Tiny Partial matchings?

You can bet below the minimum stake of £2 in the UK - in a round-about-sort-of-way.

BF's cross matching skimbot does it.

Not necessarily below minimum stake bets or cross matching. $10 was available for example. Someone could have placed a bet at the same time as you for $8.87 leaving $1.13. Their bet got through just before yours so you could only get $1.13 matched.

LayItYouMug has it I think - and currency conversion as well as cross-matching means there will almost always be odd cents/pennies/whatever available at a given price in any market where customers betting in different curencies are placing offers.

@joe86 - do you mean you're only able to bet in multiples of a whole dollar?  You ought be able to bet dollars and odd cents so long as the total is above the minimum bet size?

The simple answer may be something like this.

Place a back of $10 at a price much higher than that on offer. Then go to that bet and change it to $11.13. You will see that an additional $1.13 has been added to the bet and the bet is now split into 2 parts. Then change the price of $1.13 part to that that is on offer and cancel the $10 bet.

Hey presto you've just got a $1.13 bet matched.

Even simpler reason for odd partial matches -
One user puts up £11.13
A second user takes £10 of it
You get the remaining £1.13.

Yeah just read the opening post again and i like aye robot's answer much better than mine. I think i assumed he put his bet up first and then it was partially matched later on which it clearly doesn't say.

Also, many offers these days have stealth bets in front of them in the queue, so anyone laying Joe's visible offer will be firstly matched by the invisible amounts that have undercut him.

Thanks guys.  A lot of this sounds feasible and probably right.  Partial matching from a lay across my bet and another or perhaps currency exchange.

However, against the idea of a partial match across my bet and someone else's, there is very slow action in this market, and I have not seen any other offerings at the same odds since I started.

Earlier this morning, 1.91 out of my $5 had been matched.  Now, 2.78 and my remaining bet is not offered in the main Lay window anymore - only a Lay of far higher odds. My  bet is only visible in the "Market Information" details window.  Any ideas why this is so?

@U.A. Yes, I put it up and quite a while (1 week) later it was partially matched, while I was not looking.

Somebody asked if I was unable to bet cents.  I thought so, but see now that I am mistaken so long as I am over $5.

What's "BF's cross matching skimbot"?

Also, "stealth bets" sound like a worry.  The whole point of BetFair to me was openess and transparency.  Are "stealth bets" for real?

This is looking less and less like a viable, transparent system.

I regularly get small amounts as low as 0.01 AUD matched when mine is the only bet offered at a particular price.

I assume it's bots at work including bf's.

I wouldn't worry about 'stealth bets'. I see them in almost every thin market. Basically bf doesnt show total bets lower than AUD 3.00. The stealth bets don't show up are always at a better price than the best price you can see. It must pay, because they are so widespread.

Just got 3 0.01 matches in 5 minutes in a S American soccer match.

@Joe

Your remaining bet doesn't show in the market view anymore (is that what you mean by the "main lay window"?) as the market view only shows offers at any price where the total available is at least the minimum bet size.

Cross matching:  see

https://bdp.betfair.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=143&Itemid=62

and the second page linked from the bottom of that one

'stealth bets' - well, you might consider your remaining bet fragment as such, in that it's invisible but anyone attempting to lay the higher price on offer will get best execution and match your remaining better priced offer.

@pxb  Those 0.01 matches, do they cause you a problem?  I'd love to know who does this, how it's done and why it's done.

Dunno about stealth bets being profitable.  I effectively have one in this market 0.78 still unmatched at 200 odds, 440 odds are the best shown on the main screen.  So I have a stealth bet and really no control over it, other than just cancelling it.  Like longbridge says.  Must think how this could be used.

How can we know that BF has bots at work?  Sounds a bit dodgy for them to do that.  Conflict of interest?

@longbridge Thanks for the link across to the API.  I didn't know it existed.  Whaddaya reckon pxb?  Is that what people use to write these bots you're talking about? 

"Market view". Is that what we'd call it if we just open the webpage, open a market and tick off the "Back and Lay" option?  Ah, "at least the minimum bet size" only shown for best price.  Thanks.

@UA Thanks.  That might be a useful trick.

Those 0.01 matches, do they cause you a problem?  I'd love to know who does this, how it's done and why it's done.

Many BF methods are self explanatory when you think through the process.

For example, I offer to back a market at 1.19, and somebody matches (lays) my offer for 4p, leaving me with a position of +0.8p or -4p, and as the win is less than a penny on my side it doesn't get paid, hence the layer will win 4p or lose nothing every time.

It's against the rules and occasionally a whole batch of these bets will be voided when discovered by BF.

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Stealth bets can be profitable because they allow you to undercut the market without tightening the spread, rather than putting up visible offers that will be undercut by your opposition.

It's against the rules and occasionally a whole batch of these bets will be voided when discovered by BF.

Definitely a bug/deficiency in the software.

2 lines of code to fix.

Unless there is some implication I haven't thought of.

@trevh Hmm, that does make sense.  The old salami method - you know the story of the bank programmer in the early 70's who didn't know what to do with all the tiny fractional cents, stuck them in an account in his name, thinking it would be insignificant but got done for fraud. A lot of messing about without using the BetFair API.  I guess it's worth somebody's while to code it.

Hey, do you know, for your example of a 4p win, with the commision being

Sorry, my reply got cut off somehow.

Anyway, commision on 4p is

Trevh
Date Joined: 21 Jul 06
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When: 25 May 11 01:16
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Also, many offers these days have stealth bets in front of them in the queue, so anyone laying Joe's visible offer will be firstly matched by the invisible amounts that have undercut him.

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somebody's been running a bot for months that front runs offers in immature high overround markets with sub £2 (ie invisible) bets.