For some reason the cross-matching was turned off in a lot of the tennis matches last week. Not sure about the Berdych Roddick match.

Yes, I'm afraid mistakes are just an occupational hazard. I have taken steps to avoid them but sometimes I just can't legislate for my own stupidity. An option along the lines described earlier in the thread would have saved me 2.5k, however.

It might help you out on some individual bets but overall it means there are fewer value prices to be had as the market is regulated closer to "true" value. This is bad for all winners.

I've also found it pretty good when market making in various events.

aye robot
Date Joined: 17 Jan 08
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When: 29 Nov 10 17:16
It might help you out on some individual bets but overall it means there are fewer value prices to be had as the market is regulated closer to "true" value. This is bad for all winners.


Not if the market being regulated closer to true value leads to a significantly higher proportion of bets being matched for low margin operators. They will be better off. To use an example, my profits increased when cross matching was introduced on over/under markets in football. As my bank has grown, I tend to put prices up on both sides now though, to avoid betfair shaving off my profit. I'll put 34 up before I put up 1.03 on the other side and tend to get matched on both sides.

Someone with a smaller bank, who chooses only to put a back at 1.03 up will get matched when someone tries to back the inverse at 34 too, so they will be better off. At some stage, it no longer makes sense for winners to give betfair a voluntary handout where this can be avoided though.

Bayes,

The site will be of no use at all to you due to the sports concerned and lack of liquidity, but you may find MB (The american exchange) interesting to look at for how they present their single line.

(I like it because it takes away the argument of "punters don't understand" , as it's still exactly the same thing as far as they're concerned)

To me, market clearance is not such a great benefit when you're not getting best execution.

It seems v. likely to be IT strategies that take advantage of people 'reaching down' precipitately like aye robot's are really going to suffer.

Which is more likely? Is it pricing anomalies cropping up in a single sub-market or anomalies across a spread of twenty or so correlated individual markets? It's obviously the first; and if you're trying to exploit split-second pricing anomalies on single runners, with cross-matching you want the market to be as little broad as possible.

But then yr depth on any individual runner is yr breadth on all runners bar that particular set of lays. In this way bf clean up by piggybacking on the successful strategies of the winning bot layers.

Just had three different pairs of 2 quid backs at even money on the same account in a football match and it matches each of my pairs of backs against each other and free rolls on the third selection. Cost me 4 quid all round red and I know this is a technicality but is this entirely legal? You could argue that its the same as phoning up a bookie and asking to back all three selections in a football match but surely this highlights what an earner this can be for Betfair.

It's not 'one against the field', it's the field against two. Betfair are essentially freerolling every time two backs cross match and are essentially going to gain massively from every back at short odds that wipes the other side.

If Betfair really wanted to do true 'best execution' bet matching, then if they convert your back bet of horse A into a lay of horses B,C and D, they should pay you out at the true profits of your cross-matched bets, rather than pocketting the difference for themselves.

I'm not involved in ir horses ever, but this sounds like an absolute goldmine to me. Perhaps Betfair will fill us in on the details in the next Q&A.

I've played every market since the change and every market before it for the last couple of years. In that time I've made a very good living by understanding how the IR markets move, I am an in-running horses specialist - this is my thing so I feel well placed to comment. There is no doubt at all of the impact on the markets despite the fact than many don't seem to be grasping the extent of it or it's implications.

People who think this only affects bots are simply wrong, I will say again (because it's right) that as far as IR horses goes this acts against ALL good players by reducing the number of value bets to be had. The simplest example of how the X matcher takes away value from skilled players is to think about the classic race reading IR short layer:

Your IR layer depends on backers getting over the top when a horse is looking good, previously all the backers would pile in with a ridiculous price over-ride and push the price down by taking all the keep bets until the selection became value to lay, then the layer moved in and scooped the lot of them. The backers lost because they got over excited, the layer won because he was smart, everyone got what they deserved.
Now the situation is different though because now when the backers start clicking 1.01 for a horse that should be 2 the X matcher matches them against other backers,the keep bets are not taken, the price is not pushed in so far and the layer doesn't get his chance. So the dumb ass 1.01 clickers get true value (ish) for their bets and lose at the rate of their comm, whilst your smart race reading layer doesn't even get a look in. In this way the X matcher works against skill to even out the playing field for poor players. When you think through any example of how a good player operates you see that the X matcher works against him. Whenever you make a poor value offer the X matcher helps you out by getting you a better price, whenever you make a good value offer the X matcher works against you by matching your potential counter party against someone else. Good for losers, bad for winners - period.

Bayes is absolutely right when he says that BF make a killing every time they cross match 2 backs for a 100% book and then watch something else win. I'm quite certain that if I were able to do this with zero delay (as the X matcher does I'd make at least 50-100K a day, possibly much more. The extra comm generated by forcing people to bet closer to true value is likely be worth much more besides (although I'm not well placed to estimate this).

This is an excellent move from Betfair, it helps their good customers (the losers), works against their bad customers (winners) and will massively boost their profits. The only mystery id why they didn't do it ages ago.

Personally I'm taking a big hit from it right now but I'll survive, I'm quickly adapting and I expect to be winning at similar levels to before they brought it in within a couple of months. That doesn't mean it's good news though, this will simply spell the end for many good players.

robot

good summation of how BF have taken your 'action'

cant see how you get it back without a total new strategy

Bayes, I know it might be buttons, but if they take £3 off me for every £10k I am staking, that works out to about £300 a month. That represents a non-neglible amount of money for me!

My estimate is that they are actually making about £100 a month off me due to cross matching, because I keep the rest in my pocket by seeding both sides (which isn't the best imaginable use of funds).

I wonder if Betfair would be better off by feeding the proceeds back into the market as purple does. It would certainly increase efficiency, but whether the net effect for Betfair is positive I don't know. It's fairly obvious the exchange would function better though.

Actually, I don't disbelieve you, so it clearly is/was that much different.

Even before the skimmer was turned on in other markets, the overrounds rarely went much below 99.5 or so and even then not for long. Surely horse racing isn't that much different?

It is - massively different. Things happen so fast in IR horses that the market just can't keep up. Market over-rounds of 140% were common (if brief). Almost every race would go 130% at some point. 

Why aren't people laying the other selections? Are the horse racing markets really that unsophisticated compared to the rest of the site?

Put simply - yes. It's always been a strong phenomena in horse racing that selections get backed in absurdly quickly without the rest of the market keeping up. Until the x matcher this was the best game in town for any sort of player, whether he uses pictures, bots or whatever. I think it's just easier for "click and hopers" to look for one winner rather than several losers. Also I think people are uncomfortable using price over-rides for laying as they fear laying something at 1000 if they put too much money in- which could well happen.

aye robot, I am not doubting your obvious knowledge of ir horse racing markets but.... History has shown us the fast pic players are the first to complain when something starts to affect their bottom line. There has been no squealing on the forums after one week which we would have normally expected?

Muqbil,

I agree that this is what you would expect and I do find it strange that there isn't more complaining. To me it's entirely transparent that there is less value now on offer but I wonder whether this is less evident to many "normal" players, whether using fast pictures or not because they perhaps have less of a sense of what might have been and because they focus on individual races they may have a poorer sense of the broader picture. If you're watching races and clicking prices everything probably looks fine - in some ways it may look better because more of what you click is available. If you take empirical measures over the long term though the picture will look very different. For example after a month or two ask what the average over-round was on the back side, or what was the average maximum price matched on the winner in running and you'll see a different story. There haven't been many races since the change because of the weather, but in those that there have been there has been very much less money matched and lost at short prices than you would expect. This may just be coincidence,  but to me it does look like it's the effect of the X matcher. It's also exactly the effect that you would expect it to have.

Ultimately most people won't complain because it will benefit them - if you are a net loser then the x matcher is good news for you because it removes much of the skill from IR betting and makes it more of a game of chance. Of course it's not good news if you ever plan to become a winner but that won't effect most people. I do tend toward the view that many of the "fast picture players" are not all they're cracked up to be, frankly I think there are a lot of fast picture losers who won't ever be complaining about the x matcher.

Some people may think that the X matcher may benefit fast picture players because if they really are miles ahead of the market it could help them to get more money on. If you're trying to get a wedge on without pushing the market down the x matcher will help. This flawed logic though, because although the X matcher will help you get on at true value by the same token it will prevent you from getting out again because the price line isn't driven down to such good lay value. In a month or so many good IR players- particularly those who specialise in short or long prices will be looking at their P&L and wondering what's gone wrong. Whether or not they'll blame the x-matcher rather than (say) track-siders or some mythic "raw feed" that they haven't got remains to be seen.

It's bound to take a while before the full impact is seen, especially with so little racing on at the moment. For Betfair now's the perfect time to sneak in the pre race version in the hope evryone looks for another excuse why their pnl is lower.

You also need to remember that because of the way the x matcher works all of the actual matches will be done 'off screen' so to speak so for most people things will appear to be business as usual.

You also need to remember that because of the way the x matcher works all of the actual matches will be done 'off screen' so to speak so for most people things will appear to be business as usual.

Yes for those affected I might be good idea to take a break, smell the roses, think about the future. Currently in Ireland atm, and things are going tits up here. Dont get sucked in by ego and think you can beat it, as all the data you have will be before this was implemented and that itself will carry extra risk