In fact it's hard to see how any exchange could be made more complex than betfair. They even have to rely on ignorance as far as their commission system goes.

Coachbuster,  you words " Do Away  with  Racing "  Well you ignorant pig  and i chose  them  words carefully ,, without horse racing  there would not be  any Betfair or  any exchange  High street Bookies  .

zipper, bookies deal very well with racing

the rest of us have to subsidise horse racing via the levy

Coachbuster Remember ,most losing punters like to see the winners hand a little something back to the pot .

Why should I  subsidize losers, when I sometimes lose myself?  When I pay the PC, which isn't often, because I mostly only use this site just for the forum nowadays, it goes straight into the pockets of the directors and the shareholders.  I have never seen any evidence of it going back into the pot.
This is a typical losers attitude: Wanting some of their lost money back, just so they can bet again.

in other words, i WANT to continue pay pc at the present rate but i would prefer some say (as a vote)as to how the money is spent .

As far as I understand it you don't subsidise horse racing via the Levy if you don't bet on it, I think levy payments are only due on revenue raised from racing. I may be wrong though.

I suppose the only surprise then is that they've stopped.

wouldn't be so sure about them having stopped silverback!

betfair select may have been wound up, but it definitely didn't smell right when they said they were quitting even though they were well ahead on those bets

i would be very surprised if the supermugs' orders aren't still being taken offsite somehow

they are running themselves exactly like a bookie now, following the biggest winners in (PC) and laying anything to the rich donkeys

then keep the rich donkeys sweet by sending them complimentary tickets, hampers, etc

all such a very long way from bert's original vision - i wonder if he would even open an account with bf in it's present state, if the company was someone else's idea

Excuse my ignorance but what exactly is betfair select? Obviously it's not for the massess but who is invited and what are they invited to do? Sp*nk money with betfair directly?

If PurpleDaq offered more markets, consistently they would become more competitive.
For instance, on Thursday, they (Purple daq) didn't offer markets on Meydan, even though they did this the previous week.
I spent hours studying the form and videos in case they offered markets on Meydan, but when they didn't, I didn't have a bet:  I'm not giving 23% of my winnings to Betfair, just to line the pockets of their shareholders.

^^^ Spot on. I utterly despair at their total inability to put up sufficient markets even when the demand is blatantly there. One of the biggest betting events on specials is on tomorrow (Sports Personality of the Year) and despite people asking on the forum, and even ringing up and begging them, offering to put up prices, they couldn't manage a top 3 market. What an utter joke they are, I keep saying they eventually will get someone in charge who is capable of driving through the complacency and inertia that seems to exist right at the top, and include markets people want, but I can't see any sign of it at present.

Do you know what I said when I spoke to them? "It's not just a case of putting up markets, we need to translate them into several languages" FFS.

Anyone paying the PC but knocking Betfair should be executed, imo.

Anyone paying the PC but knocking Betfair should be executed, imo.


Goodness, if execution if the tariff for such an offence (if it is) then what would the punishment be for an offence such  as using a competitor - hung, drawn and quartered? All assets to be seized by the State? Children to be deported?  Burial in a paupers grave with no record? Is heynoodles a closet Taliban?

Re betfair growth. It's hard to imagine any country embracing them when (constitution allowing) they could just start up an exchange of their own and keep all the commission. It's not impossible of course. There's no accounting for high ranking stupidity or the power of very fat brown envelopes but any country that doesn't want them has plenty of ammunition on the integrity front. I wouldn't even be sure of their continued existence in the UK/EU. A simple turnover tax would effectively finish them and the tories are more bookmaker friendly than Labour. Certainly all the winners will follow them to Antigua but there's no guarantee the losers will.

Aha, Feck still spouting crap about the people who provide the liquidity I see, nothing to see here, move along.

"Opinionless Traders" WTF you utter moron, the whole point in a trader taking a position is because he thinks he will be able to get out at a more favourable one at a later point, how can he do this without having an opinion?

Feck N. Eejit
Date Joined: 10 Jan 02
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When: 19 Dec 10 13:43
The usual clueless posts from the pc calimeros. The purple exchange could offer every market betfair does and they still wouldn't have any liquidity. When will you thickos get it into your head, opinionless traders cannot trade unless there's gamblers already in the market. If they could the purple site would already be the no 1 exchange. Opinionless traders supply no liquidity and no one anywhere in the world will be interested in attracting delusional pr1cks who'll be willing to give them back little more than 5% of what they take out of the pot.


I don't know why you keep singling out on traders. I could easily make a slight alteration to your sentence, and it still holds true:

Gamblers with lots of opinions, cannot gamble unless there's gamblers already in the market.

Oh I see, so you can read their mind that they don't have an opinion of their own, and are only prepared to do bets based on the information available for all to see (isn't that how everyone bets), which you would like to see hidden so no-one has a clue what is available?



The only thing which is empty here is your head....

So you haven't got a shred of evidence to back up your claim that these liquidity providing traders are opinionless then, is that correct

It's just complete guesswork, which falls to pieces on examination, the same as everything else you say...

And even if they were, they are still providing liquidity for your much vaunted gamblers to use, without which you would get the famous empty screen that would also occur with your genius idea of not allowing anyone to see what is available

and do i care a jot if they have an opinion .?    err no , why would i care about opinions ? if i wanted an opinion i'd go on the politics forum .

Feck N. Eejit
Date Joined: 10 Jan 02
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When: 19 Dec 10 14:59
All you're saying is no bets are matched in an empty market. I'm saying if only opinionless traders are present the market will always be empty.


And if only consistently profitable gamblers are operating in a market, very few bets would get matched, due to the massive spreads that would necessarily exist due to the commission structure. A liquid market needs losers, and I can't see why it would matter whether a specific loser is a trader or gambler. Their value can be measured by the amount of commission they pay.

I would even go so far as to say that a customer breaking even (before commission) is slightly more valuable to betfair than a customer placing bets at silly odds losing very quickly. The customer losing quickly won't churn their funds, and thus a large proportion of the profit ends up in the hands of winning customers rather than Betfair.

Traders/market makers decrease spreads (if necessary to the point where it becomes impossible for a profitable gambler to compete), this in turns helps the clueless customers to lose their money at a slower rate (churning funds, increasing Betfair's share of the profits) than would be the case if no-one jumped in front of the profitable gambler's terrible value offer.

That's why I think the current commission structure ( rewarding traders with a better commission deal than straight bettors) makes sense. I also think PC makes sense, though obviously I don't like paying it, and the irrelevant notion of 'fairness', well in the words of Peter Griffin, that really grinds my gears.

I place straight bets on a daily basis, but only because some of the markets I bet on aren't liquid enough to trade. Under the current commission structure there is just no reason why anyone betting purely for profit wouldn't trade out of a bet at fair value if the opportunity presented itself.