We gamblers can only pray

I don't understand the we gamblers bit ,you don't bet on here do you ?

Problem is there are virtually no gamblers on a lot of the markets on here.  its almost exclusively your definition of "middlemen against other middlemen in sports like tennis"

If there were no market makers you'd be staring at a blank interface if you were just relying on "gamblers" to stick offers up.  There would be a 15 runner field at some poxy meeting at Southwell and you'd probably have offers up for about 3 of the field each at ridiculously short odds.

sorry 14 runner max at Soutwell.  Forgot they'd dropped the max from 16 to 14 to avoid paying 4 places

As always, the purveyors of the "famous liquidity is real" argument resort to flies-round-sh1te and quiet markets to make their case. Where are the market makers in the tote? If you can't see how an exchange would work without middlemen you've been brainwashed by w@nks.

It's a bigger success than betfair would be with up to 30% deductions per market.

The closest thing to the Tote is Betfair SP.  In fact it's almost exactly the same thing with lower margins

If someone is very accurate at pricing up a market from scratch, as old school gamblers would often be, they'd obviously maximize their profits by trading rather than placing outright bets.

IMO straight bets only have a place in illiquid markets where you can't trade out. Other than that, they're only useful for fun bettors. When you place a straight bet, you need a bigger margin to make money.

I place quite a lot of straight bets actually, but as I'll be backing and laying a lot of different selections in correct score markets for instance, it  will still take on trader like characteristics.

In truly illiquid markets, I will place straight bets, a recent example being my back of Arsenal to win both halves NO against Barcelona, where I backed it for thousands, hedging only a minuscule proportion of it (about 10%). As the market doesn't go in-play, it was a large straight bet.

It's interesting to note as an aside, that tax on turnover systems for bookmakers force them to apply a wide margin. Various governments around the world are often complaining about gambling and protecting consumers, but when it comes to tax income, they are happy to incentivize betting operators to fleece customers by applying huge margins.

CLYDEBANK, I find it hard to belive you wouldn't make money by trading in the markets you make money from just gambling [:o]

Eddie if I take the X Factor markets from last year.  I probably won in 80-90% of the markets I bet in.  In the vast majority of them the market moved against me and I would have had to trade out at a loss.  In weaker markets the market might move in the direction I'd bet but that's only because of my bets.  If I'd try to lay them off shorter I doubt I would be able.  Of course there will be some occasions where I do or I can but choose not to but enough to turn a profit I doubt and if it were it wouldn't be much

when I say make I wont make money or much money trading from them I mean backing and laying offf or vice versa..I could make money market making but I've been here 9 years now and I dont wont that level of involvement any more.

I agree with Clydebank. The bulk of my money on horse racing was on drifters. If too many realise a horse is value the price has collapsed before you can get decent money on.

^ ...so long as your money management's okay.

Almost everybody wants a bet matched immediately at a liquid price; people don't understand the concept of an unmatched bet. The notion that you would only have backed or laid with reference to a later auction or tote system is incomprehensible or untouchable to most people.

W/out the traders, bf cd become a bookie but otherwise the traders seem a necessary evil for spot liquidity. I wd hide the queue and introduce increasing size requirements for bets for players w/ a winning lifetime history. These are the people winning from bf and their recreational customers--why shd the site be run and designed for their benefit?

From everyone--prohibiting small denomination traders without an opinion from profiting from the opinions of others.

Gamblers are likely to be taking fewer bets and to be going on less frequently in greater size than this kind of trader. Bigger traders offering something approaching genuine liquidity are not present in the market until it's reached some sort of equilibrium in the 5 mins. or so b/f the off. The way the site is set up encourages momentum traders to take the price away from gamblers at the expense of liquidity, comm. and price-taking winners.


This is where I agree w/ Feck. I wd be happy to see the return of something like conventional bookmaking, whether done by bf or someone else with a low OR. I cannot get on other than in a few shops and being away from the computer deprives me of the degree of control I'd like in managing liabilities.

Hence I'm forced to take more of a bookmaking/trading approach than I'd like and to spend more time betting (when I know that my small business is more deserving of my attention).

All that's needed is the "Auction SP's" from previous auctions.

I wd hide the queue and introduce increasing size requirements for bets for players w/ a winning lifetime history.

There is some merit in that Askari but would it not just put them off participating till later as happens now?

Yes, w/ the effect that the market will not run away from the price. Spoofers are not an issue during the morning or while the market is in the process of price-finding (wh/ is where tissue-makers w/ an edge can expect to profit).

Feck, imv the way forward is bookmaking, poss. even for bf. They have a full betting license and the technology to express backs as lays w/ some breakage. They shd be able to a greater extent to accommodate the people who currently drip-feed.

I see no way to encourage the involvement of the traders at times when they are going to get picked off by the good pricers. The equilibrium point for the site is when the good traders, bettors and operator all take a cut out of recreational punters, who get a better price than at conventional bookmakers. At the moment the traders get too much and the punters too little, and the operator has alienated a significant portion of the userbase in trying to claw back (arguably) too much too indiscriminately.

There is no way I can take anyone seriously who writes in text speak because they are too lazy to write out the full words. Makes you look like a child.

Not any more though...

Viva, try to put y/s in my shoes and try to imagine my experience.

Any edge I have comes from making observations specific to certain horses in races and having some knowledge of how individual trainers operate e.g. when some yards pull back in the two months b/f Cheltenham, which trainers target races and protect marks, how trainers run horses w/ marked ground prefs. etc. I haven't been skilled enough to develop a winning compiler but I can just about win w/ my pricing.

I'm not a full-time punter but get a lot of time off b/c my business clients are all round the world and pay for jobs as and when they are delivered.

When I make a 14-1 morning line shot 9-1 on balance I am right (even if it wins less than 10% of time)--these on average are winning positions for me. But all my accounts bar Ladbrokes for small money are closed and I watch in frustration as the price is levered into my idea of fair value w/ virtually nothing being matched.

What are my options? To drip-feed on here for hours? To put on a hat and dark glasses and hit the shops? Or to try to overcome the information disadvantage of betting just on one horse and put together some kind of book, buying and selling between 20-60% of the market to hedge m/s cheaply against any loss?

Bf's interface and the presence of traders has forced me into a way of playing that's laborious, not particularly recreational and diminishes their own comm.

I am not one of those betting purists or fundamentalists that sees any involvement of traders in a sports market as unwelcome or parasitical. As I said, one can imagine an ideal balance where traders and price takers each have their place in a sort of ecology, just as two different winning styles of poker players win from the fish on their table. But at the moment I believe the balance is tipped too much in favour of traders, including to the detriment of the operator.

We are going in the same direction Askari. One of the big positives in the auction system (or at least my version of it) is it hinders insiders. e.g. Suppose 100 backers wanted 1K @ 2.0, 99 layers wanted to lay the same horse for 1K @ 2.0 and an insider wanted to lay it for 100K @ 2.5. In my system all 200 bets would be matched for 1K @ 2.0 whereas on betfair (even under your system) the 99 regular layers would get zilch and the insider the whole 100K.