General Betting
There is currently 1 person viewing this thread.
These 178 comments are related to the topic:
If the Betfair share price bloodbath continues what will be the impact on punters?
If the Betfair share price bloodbath continues what will be the impact on punters?
sort by:
Show
per page
Replies: 178
|
By:
Yes I accept that in many (but not all) cases bets would get matched without trader activity.
Feck I say it's your bet, because I'm assuming your a net winner (and probably quite a large one). The one gambler getting a worse price due to trading activity will be the winning gambler, the losing gambler will get a better price. This won't be true every time of course, but this is how it works on average. That's why you rarely (or in my own case never) hear about losing gamblers complaining about traders. |
|
By:
A bad workman blames his tools,
A bad gambler blames the traders.  |
|
By:
The one gambler getting a worse price due to trading activity will be the winning gambler, the losing gambler will get a better price.
You keep saying this Investor yet you acknowledge that the layer and backer on either side of any trade would generally get a better price in the trader's absence. You also acknowledge that the spreads will be filled in regardless of traders. That being the case, losing and winning gamblers generally get a better price in the absence of traders. |
|
By:
why do losing traders stick at it?
You could ask this of any losing gamblers, traders don't get the excitement of betting on an event but trading itself is quite exciting and addictive- I had a little go myself once and I must admit that even I found it quite compelling and I'm far from your typical gambler. People get the same sort of excitement from playing fruit machines- I don't and you may not- but there are plenty of people who do. Allied to this is the widespread myth that trading is a sensible way of making money, I think that helps people keep going despite the evidence to the contrary. If you believe that you're doing something worthwhile that will ultimately pay you back then you can easily buy into the notion that p1ssing your money away is part of a learning process or some b0llocks like that. People do all kinds of ridiculous self destructive things that don't benefit them (smoking for example), trading is just another one. Like all gamblers a few traders keep going because they're winners, the rest are there because they like it, because they're addicted, because they're dreamers or because they're thick. |
|
By:
trading sounds good
|
|
By:
Aye, I wouldn't dispute that many losing traders will beaver away hoping to turn things round but, it being seen as a "sensible way of making money", I see them going in with sensible stakes until such time as they think they've sussed it. Compulsive traders sounds about as likely as would be ticket touts who keep buying blocks of tickets for undersubscribed events but keep at it anyway.
|
|
By:
Also " traders" like to be able to tell people that they're not gamblers, but " trade in sports results ".
Sounds much more intelligent and sensible, almost respectable and admirable. |
|
By:
PunterA: My team will beat your team
PunterB: No way. How much you willing to bet? PunterA: I'm not telling. How much you willing to bet? PunterB: It's a secret. Anyway, what price you want? PunterA: I've got no idea. What about you? PunterB: Not a clue. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. |
|
By:
Feck, are you watching Panorama now?
All your enemies are there, right now! Bankers, City boys, tories (Boris Johnson), I've even just heard the phrase "Masters of the UNIVERSE." and "Massive reckless gambling". |
|
By:
The Betfairy
|
|
By:
I see little here that should surprise anyone.
Betting exchanges were a good idea - but no one knew how punters and governments would react to them. In the UK, enough punters got nivolved to grow the product and the government let them in with a GPT, not a turnover-based tax regime. Outside the UK, they are hitting problems. Plus Betfair's owners always wanted to IPO - and the problem with low-margin businesses which have monpolies is that once they float shareholders tire of those low margins. So prices go up (by stealth) and they diversify - to try to canniblalise the usebase and sell them other products. But it seldom works very well and it's not working here. Betfair's share price will be driven in my view by their success or otherwise of getting into markets like the USA, and whether or not the management comes up with astutue or hairbrained future diversificaiton plans. I'd start thinking about the standard 12 times profits for a sensible share price from now on - soon there will be no reason why Betfair should be priced differently to other betting companies online. Finally, new changes and competition? It's not happened to ebay (full of wholesalers now) and it won't happen to Betfair. Too many have tried and failed, too many are trying and failing as we speak. Dream on there. |
|
By:
By: Feck N. Eejit The one gambler getting a worse price due to trading activity will be the winning gambler, the losing gambler will get a better price. You keep saying this Investor yet you acknowledge that the layer and backer on either side of any trade would generally get a better price in the trader's absence. You also acknowledge that the spreads will be filled in regardless of traders. That being the case, losing and winning gamblers generally get a better price in the absence of traders. I'm not disagreeing with that. What I am saying is yes, gamblers would indeed get a better deal in the absence of traders. However this better deal would be swallowed up by winning gamblers entirely ... and then some. The losing gamblers would be worse off. Even if losing gamblers were to leapfrog each other to create 1.99-2.00 spreads that only traders can do profitably, it would simply lead to them losing money. The only people who have a financial incentive to create these spreads are traders / market makers. |
|
By:
Feck N. Eejit
Date Joined: 10 Jan 02 Add contact | Send message 19 Dec 10 18:07 If you removed all trader's trades from the market almost every gambler's bet would still be matched, in many cases at better odds. If this happened then in-play betting would not be able to survive on here. |
|
By:
Feck how would you describe your own method of betting?
|
|
By:
It consists of offerring high margin spreads, (ie crap prices) to people, hoping they get taken before those evil nasty traders offer a better deal to them, and then whinging hysterically if they do!
|
|
By:
marky sparky
If this happened then in-play betting would not be able to survive on here. ^^^ this. |
|
By:
The only way to win is to place positive expected value bets, though there are many ways you may achieve this. All winners take their money from the losers
Both those statements are false, and illustrate a point of mine that you can make money on BF by understanding the (collective) psychology of markets. |
|
By:
GetReal
but betfair is different to other bookmakers, because betfair take less risk, we see this in betfair cutting there highrollers business after making 25 million..Ladbrokes get 8% to 10% of revenues from (I guess) the same highrollers You might be right on diversificaiton never works, is betfair better off to stop sending money and to give the 170m in cash back to it shareholders...But at the same time, buliding LMAX trading platfrom and changing the law in USA cost money Really...I can not believe USA states havce started to change the law and let betting Exchange, if you said that to me 2 years ago, i would have said no way in hell... |
|
By:
GetReal,
Some astute observations. I'll take issue with one point about competition. A profitable business will always attract competition, as long as the barriers to entry aren't too high, and the barriers to entry to the sports betting market business aren't that high. Certainly much lower than BF say, and they have a vested interest in exaggerating this point. What potential competitors fail to grasp is that sports betting is a very price sensitive market and the route to success is by cutting commisions well below that of BF. |
|
By:
Marksman, no I didn't see it but I have the Friday repeat on series link.
Betfairy, that isn't the way the private auction works and you know it. Even if losing gamblers were to leapfrog each other to create 1.99-2.00 spreads that only traders can do profitably, it would simply lead to them losing money. The only people who have a financial incentive to create these spreads are traders / market makers. I don't know what point you're trying to make here Investor. You agree the losers will close up the spreads anyway and you agree those losers would be better off without a trader acting as middlemen but you seem to be saying it will cost them money unless they are led there by traders who will then act as middlemen on their bets?????????????????????? If this happened then in-play betting would not be able to survive on here. marky, I wasn't talking about ir but unless you think traders (and I'm not talking about someone who closes out their bet because their selection is doing well) are generally winning off each other ir then there must be real gamblers on either end of most trades. Anyway, if all feeds were truly live and there was zero bet placement delay most of the current cheat based liquidity would disappear. It would be replaced by odds based neutral period liquidity though. Rocket, mainly straight betting on horse racing. Get Real, so far all attempts have consisted of creating a clone of betfair. I agree that's almost guaranteed to fail though. |
|
By:
The only way to win is to place positive expected value bets, though there are many ways you may achieve this. All winners take their money from the losers
Both those statements are false, and illustrate a point of mine that you can make money on BF by understanding the (collective) psychology of markets. Both of these statement are true, let me split it up for you: The only way to win is to place positive expected value bets This is true, even traders have to strike positive value bets, if the price consistently moves in your favour that means your opening position had value. By definition, a large series of bets that shows a profit must be composed of positive value bets (on average). That doesn't mean that you have to take a view on the outcome of the event- a good understanding of how markets work will allow you to strike value bets, but they still have to be value bets. You also don't have to think of it in this way, you might not consciously think about value- but that doesn't change anything, ALL winners strike value bets. there are many ways you may achieve this I assume you're not arguing with this. All winners take their money from the losers If you don't understand this then I'd like you to explain where you think the money DOES come from? Santa? Jesus? |
|
By:
suppose santa never has a losing bet, and that jesus beats most people but can't ever seem to beat santa
if santa bets only against jesus then they are both winners as long as jesus can milk the masses for enough to pay his gambling debts off to santa here endeth the lesson |
|
By:
(the point being that santa would then be winning his money from a winner)
|
|
By:
That's a fair-ish point Eldrick, but it doesn't exist in the real world, moreover- where did the money that Santa won from Jesus come from? This situation really just shows Jesus throwing away some of his winnings on poor value bets- which is what we all do. All the money that's won by both Jesus AND Santa ultimately comes from losers.
|
|
By:
yes, all winnings must eventually come from losers. that's trivial and not worthy of discussion
what is (mildly) interesting is considering how winners fare against each other head to head - there must be punters on here who win, but do their conkers to some other winners on here. if only they could figure out how to avoid doing business with those people... |
|
By:
I think it's pretty likely that some winners systematically throw away a good part of their potential profit on poor value "green up" or "red out" bets.
In the past I was quite keen to make my returns as even as possible so I would green up pretty much everything, but when I analysed my results it became clear that I was throwing away a lot of money. These days I never green up just for the sake of it, although I do usually end up with green markets just by aiming to hit value in all sorts of different places. |
|
By:
Naida,
There have been competitors offering as low as 1% (or even 0%) commission but it did not work. This is because the biggest price sensitive pull for punters is the saving by transferring from fixed odds bookie to exchange - the only benefit in a lower rate of commission is if liquidity is equal in both places. 0% commission is no use if the liquidity is not there and even simulating it by seeding by continuously scraping Betfair's market prices does not seem to work either. ebay could not be broken by other auction sites and I doubt Betfair can be either. It would cost too much and the prize for success is too low now - there are better investment options in other markets. |
|
By:
Feck N. Eejit
I don't know what point you're trying to make here Investor. You agree the losers will close up the spreads anyway and you agree those losers would be better off without a trader acting as middlemen but you seem to be saying it will cost them money unless they are led there by traders who will then act as middlemen on their bets?????????????????????? I don't agree losers would be better of without a trader, only winners would be better off. And yes, it will cost them money if traders don't operate to minimise spreads! I said gamblers as a whole would be better off. The whole scenario is highly simplified as in reality there is no clear deliniation between traders/gamblers/market makers/ arbers etc. as many people use various techniques. In a simplified model there are three types of bettors: winning gamblers, losing gamblers and traders (losing traders are grouped together with losing gamblers). If the exchange is filled purely with gamblers. The winning gamblers collectively win x units (Before commission), and the losing gamblers lose x (before commission). The winning gamblers need to stay out of the game in situations where the spreads are small and they believe the market price is accurate, as they can't make any money. Enter the trader: In theory he can step in to ensure the margins are small all the time. This completely cuts of the winning gambler from their profits. As the spreads are smaller, the losing gamblers expected loss per bet diminishes, so he will be better off. |
|
By:
^ Exactly right.
Close market spreads and efficient markets remove opportunities for winning opinion gamblers but look after losers. In the simplest sense this benefits most players because they never had any chance of winning anyway and close and efficient markets mean they will lose more slowly, however it does dramatically reduce the already remote chance of them ever becoming winners- which is the down side. |
|
By:
The definition of the winning opinion gambler being used here is a somewhat low grade one. It is only one step separated from the price takers who have been defined as losers.
There are other things afoot. |
|
By:
Investor, you agreed earlier that in the absence of traders the losing gamblers would close up the spreads anyway. If the winning layers and backers are sitting on 1.8 and 2.2 the price incensitive gamblers will meet around 2.0. The winning gamblers are out of the argument at that stage. Please tell me how traders entering the fray will benefit the others.
|
|
By:
If the losing gamblers close the spread, they won't benefit from trader activity. They won't always close the spreads though (even now, with plenty of traders operating, you can still find wide spreads).
Many losers will simply take a price without doing any real analysis to come to a conclusion on whether the price is good. Losers are more likely to take a price than offer one. If I had a higher level of capital and/or better automation (currently I place my almost all my bets manually with the help of a few custom tools), I would get more bets matched and presumably make more money. The people I would be winning this money off would on average lose less than they would without my activity, as they would get worse odds than I offer. As a side note, if you are a straight bettor paying PC, you can bet to whatever tiny margin you want (traders don't have an advantage over you). You could say that the better liquidity is, the less the markets benefit from trader activity (the spreads would be small without them anyway). This is where I can see the perverse effect of data request charges (if your profit expectancy per market drops to an exceptionally low level, it no longer makes sense to be active). This is what happened to me when Betfair put loads of games in play that had really poor liquidity in between the WC and the start of the season. |
|
By:
aye robot,
The 2nd point 1st. It's commonly the case that winning bettors want to 'green out' their positions, and they aren't too fussy about the price because they winning. Taking these greening out bets, ie some of the profits from winners, is a profitable activity. You have defined value to be any future price movement, which is nonsense. If a price goes from 1.5 to 1.6 and then back to 1.5, how can both moves represent value? Most people define value as better than the real odds of the events outcome. Some people, myself included, trade on market factors that have nothing to do with the events outcome. |
|
By:
Get Real,
Ebay has taken the BF route of maximizing profits and its market share is falling substantially as a result. Amazon's sales were up 40% in the last Q while Ebay's were up 3%. Ebay's market share fell by at least a quarter as online sales grew rapidly. |
|
By:
You have defined value to be any future price movement, which is nonsense. If a price goes from 1.5 to 1.6 and then back to 1.5, how can both moves represent value?
This is not how I've defined value- that would be nonsense, value is the relationship between the true odds (probability) of an event occurring and the odds of the bet you strike. Probabilities change over time both before and during an event so different prices represent positive value at different times. Overall prices trend towards true value so if you are able to consistently open positions and then watch the price move in your favour then you are opening with value bets on average. It's important to understand the "on average" caveat. Not every price movement allows a good value bet just as not every good value bet wins. A trader may get lucky on a price movement in the same way that an old fashioned gambler may get lucky on a negative value horse, but to win in the long term the price must go in his favour consistently, so he has to be good at spotting the direction of price movements- in other words opening at value. The bottom line is that a large series of bets that shows a profit must be positive value by definition. We all strike bets and they have to win or lose, if they do that in line with the odds you've taken then you lose- full stop. To win your bets have to be out of line with the odds you've matched regardless of whether you're a trader or not or of how you operate your trades. It doesn't matter how you came about that value, it IS there. As I have said several times already, there are many ways of anticipating market movements, but what you are doing is still looking for value, you are just using market dynamics/psychology/whatever to show you where it is. If you still don't get this then look at your results, take all your bets, look at the odds and calculate how many of them should have won if these odds were true, then ask how many DID win, if you have made a profit these numbers MUST be out of line (otherwise you would have lost), you are therefore almost certainly looking at a series of bets that shows value overall (provided you have a sufficiently large sample etc). |
|
By:
Investor, we are at cross purposes here. I'm talking about the markets on lastfiveminutes.com at the point where you can actually get a bet on. You're talking about the same markets at a point when practically no one's interested in them. In early markets (certainly early horse racing markets) I'd say most of the trading was done by odds based traders and very little was done by opinionless traders.
|
|
By:
aye robot
Why do you say " Overall prices trend towards true value ---- " " Isn't this the the same as believong in the efficient market theory on the stock markets, and we know how that has been discredited well and truly. |
|
By:
Why do you say " Overall prices trend towards true value ---- "
This isn't a matter of belief, it is possible to measure. The odds available in (for example) horse racing markets are more accurate very close to the off, compared to the odds available several hours before. |
|
By:
Perhaps what I'm really meaning to say is that whilst prices may represent " good value" at the off, subsequent movements in the prices in running are the consequence of unfoldinfg events, which are essentially unforecastable.?
That is , a price trend before the off may be forecastable if you perceive an early price value differential, but never during a race/game ? |
|
By:
It's an unfortunate fact that when you get matched at good prices other people try and get in on the action closing the spread until it is close to true.
|