Geeks Toy For Dummies: Software Fully Explained…

A Geeks Toy Pro For Dummies…

If you can’t understand the Geeks Toy by the end of this post, I’m the dummy.

Many readers have been asking for years, literally… I’ve finally got off my arse to explain.

If you struggle to understand the trading software it’s probably best to bookmark this post now, it’s absolutely rammed with links, content and references to answer just about every question you could have when it comes to the Geeks Toy trading software for Betfair (or Betdaq).

Why Everyone Needs Trading Software When Using Betting Exchanges

If you want to succeed on Betfair, you need trading software. Why? 

• Speed – It’s an advantage, if you can place a bet faster than a website user there’s an advantage.
• Live Information – A Geeks Toy refreshes at 200 milliseconds. Everything is LIVE, unlike the Betfair website where you’ll be clicking refresh constantly (and still be behind).
• Charting & Graphs – There’s a whole load of extra features, assisting the user in making an informed decision. And of course they’re live.
• Position Calculation – You don’t need to alter stakes constantly or ‘do the math’ everything’s calculated for you, so you know your exact financial position all the time.

I’ve always used the Geeks Toy from day one, it’s worked out great and there’s rarely been a problem. There are others available, although I tend to think they carry lots of bells and whistles you don’t necessarily need. The Geeks Toy is one of the cheapest too at £20 for 3 months. New users get a free trial.

There’s probably another list as long as your arm why trading software is better than Betfair’s website. I don’t want to bore you to death though…

Geeks Toy Ladder Interface…

The ladder interface is where I live, It’s where I place all my trades. Without it I’d be lost.

Below is a screenshot of the ladder interface, complete with Market Navigator and Market Overview Chart (more about them later).

Complicated? Not really…

Looking at the image above, from left to right:

• Market Navigator – The main control centre for the Geeks Toy if you like.
• Market Overview – Streaming chart, plotting the different outcomes against each-other. More on that in a moment.
• ‘Ladder’ x 4 – Each one is identical, they just represent different outcomes.

I’ll go through the first two points individually in a moment. For now, lets look at each ‘Ladder’:

From top to bottom, each ladder has a set of information available:

The top right box is your selected stake, or bet (£10 in this case).

To the right you will see two figures, the £15.45 is the possible ‘Hedge figure’ (amount to win across the entire race) at this point in time. Next to that in black (£70) is the ‘Net Stake’ (size of bet currently placed in the market, not hedged… that means it’s just a bet)

Below is the selected ladders ‘outcome’ or ‘selection’ if you like. Next to it’s colours, assuming you’re trading a horse race. (Gilzean is the horse here).

The green figure is the potential payout if the bet was to win the entire race (£504.02 here). The blue S means the type of staking plan selected is on ‘stake’ I’d advise this, there are other options but they are mostly unused (see the Geeks Toy manual if needs be).

Below that; if you have it activated, is the horse’s Jockey (left) and trainer (right). All very straightforward, right?

Now, it depends on your personal preference but I have the ‘Streaming Charts’ activated at the top of ladder here (more explanation soon). In this instance, it’s the traded volume chart, over 10 seconds. Why? Because I like to see if any extremely large bets fall into the market while I’m trading, in the moment.

Below that are your stake buttons (Blue), it just makes for easier stake/bet selection.

Below this is the total sum column, you can see a 1.5 in the image. These are generally of no use to us. They’re an indicator as to the ‘weight of unmatched money’ but if I was to place a very large bet in the market, it would skew these numbers… hence it’s no real use. To the right though, can be helpful. I’m talking about the 7.1k. This is the total volume matched on this specific ladder (the sum of all the little grey numbers below).

From there on below, it’s pretty much the same in each row. Just to make it crystal clear I shall explain the row at 7.8. You can’t see the 7.8 of course, because there is a blue 20 in it’s place, this is one of my bets. Whereas; at 8.0 I don’t have any bets waiting to be matched.

Starting at the very left, you can see the blue lines below have moved down from this price, this is where the price previously was.

To the right of that area we have a light pink cell with nothing in it, that’s because there is no lay money available at this price (the current price is lower). Covering the 7.8 cell is a blue 20, as previously mentioned, one of my bets. The column in the centre, expressing the numbers as decimal is the price column (or your current unmatched bets).

To the right of the price column is the back column, you’ll see a 60 there. This is because there is £60 ‘available’ to lay against (somebody else’s back bets), of that £60, £20 is mine. This money is unlikely to be matched soon as the price is now lower than before, when the bet was previously placed.

To the right of the blue column is the traded volume column, in this case £258 was matched at that price. And finally to the right once more is our Profit or Loss column.

The Geeks Toy software calculates our potential profit or loss at the prices in line with this figure. This figure is hedged up across the entire event or race. So, bearing in mind there is an open trading position in the image to the left; we could currently ‘hedge’ at 6.6 for £15.45. If the price should move back against us to 7.2 we could only hedge for £8.33. Make sense?

I should have told you this at the start; but looking at a ladder in the Geeks Toy is like looking at the Betfair website (ish) if you put your left ear on the desk now.

I can’t believe you just put your head on the desk to check! You’re crazy…

Ok, below all the prices you’ll see two boxes. On the left; unmatched bets (currently at 9.0 and 9.2 – check in the price column, see them?) and on the right hand box at the bottom is the matched bets (7.6 for £50 and 9.2 for £20). If I hadn’t opened a position for this example the profit and loss column would be empty (like the others ladders on the initial screenshot at the top of this post!).

And finally, the very bottom of my ladder is the Betfair graph. It’s the same as the ones available on Betfairs website, although I like to see them all at once. In relation to the other outcomes it can be quite helpful at times. Although not always.

Phew, that was pretty long-winded. Hopefully you’re still awake!

To adjust just about anything ladder related you’ll need to right-click on the actual ladders header-bar. The Geeks Toy manual gives a short cut to most of the menus if you can’t find something. The main ones I’ll talk about a bit below.

Geeks Toy Grid Interface…

The Geeks Toy grid is the interface most like the Betfair website itself.

The number one difference being, one-click betting. The numbers are displayed in the same format, which saves you putting your head on the desk. With the countdown to the start in the centre at the top, possible hedge figure in green (or red if you’ve got it wrong) and total traded volume to the right.

Unlike the ladder, each selection, its colours and available money is listed from left to right. The little icons 1 and 2 are short-cuts to charting and the figures below them are the current exposure or payout (see the green £504.02 much like the ladder above?).

To be honest I don’t use the grid. I’m sure it’s useful in some situations, depending on the sport or event you’re trading but for the racing I don’t use it. If you’re monitoring 5 or so tennis matches at once I can see it’s use. Other than that, I’m yet to find one of great benefit.

It’s not ideal for trading the horse-racing in my eyes as there is less information available to the user. And it doesn’t look quite so clear.

Market Navigator for The Geeks Toy

The Geeks Toy evolves around the Market Navigator. It’s pretty much the main menu.

Selecting markets is really quite simple, there are sevearl ways it can be done. To find a market you will need to drill down making your selection more specific. For example;

Horse Racing > GB > Newb 13th May > 14:00 (this is the win market).

Alternatively, for a ‘quick pick’ you can right click on the Market Navigators header bar and select from the up-and-coming horse races. The difference being you won’t be able to see races that take place considerably later in this menu.

Market Overview Chart

The Market Overview is one of my favourite charts in the Geeks Toy, just because it’s so clear and allows you gauge the various options against each-other. There’s not a lot to say other than keep things simple!

The chart streams from right to left, updating at a pre-determined refresh rate, over a range you choose. To select a different refresh, range or even play about with the colours just right click on the chart once it’s open. You can select the market overview chart via the Geeks Toy market navigator, just right-click on the header.

Betfair graphs are a little more complicated and require their own post.

Streaming Charts

Streaming charts are one of the newest charting options within the Geeks Toy Software. When I first started to use it they didn’t exist, so it’s possible to work without them but they can make life a lot easier. As I mentioned above, I like to keep an eye on the traded volume chart. But there are others including;

• Betfair Chart/Inverse
• Price Candle OHLC
• Price Lines
• Traded Volume
• Traded Volume Moving Average
• Weight Of Money (WOM)
• Price MACD

It’s down to personal preference, sport, market type, trading time, style and many other things as to what will benefit you most. What works really well in one situation will be near on useless in another. I’d suggest tailoring your setup to what you need, one of the main reasons I favour the Geeks Toy over other software’s.

Much like the Market Overview you can change the ranges and refresh rates or chart type by right clicking on them once open. You can enable streaming charts by right-clicking the Ladder or Grid interface once open. You can find out more about setup via the YouTube Channel Help Playlist.

Setting up A Geeks Toy Pro…

If you’ve never set up a Geeks Toy profile before the YouTube videos at the bottom of this post will help. It’s important to remember your specific needs when creating a profile.

One of the reasons the Geeks Toy is my preferred software is the customizability it offers.

For example if you’re trading a horse race in-play, the markets tend to bounce around here there and everywhere. They aren’t very liquid and prices can move from 100 into 1.01 within a matter of seconds. Trading from home puts you behind the track-side punters so you’ll need to set up the software in such a way you can react as quick as possible. With crazy swings and things changing fast in-play it’s ideal to have maybe 6 or 7 ladders open with the full market depth on offer (to save you scrolling up and down the ladder). You might want prices from 50.0 to 2.00 visible so you can click in an instant.

On the other hand, if you’re trading before the start prices move considerably slower. So you may want your Geeks Toy set with additional charts; traded volume, price history and market overview. Allowing you to concentrate on just 4 ladders at a time. Prices don’t move so fast before the start (unless a horse breaks free!)

Here’s a couple of examples to show what I mean. Each have their own benefits:

Pre-Race Geeks Toy Setup (Horse Racing).

In-play Geeks Toy Setup (Horse Racing).

Using A Geeks Toy Pro…

GeeksToy has been my choice of software since I started, here are the main reasons I prefer it to others on the market, #2 is the biggest deal to me;

Cost – When I first started on Betfair the Geeks Toy was free. And it has been for a few periods of time over the years too. I was pretty broke at the time so it made sense to test the water with a software that didn’t cost me the earth. However, that’s much the same now with it being one of the cheapest on the market. Also you can gain a free trial from the Geeks Toy website if you’re in the position I once was.

Customizability – After testing the markets for a couple of weeks it quickly become apparent to me that having the option to customize just about everything, in terms of time frames and screen layout/space was a big deal. As you can see from the examples above, it’s important. So although finding it first was a bit of a fluke I knew the Geeks Toy would be superior for me from a manual trading angle. If you’re into automation though, you may want to look at some others.

Helpful Community – Like many others I posted some pretty daft questions early on, its part of being human I guess. But the users on the forum were always helpful and didn’t seem quite so ‘clicky’ as elsewhere. As I do now, there were even some that went out of their way just to help me out with getting set up, the geek included. A question on the forum is usually answered promptly.

Useful Geeks Toy Pro References:

Geeks Toy user manual – PDF Download

If there’s anything not covered in this post, or the FAQ below the Geeks Toy Forum is a good place to post your question.

Geeks Toy FAQ’s

Here are a few simple but common questions users have asked me on a regular basis:

 

How do I activate Geeks Toy one-click betting?

One-click betting is set to off when opening the software initially. You’ll need to right click the market navigator and select confirm bets > safety > off.

How do I activate keyboard short-cuts?

To active and set up short-cuts you’ll need to do two things:

1. Set your hot-keys by right-click market navigator > show/hide > short-cut key manager.
2. Turn on short-cuts – right-click the ladder > options > keyboard short-cuts > on.

How can I change the colours?

Colours are easily changed within the Geeks Toy; all you need to do is open the market navigator > right-click colour schemes > edit colours. From here you can change each individual colour for your profile. Be sure to save the profile after!

How do I change the sound alerts?

In order to change the sound alerts you will need to insert your custom sounds under file paths found by right-click market navigator > show/hide > audio alerts. Failing that you can just turn them off if you prefer.