National Ante-Post Bets

We went through this issue on the Antepost Forum at some length when the change was made. There appears to be no chance of the situation changing back.

The book looks very strange this year. Someone is laying fairly large sums at unnecessarily high prices  The prices offered on some of the runners seem generous and the over-round is quite low for a 244 runner book. Volume is (much) higher than this time last year, mainly because there was a lot of activity in April. The market seems to have been dead since then.

I have laid small amounts but it's only a fraction of my book this time last year. I'm inclined to leave it alone until the beginning of February, when the entries should be out and a lot of the dross will fall out of the list.

Jan/Feb is the time I get involved in the first instance.

Rydal - can you explain why they made their decision and what precise bearing do balloted out horses have on the race?

A couple of years ago on the Thursday morning when the ante-post market closed (and day of race opened) I remember having
quite a chunk of my green disappear, but I can't remember exactly what kind of percentage it would have been.

I don't understand WHY this has been done at all, and if it's benefiting anyone in particular - I'd suggest that Betfair will have cost themselves a fair bit in their cut, but I could never get my head around their reasoning 'to protect the customer' - WTF does that mean in English?

When I spoke to them about this, they seemed more interested in protecting themselves but, to be fair, it will protect some naive customers.

Not all layers understand the risk that they may move from an all green to an all red screen instantaneously, when horses are balloted out. In the past there have been large numbers of horses balloted out in the GN, accounting for a very significant percentage of the book. Similar issues have arisen in the past in the football (first scorer) and the cricket markets. In the latter case, there was a fairly blatant case of fraud when some guys used the "money saving expert" site to ramp innocents into laying big amounts with "guaranteed" profits. Their screens then went from all green to all red - some people lost thousands, and (I assume) couldn't pay Betfair.

The issue with Betfair is how they have reacted to it. It should be fairly straightforward to build a model to measure a layers maximum liability, with increasing precision after publication of the weights and at each forfeit stage and limit their exposure accordingly. They haven't done this (not yet anyway). As a result, most big layers won't be able to afford to make a big book on the race. The impact last year was that the total market fell slightly, despite the low number of horses balloted out (which should have resulted in more bets standing). If they don't change their approach, I would expect the size of the GN market in 2013 to fall by 20 - 30%. We will see.

Thanks Rydal - have you any links to any of the discussions that went on here, when Betfair moved the goalposts?

I'm still struggling to understand the concept, but I'm assuming it's something similar to what I experienced a few months ago on here, when I had a horse (about 33/1) that I didn't know (at first) was a NR (I had the sound muted for ATR adverts) and I/R it went to about 3/1 in no time, and then even odds-on!

I laid it back at short odds, and had very large greens against ALL the runners, so I laid a few more I/R, one of which won the race.
There was still a substantial green against it, and a few seconds after the NR had been accounted for, to my horror, the screen turned RED!

The losing amount exceeded my balance, which was duly snatched back once I credited my account the next day.
I argued with Betfair that I wouldn't have laid the winner for the larger amounts than I usually do, but (par for the course) there was no explanation at all from them

Why were there vast sums queued up at odds-on for a non-runner?
It smacked a bit of VLV a few months earlier, but there wasn't a peep about it!

I even put up a thread asking WTF went on in the race and I go NO response
If this episode from a few months ago rings a bell with anyone...I'm pretty sure the withdrawn horse was Made In Taipan.

Really not understanding this sorry; so I could have a green book a few weeks before the national then if a few of them were balloted out it would end up costing me money?

Bluebirdfan, the answer to your question is yes.

Navel-Gazer, the thread was called "Betfairs Latest Wheeze". It is on the Antepost Forum. The last posting on it was on March 2nd 2012. You should be able to find it from that.

Thanks again Rydal.

BBF - that's a definite 'YES' as Rydal states, if the circumstances could be exaggerated to the extent of my tale of woe above

If the balloted out horses are at the head of the market (which isn't unlikely) the reductions could be substantial, and as we already
know on here, Betfair's version of R4 is punishing compared to the normal & fair one - I haven't got a clue how they twist their parameters
but I've seen 100/1 shots withdrawn on here before, ending up costing me substantial money

For the last couple of year's i've aimed to start the National with an all green book. Obviously this means backing horses to lay them further down the line at reduced odds (hopefully!). This has worked for me for the last couple of years however does this now mean that this approach isnt possible?

I guess what i'm asking is, "what is exposure offset?" as I dont reallyunderstand it and will the fact it is no longer allowed on the Grand National market affect the approach described in the above post?