Guardian article today by Greg Wood.

Not "huge" enough.

Desmond should speak to me. I'd show him what would make people move.

weatherman, that's how to move the foxes. Replicating what foxes get here (chickens who lose hundreds of millions of pounds a year to them) would cost hundreds of millions.

Then you've got to move the chickens. What's your plan for that? Is it that Dermot should spend a hundred million more marketing to them to persuade them to move? If he did spend a total £500m on your plan and it was successful, what would be a fair division of the spoils between him and you and the other foxes? If there's one thing I've learned from reading the forum it's that 20%/80% (in the foxes favour) would make him a greedy cnut. Maybe 5%/95% would be considered a more fair split. So to break even he'll have to wait for the chickens to deposit and lose just £10 billion. If you do pitch this business plan to him could you video it for us and stick it up on Youtube?

Dermot Desmond will be alright I think

I take it you chose your own forum name.

Certainly wasn't earned.

I could do it for a lot less than your guess.

Since the change in the commission structure (after Kauto Star won the Betfair million) and then, more significantly, the Premium Charge, the company has been in decline. Some of the big players and market makers have left, or cut back on their business. Bearing this in mind, the imposition of the Premium Charge must have made Betfair less profitable and also more vulnerable to an aggressive marketing strategy by its rival.  Betfair has remained in denial of this and, instead of scraping the charge, has, instead, continued expanding its services, its markets and the special offers, and it now looks overstretched. An indication of this can be found on the Guardian's website today:

But the move also looks set to crystallise losses of up to £124m for Betfair's largest shareholder, Softbank, a Japanese technology company which bought its 23% stake in the gaming group for £355m in 2006, valuing the business at £1.54bn. Analysts now reckon Betfair is worth nearer £1b.
It looks to me that the original founders of Betfair want to get out now, with a guaranteed profit, before the decline sets in.

Since the change in the commission structure (after Kauto Star won the Betfair million) and then, more significantly, the Premium Charge, the company has been in decline.

It's not in decline, it just hasnt grown as much as anticipated, and part of that is to do with the economic downturn.

weatherman,

Happy for you to tell me why I'm wrong, rather than just the tedious personal abuse. If you don't like my numbers feel free to quote some of your own:

1. How much you think it would cost to seed?
2. How much do you think the winners you're trying to move win?

and if 2 is bigger than 1 then can you tell me how you'd plug the difference?

.Marksman. Joined: 13 Jul 10
Replies: 121 22 Sep 10 14:53 
Since the change in the commission structure (after Kauto Star won the Betfair million) and then, more significantly, the Premium Charge, the company has been in decline. Some of the big players and market makers have left, or cut back on their business. Bearing this in mind, the imposition of the Premium Charge must have made Betfair less profitable and also more vulnerable to an aggressive marketing strategy by its rival.  Betfair has remained in denial of this and, instead of scraping the charge, has, instead, continued expanding its services, its markets and the special offers, and it now looks overstretched. An indication of this can be found on the Guardian's website today:

But the move also looks set to crystallise losses of up to £124m for Betfair's largest shareholder, Softbank, a Japanese technology company which bought its 23% stake in the gaming group for £355m in 2006, valuing the business at £1.54bn. Analysts now reckon Betfair is worth nearer £1b.
It looks to me that the original founders of Betfair want to get out now, with a guaranteed profit, before the decline sets in.


Its not an indication that its in decline or that its overstretched, its an indication that Softbank paid way over the odds.

fair play askari , i just see people swearing at the horses in the local bookies

The whole "Fox and Chicken" thing is missing the point. For the most part losing players on here are NOT losing to the Foxes, that's just an excuse- they are losing to commission. Yes, a few foxes manage to win some money, but I'd challenge any losing punter who has a reasonably long betting "career" to take their whole betting history and see where the money has really gone. In almost all cases the overwhelming bulk of their losses will be to commission.

Gamblers love to blame, they blame the bookies, the fast picture players, the bots, or the Jockeys, essentially they blame anyone but themselves. The fact is that even if you killed off ALL the foxes the losers would keep on losing at the same rate because they'd keep on placing dumb ass zero value bets losing 5% a throw until they had to re-deposit. If Greg Wood is losing it's not because of the Foxes, it's because he's a cr@p gambler, the sooner he faces up to that the sooner he'll stop losing (by stopping gambling). Until he does Betfair will keep taking his money- hopefully I'll get a bit of it too, but there's no doubt who will get more.

Spot on comment, aye robot.
Its the losers on here who want to believe that they are losing to "foxes" (who must be insiders, cheats, traders, ex city boys, tory boys etc.).  These losers imagine that if Betfair could get rid of the foxes, they would have a "fair" or "even" chance of making it pay and that the PC is a valid tool for Betfair to use to achieve this. In reality, there are no "foxes" and the PC is a blatant attempt to increase profits.

Your point then Aye Robot is that the value that people talk about on here has to be the price net of any and all commissions.
Now that's hard to do on a consistent basis.
And of course, you still have to be able to successfully pick your proportionate share of winners.
It's no good getting value and then not winning the required percentage for the value to pay off.
Or are you saying if you get the value, then the winning percentage will take care of itself long term at least ?

Marksman. Joined: 13 Jul 10
Replies: 122 22 Sep 10 23:22   


Spot on comment, aye robot.
Its the losers on here who want to believe that they are losing to "foxes" (who must be insiders, cheats, traders, ex city boys, tory boys etc.).  These losers imagine that if Betfair could get rid of the foxes, they would have a "fair" or "even" chance of making it pay and that the PC is a valid tool for Betfair to use to achieve this. In reality, there are no "foxes" and the PC is a blatant attempt to increase profits.

This post doesn't make any sense if I am reading it correctly.

Are you suggesting inrunning players operating at an event do not have considerable advantage to those playing from home seeing action sometimes six or more seconds after the event?

You also seem to be suggesting that insiders who have information about an event that is not in the public domain have no advantage over average joe sat at home?

Winning Betfair punters are probably more accutely aware of the effect of insiders than your avergae losing punter. This is certainly true of horse racing, of others sports I wouldn't know.

To suggest there are no 'foxes' in horse racing is very naive at best. aye robot at least made the point 'For the most part losing players on here are NOT losing to the Foxes' and added that 'a few foxes manage to win some money'.

There definitely are foxes.  I know this to be true because when I lose I often shout "for fox' sake."

Like it betfairy.

Muqbil, there will always be winners on here, as long as commission stays low and charges are kept to a minimum.  But I wouldn't call the people who bet in running on course "foxes", because they are just ordinary people who have made the step forward from betting on delayed pictures, and this alone may have made them winners.  I don't see why successful people should be penalized or driven away from the exchange.  Calling regular winners "foxes" presumes that these people have been fundamentally different to other gamblers from the start, whereas I believe that most of them were losers at one stage.
As for insiders, there will always be people who know more than others: These could be people who go to pubs where trainers frequent, in the hope that they over hear conversations. Friends of stable lads. People who bother to get up early to watch horses work.  You don't have to be part of corruption to get "information".  Why should these people be driven away from the exchange by the Premium Charge?

I think you are reading it wrong Muqbil.
He's not saying there are no foxes, he's just saying that the losers would probably lose just the same if there were no foxes.
He's implying that the average punter is a no-hoper irregardless of the betting set-up.
Is he right on that, that's the point in question ?

what about a model where the biggest chickens are steered away to a place where there are no foxes though?

The old chestnut Marksman
When does information gained by effort and application become inside information ?.
Your basic point why should people who make an effort to get an edge be penalized vis a vis those too lazy not to bother, is extremely valid.

Level playing playing fields where everyone has an equal chance, an equal opportunity to succeed,come at a price. And that price is that everything is reduced to a lottery, for it is only a lottery, where the outcome is 100% random, that skill, knowledge, experience, family, connections, wealth etc are absent. This is, of course, the utopia that most politicians dream about, seemingly ignoring the fact that from the moment you are conceived, you are either ahead or behind in the game of life.

In every form of gambling, even roulette(where ways have been found) there is an element of skill, an element of information, a degree of application, that creates an advantage. The question is, with an exchange,is it possible that the edge you have can ever overcome the long run price you have to pay in commission and PC charges? Even for the most ferocious and successful of foxes, the theoretical answer, I'm afraid, is NO. Eventually, all chickens will become extinct and foxes will cannibalise themselves leaving the exchange owner as a very  self-satisfied fat-cat indeed.

FINE AS FROG HAIR Joined: 12 Mar 07
Replies: 532 23 Sep 10 09:46   


I think you are reading it wrong Muqbil.
He's not saying there are no foxes, he's just saying that the losers would probably lose just the same if there were no foxes.
He's implying that the average punter is a no-hoper irregardless of the betting set-up.

Ah right, I would agree more or less.

The money the insiders syphon from the markets has to have some impact overall, quite what in % terms only those in the ivory towers would have any idea. I'm not talking about those picking up 2nd hand information in pubs or those watching work. The insiders who know for sure that an even money favourite is not going to win. I don't subscribe the the widely held belief on the hr forum that every race is crooked but it certainly goes on. I would suggest they are the winning most group of players on the exchange.

I know many years ago Adonis tried to do a wierd and wonderful calculation of 'funds invariant'. His banter is missed from this forum.

Of course, the fat-cat will then become extinct himself with no-one left to pay him his dues.

I miss Adonis

At the risk of over extending an already shaky metaphor;

Yes, there are some Foxes in the shed, but the real problem for the chickens is that they're all on the way to the abattoir. Getting rid of the Foxes won't change that.

When the Foxes win it's not at the cost of the chickens - they will be dead very soon anyway, the cost is borne by Betfair- who would otherwise have got all the meat. That's why PC exists, it's so that BF can recoup a part of the money that they would otherwise have got all of.




Or are you saying if you get the value, then the winning percentage will take care of itself long term at least ?
Yes.

I repeat my earlier comment aye robot......someone on here will know what i am referring to.

Horse racing has insiders and is in decline, doesnt mean exchange model is flawed or other sports cant flourish.

Its annoying when people say betfair or exchanges when they really mean horse racing markets on betfair.

Yes, the Spanish football markets are much fairer this year since Sky has managed to secure fast feeds.  Goodness knows what those Spaniards/expats are doing for money now?

You can be sure that someone, somewhere within BF, knows EXACTLY who of their clients is making the most and what their different strategies are. I am sure that this is the one secret that will remain a secret unless a rogue employee (with no shares) decides to inform the rest of us.

Until then we can only speculate. I suspect that it will come down a) good old-fashioned insider information b) technological edge . The former would show up as spikes whilst the latter would show up as growth with little variance. Given that BF's share of horseracing gross win seems to have plateaued, and the fact that the market is hyper- sensitive, I wonder if the majority of good old-fashioned gambles still go through traditional off-course channels?

There will always be winners and losers...so there will always be foxes and chickens...the more foxes there are actually increases the life of the chickens as the foxes fight amongst themselves and the price of chickens goes up.

Any talk of banning winners is nonsense (unless they are cheats).  The winners generally lay the seed and the more winners you have the more feed there is for the chickens.  The market would be like a 2bob exchange if it was to rely on "recreational" punters alone (in his analogy chickens).  Without foxes there wouldnt be any chickens but the foxes know that if they move home they are likely to become chickens because one fox on his own can't beat the might of the group of foxes left behind, even if he is the wiliest fox in the set because, the chickens flock to where the most and best seed is laid. 

If the wily fox leaves and sows seed that is too cheap the other foxes will buy it and sell it on at a cheaper price back here.  The problem for the wily fox is that the price of seed changes and it is no good to him if the seed is mostly only bought by roaming foxes when it becaomes too cheap.  So the status quo will always remain unless the point comes where the wily fox can mostly sell his seed at the prevailing market price elsewhere.

In every form of gambling, even roulette(where ways have been found) there is an element of skill

Sandown I have been mulling this over and for the life of me I can't find any element of skill in Roulette.

maybe because he writes for the Guardian Greg Wood is a communist as what he describes would have ended Capitalism years ago

The question is, with an exchange,is it possible that the edge you have can ever overcome the long run price you have to pay in commission and PC charges? Even for the most ferocious and successful of foxes, the theoretical answer, I'm afraid, is NO. Eventually, all chickens will become extinct and foxes will cannibalise themselves leaving the exchange owner as a very  self-satisfied fat-cat indeed.

IMVHO Sandown you're making exactly the same mistake as Greg Wood. How can it be theoretically impossible to have a long term edge that's greater than commission? You can't pay the premium charge unless you have an edge that's greater than commission over the lifetime of your account. Try telling people on here who pay it every week not to worry because you mistakenly think it's theoretically impossible to pay it and you won't be very popular. And the premium charge itself is a tax on lifetime profits, so you're talking about exchange users for whom deducting 22.5% of their lifetime profit = a loss. Any positive number you pick will still be positive after deducting 22.5% of it. If your theory is that anyone who makes a consistent profit is just very lucky, rather than having a systematic edge over others, then it's a rubbish theory.

And what are you on about with all the chickens becoming extinct? You're talking about a group of customers who've deposited a bigger amount every single year that betfair's existed, and that's just on here. What about the rest of the global gambling industry? When will their recreational, cash-depositing customers become extinct and why? People have gambled recreationally and lost money doing to for thousands of years. When are you predicting that human nature will inexplicably change?

Sandown I have been mulling this over and for the life of me I can't find any element of skill in Roulette.

Theer was a story a few years back that some geniuses from MIT or wherever found a way of incorporating a computer into their shoes which would calculate where a ball would land once thrown and bets were placed whilst the wheel was spinning. It gave them an edge over chance. They were found out and advised "politely" to leave. Or so the story goes. Of course, it could be an urban myth. Or a scam.

ah ok sandown thanks.  There would be another word I would use to describe what they were doing though

The Calculator

10 years is too small a period to justify your conclusions.Theoretically, I said.

The biggest market that BF has is horseracing and it is the most mature. The fact that BF's share of the horseracing market appears to have peaked suggests that the number of new players coming into it reflects what is happening broadly to horseracing as a betting medium. BF's continued growth is really dependent on successful geographic expansion and the introuction of new sports and markets, imo. Look to the core business- UK horseracing is the canary in the lamp - and you wouldn't be too sanguine.

What comment is that then Fairfield Grand? I don't see it anywhere.

I think Fairfield Grand may have been referring to the bit below, however looks like they've dropped it now ...

High Roller segment
During the first quarter of the year, Betfair ran a trial service with a small number of ‘‘High Roller’’
customers. The size and scale of the betting patterns of these customers is too large to be fully hedged
through the Betting Exchange and so Betfair has necessarily accepted proprietary risk on these bets.
The trial with High Roller customers proved to be profitable, but the volatility of returns from such
customers is such that Betfair has now decided not to proceed with this product offering for the
foreseeable future.
Revenue from the High Roller segment during the first quarter was approximately £25 million and
EBITDA(2) was approximately £7 million. The results will be reported as a separate segment in FY11 and
have been excluded from the Core Betfair revenue for the quarter stated above.

Thanks Jabmast- never knew about that.

lol, lets see how long this thread lasts now.

From Mark Davies Blog

Yes: back in 2002, Racing was a significant part of a bookmaker’s business. I am revealing very little, and in any case drawing on residual and previously-published knowledge, when I say that eight years ago, it constituted about 80% of Betfair’s revenues. So, too, am I divulging no secrets if I state that now, it accounts for less than 35%. Indeed, I remember it getting as low as 21% of Betfair’s weekly revenues, although admittedly that was in a seven-day period when the football calendar was strong.

http://www.markxdavies.com/2010/09/22/who-on-earth-is-advising-racing/

how much are the high roller betting to lose 7 million a quarter. Betfair says no thanks to them aswell

betting_quant, that info is public, it's on their corporate website.

it might be 'public', but I don't think it's general knowledge amongst foxes or the average chickens.......

News to me if it has been stopped now.

I neither feed the foxes nor get eaten by them.
The betting techniques I use do not incur premium charges as I am well over the 20% threshhold of charges paid to net profits.
There must be many, many others on here like me.
In other words, the BF betting platform works fine for both me and BF.

Bully for you

What about the wolves, the ones in sheeps clothing. They are the ones to really watch out for.....

FINE AS FROG HAIR, I take it that you are the ostrich on this farm, with your head buried in the sand.  You think that because you lay big eggs and are not kept in a PC cage, you can ignore the fate of those who are suffering.  I was happy with my free range life, until I had 2 big wins last year, and now I am paying for it, confined to the PC cage.  Fortunately I sneak out to the Purple Farm each night.  I don't know whether or not the food on the Purple Farm is lying there because the purple farmer has been seeding.  Quite frankly I don't care, because life is better over their than it is here.

Not really Duncan.
The point I'm trying to make is that generalisations made about punters on here and elsewhere are usually well wide of the mark.
BF is a success story for the exact reason that it offered, and still offers, a true alternative to being ripped off and, worse still, being banned by the bookies for being relatively successful.
It was a wonderful, innovative concept and I say well done to the entrepreneurs who invented and developed it.
Their public float will be, and deserves to be, a great success.
There are far too many knockers of success both here in the UK and elsewhere in the world.

Marksman
That is your prerogative of course.
It's called freedom of choice, available to all.
It's unfortunate that you have been caught by the PC charge in the manner you have, but BF has to surely run its operation in a manner that generally suits most of its customers overall.
No other way in the real world of business to operate a retail customer business like this, I would think.
Of course you personally feel discriminated against, and I fully understand that, but I can't really see how you can translate that very personal dissatisfaction into a generalised critique or dissatisfaction with the BF business model.

I find the fact that bf are standing the bets of their highest-rolling clients astonishing and have submitted a question to their q&a session tonight.

It is quite plausible to me that the numbers and supply of chickens are diminishing. Is betting on the horses against the great mass of opinion sustainable?

fancy they will swerve it askari1 but good work anyway.

1.01 the answer will be so bland that its meaningless (if you get an answer)

"betfair trialed this in the first quarter but decided not to persue it" ie nothing more than is already public domain

Fairfield, I previously asked a question about the cross-matcher (which I called  a 'skimming bot') that they answered in its entirety and printed w/out changing my wording.

My experience is that the company actually do have a predisposition in favour of openness.

Yes, their answer to the q. about being skimmed was evasive, but the question at least brought the issue to the attention of people following the q&a session. Anyway, most bf clients won't see it is relevant who matches their bet ('the price is the same' etc.)

I find this standing of bets alarming: I had always believed that the chicken coop was ring fenced.

the farmer has the key

God what a load of bloody whingers most of you are

The trial with High Roller customers proved to be profitable, but the volatility of returns from such
customers is such that Betfair has now decided not to proceed with this product offering for the
foreseeable future.
Revenue from the High Roller segment during the first quarter was approximately £25 million and
EBITDA(2) was approximately £7 million. The results will be reported as a separate segment in FY11 and
have been excluded from the Core Betfair revenue for the quarter stated above.

Surely they will look at this again in the future. It looks a good source of revenue when compared to their over current profit figures.

It would be interesting to know how much the foxes take out of betfair every year. Betfair go to huge marketting expense to attract new chickens to be decapitated by the foxes every year. For their part betfair seem to still publicly be of the belief that foxes are somehow good for their business...

Because of its risk-free exchange model, Betfair is able to attract, retain and derive commission revenue from high value customers who are consistent winners and are, therefore, unattractive customers for traditional bookmakers. In addition, the Betting Exchange model facilitates trading and arbitraging strategies, enabling Betfair to attract customers who may not previously have been able to employ trading strategies in the sports betting market.

Siphoning off high roller losing chickens away from the Betfair foxes could be a great money spinner if they can be clearly detected.

frog, they can be detected by virtue of the amount they want on and the events on which they are betting.

East Asians (presumably the people wanting to bet at irregular times in the UK) do not have some kind of privileged insight into the results of Manchester Utd or Barcelona games. It may be these are illegal bookies themselves looking to hedge into bf (not suggesting that there is anything untoward in their dealings w/ bf).

There are a lot of people on here who think that regular winners are a bad thing for Betfair.  But these are the people who pay commission.  Losers don't pay commission unless they win.

The people who complain most about the "problem" of regular winners are either losers who think that by getting rid of the current crop of winners, they could then get into profit themselves, or are employees of Betfair who have been told to come on this forum and spread disinformation, in an attempt to justify the Premium Charge (which is actually daylight robbery).

Losers don't pay commission unless they win.

Not strictly true unless you assume that losers lose 100% of the time. Assuming that losers win but lose more often than they lose it is possible for losers to pay more in commission than some winners.In reality, both winners and losers pay commission.It is probably true to say that only winners are likely to pay PC, but certainly not all of them.

And, its a pound to a penny that in total losers pay more in commission than do winners in total.There are just so many more of them.

It would be interesting to know how much the foxes take out of betfair every year. Betfair go to huge marketting expense to attract new chickens to be decapitated by the foxes every year. For their part betfair seem to still publicly be of the belief that foxes are somehow good for their business...

That's because foxes are good for their business.  Not only do they generally provide virtually all the liquidity (that's not to say there are foxes that provide vitually no liquidity because there are) but the more foxes the more competitive the prices for the chickens.  The minimum rate of commission is not 2% for no good reason, it's because the big players on 2% are fundamental to the success of Betfair (and vice versa) and they don't want to piss em off.

Betfair is like an economy.  Betfair is the government.  If it adopts a communist approach where the state takes all, the economy stagnates and goes into disrepair.  There is a skills drain to other economies.  If it adopts a free market approach where there is incentive for individuals with hard work, brains and dedication to make a buck the market flourishes.  It has to carefully choose the right taxation system to balance future growth and instant cash and also to prevent another government getting into power.

.Marksman. Joined: 13 Jul 10
Replies: 127 24 Sep 10 09:44 
There are a lot of people on here who think that regular winners are a bad thing for Betfair.  But these are the people who pay commission.  Losers don't pay commission unless they win.

This is totally false.

In yesterday's Q&A BF admitted that some people bet on credit.

So let's assume that a loser and a winner bet on credit and that they match their bet of 100 pounds at even money. Who will BF ask to pay up? The loser will have to pay his 100 pounds and the winner will receive his 95  pounds (or 78) and BF will keep loser's 5 pound (or 22).

Don't forget folks that the Pc charge includes implied commission, which means it doesn't matter essentially whether you are losing or winning, just so long as you are betting.

You are using twisted logic there.  Your example is as bizarre as the riddle of the three men who go into a restaurant and order a meal...and find that, somehow, at the end of the day, £1 is missing.
Your example should show that the winner has won £100 off the loser, and that the middle man (called Betfair) has now taken £5 off the winner.  The middle man will also plunder the winner's account on the following Wednesday, if he is a Premium Charge payer.  In fact losers don't realize how good they have got it!

(The above comment was in reply to ante's post.)

Everyone's a winner on Betfair...

No. The three men in a restaurant story can easily be explained mathematically and logically. Just put numbers on a piece of paper and you will figure it out.

However, my example is factually correct. The winner who bets on credit will never have to pay BF 1 penny. Even if he pays the PC he still won't pay BF 1 penny – he will just receive less of losers' money and BF will keep the difference.

Face it, it's losers who fuel this whole thing.

It's winners and losers who fuel it, who pays commission is an irrelevance.

An irrevelant fact maybe, but the fact is that it's losers who pay it.

Marksman, let's say you had the option of betting on the exchange with the mix of players it had or on a theoretical exchange where all those who had a ROI of above 20% or a cash profit above a certain sum over three years were removed.

On which exchange wd you bet?

It's very similar to the thinking of bf in being ready to lat high-rolling mugs.

askari1, is this a trick question?  Assuming that it is not, and that there was no Premium Charge, it would be the first one (with a mix of players).  The more players the better. The more players, the more money there is in the pot.

askari if you were a serial loser or a normal recreational punter you'd want the former situation.  It's only other "foxes"  or the semi shrewd that would want the latter.

Why do people think that losers pay commission? It's the winners who pay it...the losers just lose their money.

jimmy69    , that's what I thought, but there are people on here who think differently.

The bottom line is that nobody wins every bet just as nobody loses every bet.
Everybody pays some commission.
A " normal" punter who puts all his wagers through BF will pay way in excess of 20 % charges on his net profit, if he is lucky or good enough to be in profit.
You'll only pay PC if you have a very, very high net return on turnover and are paying commission at a substantial discount to 5 %.
Not many " normal" punters doing that.

Jimmy , the losers don't lose every time ,they lose through depreciating assets (their bank) and pay a  chunk of commission along the way .

Winners pay , but in the big scheme of things  it's the losers who keep betfair in clover .

nice to see you're still around btw 

Coach is right.
The losers pay effectively a massive percentage of their turnover in commission.
BF is only trying to make sure that those who win overall and pay effective very low commission ( being actual and implied )  on their real turnover are paying their fair whack for using and profiting from the site.
Isn't that fair enough.
The losers after all are paying their fair whack and are not even profiting from the site, in a monetary sense that is.

Clydebank: askari if you were a serial loser or a normal recreational punter you'd want the former situation.  It's only other "foxes"  or the semi shrewd that would want the latter.

Clydebank, I'm not sure I follow; are you saying that someone who (as a matter of course) takes negative expectation bets is better off being filled by the higher price of systematic winners? That the bets this person will match will be on average losers, but less bad losers than wd otherwise be the case?

It seems a paradox to me: why shd a net loser (on expected return) want to play w/ net winners?

Marksman, I'm not sure you followed my train of thought. First, you were saying that marginal losers did not lose because of the presence in the markets of winners. Then you acknowledged that marginal losers wd do better if they didn't have to face these players in the markets.

It's not just the liquidity of the markets than helps players, it's the composition of opposing players (in terms of recreational/arbing/insider/botted etc.)

Clydebank, in the absence of technically-winning players, I feel that there wd be a larger saddle in the markets and less liquidity. Price-finding wd be more jerky. I don't know that it wd negatively affect a good non-insider who is taking positions: a lot of the 'too-uncomfortable-to-call' bets not taken wd be where (w/ limited information) the winning price-takers had in fact mispriced.

Because a serial loser or recreational player will generally take what's on offer.  Take away the biggest winning players and market makers and the percentages and/or liquidity will get worse in the less competitive environment.  Winners will only be replaced at the end of the day with a new set of winners and market making winners will only offer what they have to to net the casual punter.  If the casual punter starts offering prices without others to guide him in weak markets he'll likely get picked off quickly.

Clydebank, yes, this was what I thought you meant.

The reason I couldn't immediately reconcile m/s to it as a line of argument is my suspicion that there is also something about the recreational punter's horse or runner selection that makes him lose.

But maybe he just loses b/c he takes a price.

I wd like to play in liquid prices in badly-formed markets characterised by incomplete information (a contradiction in terms, I know). How about being able to bet on the RP's oddsline in the paper?

For those who haven't realized that it is the losers who pay the commission on here, not the winners:

I back a horse to win. I have £100 at 2.0. It loses.

I pay Betfair £100 of my money, of which they give £95 to the layer who matched my bet, and keep the other £5 for themselves.

The £5 "commission" came from me, the losing punter. The winning punter never sees it.

If he never sees it, he didn't back 2.0

I can see the adverts now.
"If you lose £95 on a bet, you must pay another £5 to Betfair."

You losers have never had it so good!  In the old days of `10% betting tax in shops, you would have had £100 on a horse and "paid the tax", which meant you actually had paid £110.  Nowadays, on Betfair, you only hand over £100. I'm not complaining about this change, because it is a good thing. But it is us winners who have suffered by being hit by commission on all our wins, and then, when we have a good week, we have to pay an additional charge on Wednesdays.

Clydebank the Australian of Slavic origin you mentioned early on in this thread is probably the biggest winner on the site and gladly paying a small fortune in premium charges

Screaming

For those who haven't realized that it is the losers who pay the commission on here, not the winners:

I back a horse to win. I have £100 at 2.0. It loses.

I pay Betfair £100 of my money, of which they give £95 to the layer who matched my bet, and keep the other £5 for themselves.

The £5 "commission" came from me, the losing punter. The winning punter never sees it.


Rubbish...the 100 goes to the layer first then the commission is taken. So it is the winner who pays commission not the loser. Check your account statement

Marksman

If you are an overall winner and know how to continue in that vein then all you have to do is increase your stakes markedly and you will never pay the PC ever again...try it and see

Coach

I've never been away. You can usually find me in Mr Nibbsy's new quiz room...the link for which is on chit chat under Quiz Room Diary.

Jimmy - i wasn't allowed in

Jimmy69.

Have another think about it. Where did the £95+£5 come from in the first place?

It came from the pocket of the loser. Without the losing punter the fiver would never have existed at all.

jimmy69, thankyou for your advice.  However, I have a nagging feeling that it is not quite as simple as you make out!  Back in the day, I was winning sporadically and just about making an overall profit. Then I had 2 big wins; Mon Mome in the Grand National and Mastery in the St Leger and I was suddenly paying Premium Charge.  I can't really see any way to make a profit on here any more.

Screaming

I know where the money came from....the losing punter has just lost his 100 quid. They haven't paid the commission as well. That comes from the successful layer. Indirectly it has come from the loser but is the actual layer who pays the commission

Coach

Are you sure you did everything correctly?

aye Jimmy ,i'll try again tomorrow

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/leisure/8024511/High-rolling-Betfair-clients-targeted-in-Inland-Revenue-investigation.html

And there it is.