Pythia's comment

I'm still trying to get a discount on my council tax though, Jimmy ;)

Say you're in prison Coach...

:0

lippy, I would take those comments with a pinch of salt. They just make people doubt honest people whose activity doesn't fit into betfair's profile of a pc payer.

A lot of jealous people on here, imo.

When someone is obviously wrong, but repeatedly denies it, despite it being completely obvious that they are wrong, there is no point arguing about it and there's no point discussing any issue on any subject with them even if it's about the weather.

I understand the PC charges and I think they are an improvement despite the fact that 85% of PC people will now pay more. I also want Betfair to attract more customers not less.

Pythia

From my own point of view, I'm not going to engage with customers who I know to be posting deliberately misleading comments about their own activity on Betfair.

----------------------------

Interestingly revealing quote when you think about it.

Everyone and by everyone I mean Betfair and PC payers would be better off if Pythia just kept quiet. All he's doing is p1ssing customers off. I was completely relaxed about the changes, any debate from me relates to anorakish interest in the mathematical aspects and then Pythia comes along and talks complete cobblers and casts aspersions on the integrity of forum posters and therefore casts aspersions on anyone who disgrees with what he is saying, talking about hidden agendas.

The vast majority of posters who disagree with what Pythia says havent got hidden agendas they've just got a basic grasp of mathematics. They are probably not happy that they are paying more, but its my guess that they are more unhappy that they are being told that they are not paying more.

Fascinating. Both delightfully vague and chillingly precise at the same time.
Perhaps I have underestimated Pythia.

That was to el presidente!

They are probably not happy that they are paying more, but its my guess that they are more unhappy that they are being told that they are not paying more.

I'm delighted I'm being told I'm not paying more, I just wonder if it's correct. :|

(and if it's not correct, your statement is right on the money)

May I direct you back to your opening post Lori.

I'm still hoping for an explanation. Pythia did say he would check with the PC team on Monday and I assume he's digesting the information before informing us of the result.

Clydebank: "...casts aspersions on the integrity of forum posters and therefore casts aspersions on anyone who disgrees with what he is saying, talking about hidden agendas."

--------------------------

Also, conveniently, leaves people with the impression that *anyone* he doesn't engage with is lying to fellow forumites.

Fear and Loathing on Betfair.

Just fwiw according to the portal, I'll be paying more if things stay the same for me.

I assume I'm a special member of the tiny percentage, but in my case the lowering of the commission generated % and the removal of the allowance mean I'll pay almost double every 60 weeks.

Lori - Betfair seem quite content to keep the big boys happy, its the smaller punters who will be hit most by these changes. someone who wins say £5500 will see their premium charges increased by 900% with the eventual loss of the rolling allowance (figures not accurate but i hope you get my point)

Only 900%? If the new rules had of been in place from the introduction of the premium charge I would have paid 1600% more in PC in the previous year!

Signing in Lori. I haven't paid yet, but am now twice as close as I was to paying following loss of ½ of my allowance

500 quid's worth of allowance wiped out at a stroke, back in PC hell.

new translation for the BF/pythia lexicon:

"only expected to adversely affect a tiny minority" = "bend over"

I thought Pythia would be on this week warning us about scaremongering as he puts it , could it be the forumites have been correct all along ?

hazel 20 Oct 12:07
Lori - Betfair seem quite content to keep the big boys happy, its the smaller punters who will be hit most by these changes. someone who wins say £5500 will see their premium charges increased by 900% with the eventual loss of the rolling allowance (figures not accurate but i hope you get my point)


Spot on fella, squeezing the pips of the small winning punter. Who thought this sh!t up.

In fairness to Betfair it has yo be said that they don't difference between small or big players , they screw everyone !

The Visionary 20 Oct 18:48
Signing in Lori. I haven't paid yet, but am now twice as close as I was to paying following loss of ½ of my allowance

How do you know you are twice as close if you havn't paid yet ? I just get a message saying I havn't had to pay anything yet with no figures to judge how close I might be.

I'm a relatively small player on here , yet I have been hit , my remaining PC allowance has diminished from £728 down to £124 due to this change , Pythia talks complete trash.

IanP in broad terms this time last week I had the full 1k allowance. Now I have £500

Think yourself lucky.
This time last week I had a 1k allowance, now I don't have any.

great PR of betfair to discriminate against their current customer base with retrospective allowance erosion compared to any new customers with a brand new £1000 allowance,well done betfair very unfair

Pythia 30 Sep 03:55
curly, I think your guess will prove to be well wide of the mark. There will be a tiny percentage of PC payers who are likely to pay more, the bulk of them being those who will no longer be able to offset transaction fees against the charge.

About 15% of current PC payers will fall outside the new Ts and Cs and be unlikely payers once the lifetime offset and other changes kick in.


...............................

We anticipate that the changes will reduce the number of customers affected by the charge and also the total amount of Premium Charges collected each week.

....................

I can only deduce that they have decided that those people who accrued premium charges but didn't pay it were affected by the charge before, even though they didn't actually pay it, because it reduced their allowance, and gave them the justification in their mind to post that statement. The statement reads as if it says the number of people paying premium charges will decrease but if you look at it closely it doesn't say that it just says affected by and the total amount of premium charges collected.

.......................

I would say where Pythia went wrong is that he read and interpreted the Betfair statement in the same way as any reasonable person would.

There will be a tiny percentage of PC payers who are likely to pay more, the bulk of them being those who will no longer be able to offset transaction fees against the charge.

This can not be misinterpreted and as long as the 1 k allowance is changed from 1 per 60 weeks to 1 per life time everyone still paying in the future will pay more.
Complete BS from Pythia !

I wonder what the average % rate of implied commission was before BF stadardised it? The new level sems low, I thought nearly everybody paid 5% in practice.

I think someone has posted earlier on the forum that the average implied commission was close to 3.3 %. If this is correct , Betfair will also benefit from their now standard 3 %.

Bottom line is we are still here , unfortunately they have a monopoly in all but name on liquidity and IR markets, although its not what it was elsewhere there is nothing, were all still here using the site so they can charge what the hell they like, do you think they give a sh1t, they will keep turning the screw until we feck off somewhere else , but there is no viable alternative.I pay 22.8% of my gross profits in charges every week, its the same as income tax only it's going into the pockets of fat cat betfair execs instead of nhs,immigrants and single mums. Betfair have it well sussed, bordering on genius as it stands, if there ever becomes a viable alternative the genius will turn quickly to foolishness, but thats unlikely and they know it .They have you by the balls and are not gonna let go of this money spinner.

Eddie I know what Pythia said is wrong all i'm saying is I think he that he mistakenly took internal communications along the lines of "won't be affected by" to mean the same as "won't pay any more"

You really are giving him the benefit of the doubt then.....
Anyway , his silence is telling me he now is getting it and realizes that his posts on here was mostly BS of the highest order.

He may just have forgotten Eddie.

.

He has gone skint...RIP Pythia.

Pythia 28 Oct 21:49
From Ts and Cs...

"The maximum daily payout per customer for all winning multiples bets combined is £1,000,000 (or the currency equivalent)."



he was on here the other night but he must have missed this thread

Seems a few more paying this week. Still can't get my head around there being a tiny number paying more if I'm honest.

Lori

Would any business, stagnating or even losing customers/market share bring in a 'new' charge to the benefit of its remaining customers? or, try and eke more profitability out of the pot and claim its doing its customers a favour.

I admit, I have a suspicious, cynical mind, but I haven't forgotten the cross matching ald yet!

Do you think they will be honest enough when the Forum Q/A starts on this subject?

Pythia`s silence is deafening ,stiched up like a kipper at BF Towers is my guess.

^^

Birthday greetings to David Yu for Friday. Just 42.

Or 33.6 in betfair years ;)

Do you mean he's 21 noodles or is he officially 84?

lol Feck.

Just in case he's forgotten

^0
He is in the wind.

Seems a lot of new payers this last month. Surley the 0.5% has been breached or will be soon. The numbers were increasing by a few hundred a month regardless of these changes.

Will be paying it for the 1st time tomorrow. Under the old method i was 26.66% total charges with a full £1000 allowance remaining. As i posted on another thread, i was £900 down after Monday last week and took 4 days to claw back to being level again and went on to register a £700 profit for the week. I placed 57 bets after being £900 down and i assumed such a rollercoster week would mean premium charge would be avoided but their ridiculous commission generated calculation came to just 10.02% for the week.

Pythia the king of spin. Truly pathetic.

^^^

What has he been banned for ? Can`t be bullshi*ting as the place would be empty.

Gone skint, perhaps.

Pythia last seen running aimlessly around a darkened room, full of smoke and mirrors, desperately attempting to find an open door.

Either stupid or dishonest imo

Or naive as in believing every word from the management.

He tells us he is part of the management. Head of Horse Racing I believe. Scary!!

OK if that is correct , we can rule out the naive option.

Any sightings?

He did say he was going to check this thread out on Monday morning. 30 minutes to see if he meant this Monday morning I guess.

Isn't he standing by the API server in case it needs a reboot?

I'm led to believe Pythia found the Premium Charge increasingly difficult to justify and left the company to pursue a less stressful career. He recently secured the position of Sir Fred Goodwin's public relations officer.

Last seen polishing Fecks shoes.

I noticed you were back so bumped this in case your people on the case had forgotten about it

Pythia 10 Apr 19:01


Have the bookies just pulled off the most brazen scalping of punters we've ever seen with their returned SPs.

With margins around the 130% mark fifteen or 20 minutes before the off time, prices were consistently clipped with an eventual over round of 155% being returned. This is the worst return for National punters I have seen.

Here are the stats for this decade:
2000 - 138%
2001 - 142%
2002 - 143%
2003 - 143%
2004 - 133%
2005 - 139%
2006 - 147%
2007 - 152%
2008 - 146%
2009 - 146%
2010 - 155%

And the reps have the audacity to claim what a desperate race it was for their firms.

Just for the sake of openness, I personally have paid less (in fact it may even be zero), but it's nothing to do with the change in charges that's allowed me to do this, merely a change in strategy.

I'm pleased he is back again. He's gonna feel a bit daft when he realises he keeps just missing this fred though.

Also, when you check on Monday (as per Oct 10th post) could you also ask them why some people are being incorrectly overcharged (as per Joel's thread and Clydebank's comments therein)

Thanks for your investigations.

That national SP will be worse next year if BOG is still around. IMO.

He must have been waiting for the new fancy forum I reckons.

roughyed, how did you manage to retrieve this thread please?

?

?

??

How's it looking?

Just a reminder, I realise these things can take a while.

ah, the return of an old favourite. I wonder who pythia posts as now?

fwiw, the changed system has proved to be much better (well, less egregious) than the original one imo. you can now effectively rebuild an allowance, whereas previously the same activity would have gone towards effectively clearing a debt you didn't realise you'd run up.

I think he still posts as Feck.

When you get around to this, could you also ask them about the site crashes?

Cheers

TTT as Pythia is around again.

After pointing out that I was a liquidity provider rather than a liquidity drainer, I received the following email from Betfair. Draining of liquidity takes place when money is withdrawn and not used on the exchange, not when it is won.
Feel free to assume that any changes to the PC either now or in the past, will increase the take for Betfair:


Please be advised that there is no current discrepancy. When someone wins on Betfair, they will continue to bet on Betfair. If they keep winning they will continue to use our exchange. When they lose they will bet less. If they keep losing they will eventually leave Betfair.

The people that continually win, such as yourself, can only win if Betfair continue to develop the exchange and continue to bring new users in. If we did not do this, then your bets would not get matched and you not be able to win. Therefore, winners cost Betfair more than losers.

For this reason the premium charge has been introduced and those customers who win continually have to pay slightly extra [sic] so we can maintain the level of liquidity that we offer.

I would say that if there was no PC, liquidity would be better. However, there is one thing that may stop this being true, that's the fact that PC payers can profit from any margin no matter how small, that others can't profit from.

A focus on liquidity drain rather than profit would be good. Someone that makes a lot of money and continues to bet larger and larger (like me [;)]) is obviously more valuable than someone winning an equal amount that is not growing and withdrawing all profit. The reason being that Betfair's take increases over time rather than remaining stable, and liquidity is improved by a lack of withdrawals, and consistent use of funds to bet with.

I think we can say Pythia was wrong, and I'm sure he would be apologising profusely if he did come across your question.

If they keep losing they will eventually leave Betfair.

Really?  What happens to these people Do they give up gambling altogether?...Do Betfair take in gamblers and so disillusion them they give it up alltogether?......maybe Gamblers anon should recommend Betfair as a cure for compulsives

Pythia Joined: 07 Sep 05
Replies: 19 10 Oct 09 17:17   
People seem to think that because the allowance has been amended they will pay more but the evidence we have, when examing all accounts, suggests this won't be the case because of earlier betting patterns.

I don't dispute some people will pay more but they're mainly those customers who will no longer be able to offset transaction charges or have a betting strategy that won't benefit from the new changes - these numbers look like being fewer than a couple of hundred or so accounts and are primarily linked to people betting in fewer than 250 markets pa. It could, of course, be that I am missing something and I'll double check with the PC team on Monday morning.

The changes do take about 15% of people out of the PC net and will, overall, result in Betfair making 15% less revenue from the PC than last year.

I completely get why some people want to present this as a price rise but for the vast majority of PC payers it isn't. The fact that 30 or 40 people have been particularly vocal on here - many of whom were also similarly vocal last year - is something we, of course, take note of but it doesn not reflect the views of the vast majority of Betfair customers or even the consensus view of those customers who have paid the premium charge.

There was a lot of scaremongering about the charge, when introduced, last year, and many of those responsible for that are at it again this time around. The facts remain that from a customer base now exceeding 2.5 million and an actives base of 600k plus on the exchange, the people paying the PC total something around the 2,000 mark - I don't have precise figure but it isn't far of that number.

From my own point of view, I'm not going to engage with customers who I know to be posting deliberately misleading comments about their own activity on Betfair. I am certainly not suggesting you are one of those customers but there are plenty around and it is simply a fruitless waste of time to engage with those guys if they're not being straight with their comments.

In the end, everyone has the choice to say what they like on here and to decide whether to bet with us or not. Betfair is far from a monopoly, has to exist in a very competitive market place and if we're charging people too much for the service we offer then we will inevitably lose their business. I hope we're not doing that and our customers still recognise that Betfair charges fair and competitive prices for the service it offers. 

I know you said you'd get back to us on Monday, but I'm starting to think you've forgotten.

A few variables have changed a touch, could you just confirm we're still going to be paying less.

Thanks.

unfortunately not pythia answering your question lori...

was just pleased to see the 1.01 landed with the thread bump

poor chap must have picked up a nasty cold and still be on sick leave.

plenty of other Betfair plants are present but funnily enough they won't admit to being a betfair representative[:x]

He may not even still be at the company as I was reading alot of the execs and those below them have been leaving over the last few years.

Interesting Piece, just stumbled across this site. http://www.thesocialgambler.com/2011/06/29/greedy-betfair-stick-two-fingers-...

lol @ the irony of the ad.

"Please be advised that there is no current discrepancy. When someone wins on Betfair, they will continue to bet on Betfair. If they keep winning they will continue to use our exchange."

I think they will find out that this is not the case

"The people that continually win, such as yourself, can only win if Betfair continue to develop the exchange and continue to bring new users in. If we did not do this, then your bets would not get matched and you not be able to win. Therefore, winners cost Betfair more than losers."

If winners didnt continually try and improve their edge, spend money on software, hardware and subscribe to certain publications they wouldn't be in a position where they could stick offers up on markets and entice customers into Betfair by offering better prices than available at the bookies and enable Betfair to make any money at all.

POT KETTLE ETC

"A few variables have changed a touch, could you just confirm we're still going to be paying less.

Thanks. "

greta stuff pythia

Pythia 2008

"I work for Betfair although am not an apologist for it. However, the claims being made that all Betfair is out to do is rip-off punters has to be challenged. As does the absurd claims that most winning punters are being asked to pay commission and then an arbitrary 20% ‘tax’ (as people have referred to it as) on top of that.

The people being asked to pay the premium charge are, on the whole, those guys who take more out of the exchange than it costs the company to bring in new customers to compete with them. Even assuming, as some folks on here seem to want, there was a mass migration to ****** or another exchange, that exchange would be faced with the same issues Betfair has a few years down the line.

The exchange eco system is a relatively new one and just because this company came up with a pricing structure a few years ago that has remianed pretty much unchanged, and also been adopted by other betting exchanges, it doesn’t mean that this structure shouldn’t evolve over time.


People can take a view about whether charging fewer than 500 winning customers out of more than 110,000 exchange punters, last week, is the right move for the overall health of the exchange. But to suggest that Betfair is intent on forever putting up prices and charging whatever it can get away with is risible.

It is in the best interest of the company to do what it thinks best for the overall benefit of all of its customers and using money raised from the premium or any other charges to reinvest in the product -and in marketing and offers to attract new and retain exisitng customers – is a business decision I, for one, think is right.

Where the company hasn’t done so well, imo, is in how it has communicated information on the new charge to some customers. Lots of people seem to think the day will come when they will be asked to pay the new charge even though there is no prospect of this happening. Some of the misinformation has been spread about by people with a vested interest in either pushing their own agenda or in damaging Betfair but it is fair to say that the company could have done a better job in explaining itself too."

Good post Dashero.

I kind of see this raise in premium charges as balancing the socialist books, redistributing the wealth from the successful punters to rewards less successful to continue betting and attract them in the first place. As you mention communications, the issues are every bettor is a stanch Tory! No tax, free market and not in my back yard. Even if there back yard barely has space for decking.

The problem with communicating the new charges is that there is a relatively free forum where people can discuss amoungst concerned individuals. If they were to ensure everything spoken on here was correct and accurate regarding the PC charge  the new change would be 110% on profits. Just to pay for all the new staff required! Betfair's community is it's most vocal critic. However they don't turn a blind eye to the criticism and allow it to continue.

"But to suggest that Betfair is intent on forever putting up prices and charging whatever it can get away with is risible"

Nope, far from being risible it is in fact 100% spot on.

Good old leinster

I kind of see this raise in premium charges as balancing the socialist books, redistributing the wealth from the successful punters to rewards less successful

  So you do consider Betfair share holders to be among the less successful ??

You guys should really listen to the webcast of yesterdays results....

Leinster is a COMPANY MAN. I hope im on the streets before I become one of those.

Leinster.. sure...  but he said he'd get back to us on Monday of his own free will!

TTT

Lori, is this a lifetime commitment