Can I cancel an in play bet?

The neutral period market makers need those 8 seconds to decide whether they want your bet or not. That's why the mugs only get matched during play in the flies-round-sh1te markets if play goes against them or nothing happens in the next 8 seconds. It's not cheating though, it's a "legitemate trading strategy" (vomit).

HKP, here's a post I made on another thread which should illustrate what I'm talking about.

In an A v B situation (a tennis game e.g.) you want to be at the head of the queue to back A and the head of the queue to lay A (I'm assuming the cross matching bot takes care of the B alternatives) just as the actual play for a point starts. At any point during play, if one of those two bets looks bad value you cancel it and hope the good value bet is taken. e.g. A serves an ace. You cancel your lay of A but not your back of A. Suppose before the ace is served backer X attempts to match your lay of A and layer Y attempts to match your back of A. X is disappointed because by the time his bet reaches the queue your lay of A is long cancelled. Poor Y though. His lay of A is matched despite seeing A serve an ace 5 seconds before his bet hits the queue and is matched.

I can't be bothered going into all the possibilities involved with that strategy. Suffice to say that, provided you cancel any bet as soon as they become bad value the strategy is a winning one. There will be cases where the value bet is already matched before you can cancel but overall you'll end up with more positive value bets than negative value bets (if both are taken you've got a winning trade). At the next point you adapt your stakes to take into account what happened at the previous point to effectively close out the previous point bets.

X & Y are the fall guys in this. Never bet in running on tennis or any other flies-round-sh1te market (i.e. markets where there are many definitive odds changing moments that don't cause a suspension) except during neutral periods.

If you use the above strategy while watching for overreactions (e.g. only laying the one that's being overbet) then you'll be getting free money.

The reason you can't cancel during the countdown is because it allows people to beat the clock. e.g. someone courtside has a bot that continually fires in backs of A and cancels them just as the countdown is about to end UNLESS its owner hits a button indicating he doesn't want the bet cancelled e.g. (A scores / wins the point / hits the wicket etc.). Doing this means the only bets that get through happen almost simultaneously with an event that will cause A's odds to shorten.

HKP, they can't cancel it, I was saying that's what would happen if it were possible to cancel during the countdown. Some guys did manage to find a way of doing it in the early days. They would tie up their bank in some offer that had no chance of being matched (e.g. asking for 100.0 about Man Utd beating Wigan the following day). At the end of each countdown their ir bet would be refused because they had no funds to cover the bet but when they wanted the bet to go through they just cancelled the Man Utd full bank bet so there was enough money to cover their ir bet. Betfair closed that particular loophole by checking for sufficient funds before the countdown started instead of waiting until it finished but by then many had been cheated and were not refunded.

Thanks FNE, will focus on placing during safe periods. Will come back for bot advice if needed. Thanks again.