . after the digit, eg. 22.0 will be in European format while 22 will be in American format. 2. Next enter in the Total Investment. This will be the total investment for both legs. ArbsCalc will calculate the bets for each leg to give the appropriate return and profit. In the above example, a $100 investment will be divided into $52.13 for Toronto Blue Jays and $47.87 for Baltimore Orioles. This will give a return of $117.29 if Toronto wins and $117.28 if Baltimore wins. The profit for the trade is $17.29 (or $17.28 if Baltimore wins) for a percentage return of 17.28%. 2) Enter total investment 1) Enter odds

2) Bets to place on each leg.

2) For this leg: Total return: $117.28 Total profit: $17.28 Percentage profit: 17.28%

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3. To truncate the bets to the nearest dollar, click on the scissors button . The display will now show the dollar bets with the appropriate return (see figure below). In this example, the bet will be $52 and $47 with 18.18% profit for one and 16.31% for the other. This example shows an unequal return for both legs due to rounding errors. For small bets, sometimes you will actually loose money by rounding (this is what happened to me on my first trade hence the reason for writing this program). Instead of rounding to the nearest dollar, we can use the Best BET button to calculate the best bet that gives equal returns on both legs.

4. Clicking on the BEST BET button will give us $49 and $45 for legs 1 and 2. This will give us a return of 17.29% for either leg, which is much better as we get the maximum return regardless of who wins the game. See figure below.

Note that the rounding has been set for $1 and bets will be calculated to the nearest dollar. If you wish to round to the nearest $5, select $5 radio button and click on the Best BET button . This results in a bet of $60 for leg 1 and $55 for leg 2 (see below), giving a return of about 17% for both legs. Sometimes Best BET cannot find a good value for the bets if the Investment amount is too small or the rounding is too large (eg. nearest $10). In such cases, increase the Investment amount or lower the rounding value (to say $1).

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5. If we are using a betting exchange that charges a fixed commission for our winnings, simply click on the checkbox beside the commission value to enable this commission in the calculation. Note that the bets will be recalculated to take into account this commission. In the example below, the bets with 5% commission on leg 1 will be $52.83 and $47.17 on the other leg. This will give a return of 15.57% on either legs. Bets that have commissions enabled will be shown in Yellow. Again, the Truncate and Best BET buttons will take commissions into account when Commissions are enabled.

The example below shows what happens when the Truncate button is pressed (note that the returns are not balanced)

The example below shows what happens when the Best BET button is pressed (note that the returns are balanced at 15.57% on either legs).

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6. You can manually tweak the values in the BETs field to see the dollar and percentage return for each leg. In the example below, I have changed the bet on the first leg to $60 giving a profit of $28 and 26.17% if Toronto wins and a profit of $8.15 and 7.62% if Baltimore wins. This can be used to quickly do what-if scenarios and to tilt bets to one leg of the trade. Note that returns are DYNAMICALLY calculated as you enter in the bet amount. There is no need to wait or press a button to start the calculation.

7. The other two functions are the Maximise

and Optimise

buttons. Pressing the

Maximise button will maximise the return on one leg of the trade while breaking even on the other leg. For example, in the trade below, if we press on the maximise button for the Toronto leg, we get a bet of $74 for a return of 33.20% if Toronto wins, while the other leg will almost break even. This feature is useful if we want to maximise the return on the favourite side or maybe if we feel that the underdog stands a good chance, we can maximise on the underdog leg.

Note that Maximise will maximise to the nearest $1, $5 or $10. In the example above, we are maximising to the nearest $1. If we were to maximise to the nearest $5, the bet on leg 1 will be $80 while that on leg 2 will be $55. In this case, the total bets will be more than $100 (actually at $135). To get better Maximising and Optimising results, we need to increase the Investment amount.

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8. The Optimise button allows one to optimise the trade on one leg while keeping the bet on the other leg constant. The goal here is for a balanced or almost balanced return on both legs. This feature is especially useful for bookmakers such as World Sports Exchange where the bets are fixed at $10 increments or if we want to use up the funds in a particular bookmaker account. For example, if we want to place a $40 bet on Baltimore (the lower leg), we enter in $40 for the Baltimore bet, then click on the Optimise button next to the Toronto leg. This gives us a calculation of $44 to place on Toronto for a profit of 17.86% and 16.67% respectively.

Similar to Maximise, the Optimise button can be used to optimise one leg by increments of $1, $5 or $10. For example, if our Rounding were set to the nearest $5 and we click on the Optimise button, the bet for leg 1 will change to $45 for a return of 19.12% on leg 1.

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Saving a Trade into a log file Once a trade has been made, we can save the trade into a log file. The name of the log file is tradelog.txt and it is located in the same directory as where the executable is stored. For most installations, the location is c:\Program Files\Arbscalc\tradelog.txt. Before saving the trade, enter in the description for the trade then click on the Save Log button. This will open up another screen where we can enter in the Title for the trade and any other description that we wish to make. Click on the OK button once you have made any necessary changes. Note that this log will be saved with a date and time stamp, which is especially useful for tracing and reconciling your trades.

9. We can read the log file by using a simple text editor such as Notepad. There is no need to Save launch Notepad and then start looking for the log file, instead, we can do this from Arbscalcinto itself. Simply click on the System Menu (top left hand corner) and select Read Log file Log from the drop down menu. This will launch Notepad opening up the log file. file

Enter in description of the trade and any other additional notes.

Enter in a title for the trade. For example, Tennis WTA

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Apart from saving a trade into the log file, we can also save comments and maybe our thoughts as we are making a trade into the log file. I use this to remind myself of a deposit that I made to an account. This feature is similar to the trade log but is more free flowing. To save a comment into the log file, click on the Save Comment button .

The screen above shows how we can save a comment into the log file. Note that comments entered into the log file are also date and time stamped. This makes it easy to track back on trades and deposits that were made. View Log File To view the Log file, click on the file.

button or you can use Notepad to manually open up the log Click to Open log file.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Question: Trucate, Optimise, Maximise and Best Bets

I am having problems comprehending Truncate, Optimise, Maximise and that button above the scissors icon (looks like rabbit out of a hat). I understand Truncate is to round off the odd cents to the nearest dollar, and Maximise is to maximise our bet on either the favourite or underdog. But is Optimise and the other function above the scissors icon? Answer: This is a good question.

Truncate or pressing the will just cut or truncate the cents off the bets. Say if your bet for a given set of odds is $81.32, if you press the truncate button, the bet becomes $81.00. In truncate, no optimisation is done, we only throw away the cents. When I first started arbs trading, I was just dropping the cents off my bets and using the dollar amounts for betting. I found that if my bet was too small, in some cases, I could actually loose money on one leg of my trade. Also, when truncating, the returns on both legs may not be balanced. For example, say we have odds of 1.3 and 5.66 with a total bet of $100. This trade has an arb of 94.59%. The calculated bets for legs 1 and 2 are $81.32 and $18.68 giving a profit of about 5.7% balanced on both legs. If we simply drop the button), you will find that cents and place bets of $81 and $18 (you can do this by pressing the your return for leg 1 is now 6.36% and that for leg 2 is 2.91%. In other words, the returns are now not equal on both legs. So if Team 1 wins, you will make 6.36%, while if Team 2 wins, you only make 2.91%, loosing out 2.80% (from 5.71 2.91). In conclusion, truncation may not be the best option to use for a trade as it can cause the returns to be unbalanced. button will attempt to calculate the bets that will give EQUAL returns on The Find Best Bet or both legs. In the example above, dropping the cents off the bets gives unequal returns. But if we click on the Find Best Bet button, ArbsCalc will re-calculate the bets for equal returns. In this case, its $74 and $17 giving a return of about 5.7% whether Team 1 or 2 win. Find Best Bet will calculate bets to the nearest $1, $5 or $10 depending on the Rounding value selected. If your investment amount is small, its best to keep the rounding value to the nearest $1. Sometimes Best Bets cannot be found and ArbsCalc will simply return the closest bets that it can find. In our example here, if we set the Rounding to $5 and click on Best Bets, the bets calculated are $85 and $20. This gives a return of 5.24% and 7.81% on legs 1 and 2 respectively (see below). While this return is not balanced, its still better than simply truncating the cents.

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The Maximise button will maximise the return on one leg of the trade while breaking even if the other leg wins. In the example above, if we think that Team 2 has a strong probability of winning, we can click on the Maximise button for Team 2 to calculate the best bets for maximum returns for Team 2. This gives us bets of $80 for Team 1 and $24 for Team 2. If Team 1 wins, we break even. But if Team 2 wins, we get a return of 30.62% - a pretty healthy return. The picture below shows the bets. Note that the Maximise calculation will also make use of the Rounding value of $1, $5 and $10.

Maximise on Leg 2 of the trade.

Maximise calculation will find values to the nearest $1, $5 or $10

The Optimise button is used to Optimise one leg of the bet while keeping the other leg constant (unchanged). For example, I only have $22 left with Pinnacle for Team 2. What bet can I place for Team 1 so that I get equal returns on both legs? First we enter $22 in the bet field for Team 2, then we click on the Optimise button for Team 1. ArbsCalc recalculates and gives us bets of $96 and $22 for returns of 5.76% and 5.53% respectively. This is a very handy feature when we want to use up all the funds in a particular betting account or when we are have placed a bet on one leg and the odds changed on us for the other leg. In the latter, well need to re-enter the new odds and Optimise. Note that the Optimise calculation will also make use of the Rounding value of $1, $5 and $10.

(1) Enter in $22. This is the bet we dont want to change. (2) Click on this button to Optimise this leg of the trade.

Optimise will find values to the nearest $1, $5 or $10.

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Question: How do I make AbrsCalc stay on top?

Its difficult trying to juggle between Browser window, Surebet window and Arbscalc window. Is there an easier way to use ArbsCalc? Answer: Yes, ArbsCalc was designed to be only a click-away. There are a few ways in switching between ArbsCalc and other applications. Roll-up and Stay-on-top ArbsCalc has a feature where we can make it always stay in-front of other windows. To do this, click on the pin icon on the caption bar. This action causes ArbsCalc window to be pinned on top of other windows. If you find that ArbsCalc is still in the way of other windows, you can roll it up by clicking on the roll up button . This will shrink AbsCalc to only the caption bar. You can unroll it when required by clicking on this button again. Note that even though you may have pinned ArbsCalc to be on-top of other windows, sometimes switching between windows will cause ArbsCalc to drop out from being on-top. This is a behaviour of Microsoft Windows and cannot be controlled. To make ArbsCalc stay on top again, just unpin and pin it again. Minimise to System Tray Pin ArbsCalc on top of other windows.

Roll up ArbsCalc window

Minimise to System Tray Another way to move ArbsCalc out of the way is to minimise it to the System Tray. Click on the button located on the ArbsCalc window caption to minimise ArbsCalc to the system tray. Click on the ArbsCalc icon on the system tray to restore ArbsCalc.

ALT-TAB keys You can switch between ArbsCalc and other applications by using the ALT and TAB keys.

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