ET,

As others have noted it is possible to do what you have outlined, and I am doing it myself (except the scraping aspect) every day and have been for nearly 15 years.

I am fortunate to be a punter and a programmer so I understand my own requirements and can translate that to code and functioning programs.

Bettordata used to be my data feed of choice for tote prices as it had all 3 totes and the APN (on course prices). At the end of 2015 TAB stopped access to their prices so it now only has the Tatts and APN, and the latter only when there are 2 or more bookies at the track.

Historically the TasTote api was by a very big margin the best way to bet into any TAB in Australia. Now the TABCORP api is very feature rich and allows a user to get any information that is on the website.

Tatts have a new json based api that is well documented and simple to work with (if you are a programmer). WA has a very basic system of sending bets and there is no api as such.

BF is a whole different ball game and is for expert programmers only. I know Pinnacle has an API as does the new entrant on the scene, Global Tote. The latter is relatively straight forward.

Don't be deluded that you can "learn" programming and create betting bots in a small time frame. The concepts are the same for all betting shops, but the design, naming conventions and so on are ALL different.

If you are young and enthusiastic, plan on punting for a long time by all means learn to program along side your punting. For anyone going down that path there are shortcuts you can take that make the learning and development quicker. Stick with well documented languages like vb.net, c# or python. There a many user groups that have paved the way and been down the path you want to go on so you can follow their lead (and their code examples)

All that said, when a tap breaks I pay a plumber, when the power shorts out I call an electrician. You get what you pay for - if you have a half decent system that makes money the investment (say around $2000 for a custom betting application) will pay for itself in no time.