I am not understanding this and perhaps somebody could help.

Morning Alex, I've noticed this (not that I seed markets).

I wonder if it is someone who wants to back something at a certain price and puts up a lay just below their acceptable price. They do this on the assumption that someone with a bot will immediately follow them in with a longer price that they then match. If nobody has a bot set up to jump infront of them with a slightly longer price then they cancel their bet before someone has a chance to match it.

I may be wrong, just a thought.

Morning Sir. It is for sure a bot. I am just wondering what is in the head of the person that programmed it.

It is always going to be difficult to second guess something like this, but most things are open to analysis I'd have thought. It may be that recording the events that you witness this happening reveal a pattern over time. The person operating the bot will have specific criteria when they deploy this I would have thought.

Similar to the plankton theory, I would assume that there were varying degrees of competence with the operating criteria of some bots used here. If you can out think them you can outdo them.

I recall reading something years ago on these lines. Perhaps some of these bots users are even easier to turn over than the average punter. Some will think that they have an advantage, but if their thought process is faulty in the first place it will of course render them ineffective long term.

I seed the forum :-)

I jump over any existing posts to be last in the thread

Depends on the market, in some markets this is people placing 'hidden' bets below the £2 threshold.

Using the (place bet / add £1.99 / cancel original bet) method

I noticed this yesterday.

Someone had £7 down at a price I too wanted to lay at and so I stuck on £150 or so on top of this. Then when I went back to have a look at how I was getting on, my money was being matched yet the total on that price was still my amount plus £7. So I assumed someone had taken it off when I matched their price but then put it back on again. As to why, I had no idea.

It was a very illiquid market so I don't think it was a coincidence that someone else had just put £7 on.

Its called ***** or flimping .. foget it .. bet in the markets 4 mins to post time or better still take Betfair SP back or lay .. that way you will be on . at a fair price .

which market was that templeton?

I'm afraid I don't recall. Pretty sure it was the Sevilla game on Sunday night on one of the smaller markets. But it may possibly have been the IPL final. Why do you ask?

PURE SPECULATION:

I've seen this sort of activity on illiquid markets and I suspect it is something to do with obtaining a 'Picture' of the market from multiple/alternate servers.
Because of the high transaction rate of betfair, The architecture uitilises multiple servers which reconcile with each other on a periodic basis, and my guess is that illiquid markets reconcile less frequently than a 'hot' market, so it is possible to see an out of date/ different picture of the market depending on what server your refresh data was obtained from.

It was a reasonably illiquid football market. But nothing or very little was being matched. Just modest lay bests coming and going and allowing me into the queue provided i stuck to my original assessment of the odds.

As for zippers suggestion, wild horses would not persuade me to take money off the book unless it screamed vale. SP! Hah. ;)