Placing A Bet Via The Ladder

The number of ladders displayed on your screen will depend on the screen size. Evolution automatically displays the optimum number which may be 3, 4 or 5.

You can choose to have more than this and use the scroll bar to view them. All the selections in the event appear in the left panel, and you can select which ones you want to view ladders for by ticking the boxes there (in the screenshot above these are circled in red). Ladders can be moved into whatever order you wish by clicking on the name of the participant/team and dragging and dropping, and they can also be dragged from the left panel to replace ladders already showing. The ladders show full market depth of prices, and you can scroll up or down by clicking on the grey column in the centre and using the mouse wheel. If you are using a laptop trackpad, then you will not be able to scroll the ladder. You can however click the pale tan area (where the price history graph appears) anywhere above or below the horizontal centre and this will move the odds by 4 ticks. A handy feature (whether using a scroll-wheel or not) is to set the Ladder Auto-Center to ON in the setup menu.

The ladder features one-click betting. To place a bet on the ladder, left click on a price (blue for back and pink for lay). Your default stake will appear on the white part of the ladder next to the price you clicked on, with a ! next to it. This means that the bet has been submitted but has not yet reached Betfair. Once the API acknowledges the acceptance of the bet the ! disappears and the bet is either matched or placed in the queue, in which case the unmatched stake value will show on the white part of the ladder. If you want to place a bet other than your default bet size you can enter the stake in the stake box at the bottom of the ladder. In this screenshot below, we left-clicked on the blue column, at 9.0, with a stake of £2, which has not yet been acknowledged by Betfair. When it is acknowledged, it’ll join a queue of £148 which is waiting to be matched at these odds.

To cancel a bet on the ladder, simply left click on the stake in the white part of the ladder, or you can use the red x on the betslip in the left panel. Your bets also appear at the bottom of the ladder, unmatched on the left (circled in red above) and matched on the right. You cannot cancel a matched bet.

The Unmatched Bets panel on the left of the screen:

To move an unmatched bet on the ladder, right click on the white part of the ladder next to the odds you want to move it to. If you have 2 unmatched bets, right click on the one you want to move. The stake will go red with a line through it. Then click on the white part of the ladder next to the odds you want to move it to and the selected bet will move.

When your bet is matched the red and green p&l figures appear under the names of the selections at the top of the ladder. The hedge figure appears to the right of the p&l of the selection you have a bet on. If you click on the hedge figure it will submit the correct amount to hedge at the last traded price.

The ladder can be set to show the red and green hedge figures in the white part of the ladder at every price by ticking “unmatched bets + hedge” in the setup menu under Ladder Unmatched Col. This enables you to hedge at any price with one click.

At the bottom of each ladder, under the stake buttons are 3 boxes, white, yellow and red. The white one is the net button, the yellow one toggles between stake (S) and liability (L) so that you can back or lay to a given stake or liability, and the red one (K) cancels all unmatched bets on that ladder.

To set the keep bets function, there is an open padlock icon on the right of the betslip in the left panel. Clicking on it will close the padlock and set the bet to be kept in play.

The ladder mode features candlestick graphs, which detail not only the latest price matched, but also whether that was a movement up or down. Each price movement produces a vertical black bar. An upward movement has a green top and a downward one has a red bottom to the bar. These form a continually updating record of the recent activity on the selections in the ladder, and can provide valuable information about recent market trends. The amount of money matched at each price (in thousands) is indicated on the left of these graphs. In addition there is a weight of money indicator at the top of each column of odds on each ladder, and the total matched on each selection appears at the top of the graph column. Whenever a bet is matched the price on the ladder flashes red for down, yellow for same or green for up compared to the previous price traded, and the amount matched appears in the opposite column in grey.

In the image above we can see that there is a total of €1,160.18 riding on Beautiful Brew, with 33% of the money backing, and 67% laying. The latest price for the horse was 7.60, which was a movement up (green).

You can see bets being placed via the ladder in these videos:
the basic features of the ladder and how to use them, a further explanation of the ladder tab.