Premium Charge Hike - Action needed

no. i'll try sending another

Alot of posters are forgetting one important thing.....the level of risk that the OP is taking in order to generate profits.  Plenty of you are assuming that it's 'easy money' but if that's true then why aren't we all doing it?

The '40% of something is more than 100% of nothing' argument also winds me up.  Not so long ago the 40% was 20%, so how long before it's 70,80, 90%?

Betfair are dividing, and by the looks of it successfully conquering their once loyal customer base. 

Wake up and smell the coffee!

It's also conveniently forgotten how much the average winning gambler pays in expenses.

It's a lot more than sitting in front of a paid for computer all day and raking in free cash. My Sky TV bill will attest to that. The mind boggles at how much some people must pay in technology bills for all manner of different purposes.

paulme thinks that winning 100 a day is tough on bet fair, no offense mate but you must be a complete loser?? actually I've read your horse laying thread and laughed at it, you are a loser.


Go over to the aussie forum and you'll find dozens of posters winning 100 a day easily, christ today I tipped 11 lays all under $5, and 10 of them got beat some were odds on most about $3.60ish thats a 90% success rate laying horses under $5, don't worry about laying long shots that'll get you nowhere real quick. The one horse that cost me out of the 11 wasn't evenb a system bet but more of a STD bet, had I have just follwed my system bets today woulda been 10/10.

Winning on the horses is easy as piss if you have a brain for lateral thinking and know how to do a bit of research have a structred bank and staking plan.

Alot of posters are forgetting one important thing.....the level of risk that the OP is taking in order to generate profits.

Less than 5% comm and winning every week doesn't represent a high level of risk. Agree with Feck the charge seems acceptable for customers like him.

I know nothing about horse racing i dont even know if Aussie horse racing is in running but his winnings would suggest somebody with fast pics hoovering or a very efficient bot.

I can't understand why all these people are attacking the guy, sure he is a big winner but how does that effect any of you, i can understand his anger at having so much taken away and in time he may come to live with it.

where do you get 5% from did you not read what was typed.

Mr celebrity
Now let me make sure I'm getting this right.
You've paid $200,000 PC this year, being 15% of your gross profit.
So your bottom line net profit has thus been ( .8* 200,000/.15) = circa $1,060,000 pa.
And now you think your PC bill will go up by circa $ 300,000 pa, thus reducing your net profit to ONLY $ 750,000 pa.
If I'm correct, I'm astounded that you are crying poor and looking for urgent help.
Is this for real ?
Have I missed something important here ?

looks a lot closer to 20% to me

No_BS
30 Jun 11 09:23 Joined: 24 Apr 11 | Topic/replies: 72 | Blogger: No_BS's blog
where do you get 5% from did you not read what was typed.

The opening post.

as I always pay less than 5% of my gross profit in commission.

I also understand he is a 20% PC payer as i can read thankyou

Lori
30 Jun 11 08:38 Joined: 20 Apr 04 | Topic/replies: 35,407 | Blogger: Lori's blog
It's also conveniently forgotten how much the average winning gambler pays in expenses.

It's also conveniently forgotten how much Betfair pays in expenses to run the site.

Ronaldino
How dare you point that out.

It's far less than they take in commission if that's what you're getting at.

My point is that when they take 40% of someone's winnings, that can easily turn a winner into a loser. Not that I'm making any point there other than a lot of the stuff aimed at the winners "60% is still better than nothing" is often not true.

Obviously it's less than they take in commission, otherwise they wouldn't be turning any profit.
But they also need to generate revenues to upgrade and improve the site and market and explore new products/new markets, grow the business etc and etc.
I do agree with the point about the swings and roundabouts of many a punter's performance, though not all.

mr celebrity bets on 15 /20 australian horse racing markets a day....never trades or places a lay but always wins hundreds thousands dollars montly( on markets with a medium small liquidity)and his commissions are costantly  below 5% of his net profits...but he is the one who needs help....funny thread

You're no moron.
Nicely summed up.

Lori
30 Jun 11 09:47 Joined: 20 Apr 04 | Topic/replies: 35,408 | Blogger: Lori's blog
It's far less than they take in commission if that's what you're getting at.

Big long discussion on where BF spend or waste their revenues.

My point is that when they take 40% of someone's winnings, that can easily turn a winner into a loser.

I am in that category.

I have often wondered about this scenario, BF always has the best odds in the markets that interest me probably all markets? certainly better than sportsbet sportingbet UNITAB centrebet here in Oz etc

So if your a bookmaker of XYZ and offer your market 6-1 about a chance yet that same chance is 8-1 on BF, why wouldn't the bookie take the bet and lay it off on BF for a 2 unit margin??

Say he's holding $1000 on the 6-1 pop with a liabillity of 6K, he lays off on BF at 8-1 with a profit of 8K, pays his 6K liabillty and pockets the 2K as profit??

if I were a bookmaker that is how I would operate can't lose especially in th emarkets with high liquidy??

Is this the person BF is trying to get rid of????

I agree, if i was a bookie i would take the bet and back at BF for bigger odds generally.

I dont know any other BF customers so would speculate they're targeting sophisticated computer/bot players, hooverers/court/track punters, cheats/inside info players as well as people who use bookies to know which way the BF market will move and other categories.

For the record i dont use any of the above, my strengths are more old fashioned, with more emphasis on hard work

mrcelebrity

I have a couple of easy solutions for you predicament. I will display my figures in english pounds father than aussie dollares.

Solution 1

Rent the accounts of serial losers on betfair for the fee that you would normally pay to betfair under the original premium charge scheme that you were resigned to pay anyway. This could be done on a weekly basis until their accounts gets to a stage whereby they move into profit and qualify for the premium charge. I'm sure serial losers will be queuing up to rent their accounts for an income of £3k a week or £150k a year.

This may involve you moving your location of where you log into betfair so they can't link the mrcelebrity account to the losers accounts each time you turn an account into profit. But the cost of renting a new facility is a small price to pay with the sums involved.

Solution 2

Rent your system to serial losers. again with the sums involved you can sit back and achieve a healthy income without having to lift a finger. Depending on the system your income could be potentially higher than it currently is if you balance the number of people you rent your system to.

GoldCoastinvestor
Date Joined: 28 Aug 10
Add contact | Send message
When: 30 Jun 11 10:22
Joined:
Date Joined: 28 Aug 10
| Topic/replies: 845 | Blogger: GoldCoastinvestor's blog
I have often wondered about this scenario, BF always has the best odds in the markets that interest me probably all markets? certainly better than sportsbet sportingbet UNITAB centrebet here in Oz etc

So if your a bookmaker of XYZ and offer your market 6-1 about a chance yet that same chance is 8-1 on BF, why wouldn't the bookie take the bet and lay it off on BF for a 2 unit margin??

Say he's holding $1000 on the 6-1 pop with a liabillity of 6K, he lays off on BF at 8-1 with a profit of 8K, pays his 6K liabillty and pockets the 2K as profit??

if I were a bookmaker that is how I would operate can't lose especially in th emarkets with high liquidy??

Is this the person BF is trying to get rid of????


That would be silly. I think the guys on the other side of the bookies bets on Betfair make money. They're laying off, and willing to give up a fraction of profits to guarantee that profit. As far as I'm concerned this is good for the bookie, good for Betfair and good for Betfair's customers.

theinvestor2 you wont see any difference.  losers will still lose and winners will still win.  prices on betfair wont change from what they are.  many of the 60%ers are small players who have been on befair since its early days making about £8 per race; its not going to make any difference to losing clients if the 60%ers leave.

Thanks for the first practical ideas posted in this forum KC.

Can't Betfair recognise betting patterns?

I have no idea how much work they put into linking accounts but I can only imagine it'll have gone up with this new charge

Highly doubt that ZR is paying PC and as such shows how misguided the PC happens to be.
BF has gone from a neutral exchange to an entity who has spent incredible sums competing against it's winners for it's losers money. It started with the exchange games, moved into the casino games, started booking bets et al. This is just more of the same and it does not specifically target the most successful customers on a net basis like ZR it targets the ones who are most risk averse.

I won't be incurring in these super-charges still for a while but the news are definitely worrying...

@paulme - do you really not believe it is possible to win £100 on horses on any day regularly? Just to let you know, in one year I've made a bot from scratch that (at the current stage of development) makes me an average about £250 a day on horses, and I'm looking to make it better. I think that rather than doubting everyone you should take some inspiration: these things are possible.

@mrcelebrity - I agree that since you are putting in a lot of effort (10-12 hours a day), seeing a massive chunk of your profits being taken away for no apparent reason is quite annoying. Maybe you should consider automating your strategy so that you don't need to be in front of a pc all the time. In this case, let me know if I can help - maybe we can work something out that is convenient for the both of us. I'm always looking for smart partners.

Am I missing something? Please enlighten me if I am.

It seems odd to me that Betfair are additionally penalising the customers who are, in all probability, the ones providing their legendary liquidity.

In every trade on here, there is a winner and a loser. Commission of 2-5% of the "winnings" are paid to Betfair for the service they provide. I see no difference between small staking, mostly losing punters and the "mrcelebrity"'s of this world. Someone has to win. That is the nature of the exchange.

Surely a fairer system would be to have a flat 5% commission for everyone (or 6,7 or whatever % they need to set) so that the bigger players automatically pay more commission the more they win. It could also be done in a similar way to income tax. The profits over a certain level incur an incremental charge rather than a big lump at a certain profit level.

It is starting to look like the whole exchange model is flawed when Betfair need to levy this additional charge on people who use the exchange for maximum benefit.

They tweeted this afternoon (and I quote) - "Over £1bn worth of bets, 88% growth in revenues and 122% growth in users - it's been quite a year for Betfair Mobile"

While I appreciate that they are constantly improving their range of offerings regarding mobile betting / games / poker etc, that investment should not come by directly charging your "best" customers through the nose.

If that is the only way to fund it, it would seem that the levels of investment are unsustainable or the new products are not returning the levels of income that were envisaged.

Big Loser

I don't agree with these charges but they do make economical sense from Betfair's point of view.
Let's say we are two evenly matched punters: sometimes you win, sometimes I win. BF makes 5% profit every time we "exchange" money between us, so BF is slowly but steadily taking money out of the system.

If instead you are a much better punter than me, you win more often than I do and in the long run you will be accumulating money and taking it out of the system. Once this money is taken out and is not exchanged any more, BF lose their little steady profit. Hence they want a piece of it BEFORE you take it out, and they are estimating that in order for the trick to be fair you need to pay 12 times more commission (60% rather than 5%), which effectively means that they would have wanted that money to go be exchanged between me and you 12 more times. Since it is NOT going to be exchanged, their only way to get what they think they deserve is by applying this seemingly criminal charge...

In my opinion, this simply means that when they first came up with the whole BF exchange idea, they had miscalculated the average number of times that the money is likely to go around before it is accumulated by some people. Or, to state it another way, they had not realised that some punters (or traders) could actually be really good at this.

rikisola

Thanks for that. Makes more sense in my head now. :)

If by economical sense you mean greed than I agree with you... also a need to stop the share price bombing completely and help bolster figures in a year where there is no major summer football competition to inflate the figures for them...

GoldCoast - you utter unfriendly cretin/waste of space. another forumite i dont even know just comes on and is nasty for no reason.

i respond:

i am a mug gambler and yes i lose. im honest and genuine. does that warrant your abuse? if someone is bad at golf are they a loser to you even if they give it a go. what a piece of dirt you really are. if you can win £100 in one day on the horses then  prove it on my thread.

Winning on the horses is easy as piss

that's all very nice but do it without aftertiming

Christ paul, how many times have you asked that question now?

The fact that Betfair have introduced this charge is proof that people can easily earn that in a day. End of conversation. That's all the proof you need.

that's all very nice but do it without aftertiming Rocket.

also how many people are affected by PC cos most of the forum seem to be discussing it

@paulme - do you really not believe it is possible to win £100 on horses on any day regularly? Just to let you know, in one year I've made a bot from scratch that (at the current stage of development) makes me an average about £250 a day on horses, and I'm looking to make it better. I think that rather than doubting everyone you should take some inspiration: these things are possible.

that's all very nice but pass my challenge and do it without aftertiming. should be easy for you Oprah,

We know a small percentage of current PC payers will be affected by the change.

We also know this number is 480

So number of PC payers (and there will be non payers who are affected by it indirectly) equals 480 divided by a small number

480 divided by a small number is hard to guess, but it's "a lot" more than 480.

480 divided by a small number is hard to guess, but it's "a lot" more than 480.

erm... really?

You'd think so wouldn't you.

How can you make 500AUD on every Aussie race?

$35k a week on Aussie horses. Seems like bullshine to me.

Seems like mrcelebrity and his alias KC are out to spam the world. Yes sell your mystery system.

go to imageshack and post a screenshot of your last 3 months P and L or stop time wasting ydfs spamming c.

agreed but you should too RMB

I should too what? Spam the forum. OKAY. Send me £25,000 paulme and I will sell you my SUPERSYTEM. Double the price and I will sell you my SUPERDUPERSYSTEM.

go to imageshack and post a screenshot of your last 3 months P and L or stop time wasting ydfs spamming c.

that

I have no interest in selling a system of any kind. I'm not gonna post in this thread as I'm looking to chat about the premium charge and not anything else

http://img825.imageshack.us/img825/7906/threemonths.jpg

What's the weather like in Perth at the moment ?

I wish people would stop throwing around the word 'greedy' so flippantly and emotively in this conversation.  The fact is everybody is, to a greater or lesser extent, greedy.

Betfair are greedy in that they want to increase their already large profits by imposing an increased tax on their highest winners.

The big winners are greedy in that they want to keep all of their extortionate levels of personal income and not give any more than necessary back to betfair.

Even the small winners and losers who are pleased with the premium tax are greedy in that they sense that the PC will drive some of the bigger players out of the market and allow them to increase their own profits.

So really all you have is a bunch of people out there on all sides of the fence looking after their own interests, crying 'unfair' and trying to bring people round to their point of view with emotive arguments.  But the fact is, there is nothing inherently 'fair' or 'unfair' about the PC.  The big traders affected can make the choice to either carry on using Betfair or quit.  If they choose the former then they are admitting that even with the new charges, Betfair is still a worthwhile enterprise for them, hence proving Betfair's point for them.  If they decide to quit then either Betfair will suffer as a result (probably forcing them to rescind their charges) or they won't, showing them they are right to tax heavily the players who do nothing positive for the site, just remove money from it.  Betfair on the other hand have to balance generating increased profits with pissing off too many players or they'll lose their dominant market position.

Everyone is just playing the game, doing them best for themselves and their families.  Sometimes the rules change and you can either adapt or quit.

Rommie-excellent post.100% accurate and summed up perfectly.

If you want credibility, you should have done your maths better mrcelebrity.
You are talking about 30k a week profit on Australian markets, NEVER laying.  So your strike rate is over 90-95% winning markets, by ONLY BACKING, on markets with liquidity during the week of 50k a market.
The only way this is possible, is by either having green across the board, or knowing which horse will win beforehand.

What should you do now?  Become a comedian.

What are you claiming your reduction factor is?

Exactly

greedy greedy greedy ...........

that is the word perfectly describes betfair. If you see history companies come and go. whatever the betfair doing now will be discussed in the future as the reason for its failure.

The reason it was so successful is because of exchange concept and person to person betting. Now it thinks it can do whatever it can and still successful. Now it is creating a gap in the market by changing its strategy and new companies will certainly grab this opportunity.

i think that currently betfair is feeling the pinch on the stock market and this new asset stripping operation on all betfair high rollers co-incides with a recent announcement that they are putting some of there profits back into the stock market to bouy up the price, after all now they are floating they have too swim or sink!

a recent upsurge in there stock market value comes as no surprise

You have to realise, as should everyone, that Betfair are simply bookmakers who have found a different way to take money off punters, which in the early days enabled them to boast that unlike bookmakers winners on Betfair were welcome no matter how much they won, then when they found that punters winning too much does affect them they reverted to "bookmaker" type but instead of banning as bookmakers would, because of their different way of taking money off punters they are simply able to increase their commission.

Much has been said about the Premium Charge since it was introduced but no one has challenged it in court:- the likely gronds would seem to be abusing their domminant market position, because no other betting exchange does this or could do it. If you make the profits that you say surely you could afford to look at this, or at least get Councel's Opinion? and Councel might see other grounds.

I only wish that the real world economy could work like Betfair, yes, the ones that win more should pay more, period. (Like Buffett says, "I doubt that if you were born in Bangladesh you had a chance to be in the top 25% of the richest persons in the world")

the only thing I find unfair is that the PC is equaly charged to every person instead of following a much fairer "win more, pay more...win less, pay less... win nothing pay nothing"

also, the money collected by the PC should somehow comeback into the betting instead of going straight to the betfair pockets

harechaser6 14 Jul 11 18:19 
i think that currently betfair is feeling the pinch on the stock market and this new asset stripping operation on all betfair high rollers co-incides with a recent announcement that they are putting some of there profits back into the stock market to bouy up the price, after all now they are floating they have too swim or sink!

a recent upsurge in there stock market value comes as no surprise


Er... exactly what recent upsurge are you blathering on about. They're trading at their lowest week ending level ever (yet again).

Have a look at their stock chart, you won't see a gradient decline of that magnitude even on a double black diamond downhill ski slope ffs.

There is a dependency culture within the city now. When they make an executive balls up they expect someone else to pick up the tab.

Not like the good old days eh ?
You're showing your advanced years Feck.

either that or resign as chief exec & leave someone else to clean up the excrement

I don't understand your post fafh.

I think dependency culture is not that a recent thing. It used to be called passing the buck or something like that.
I just really meant that you're sounding a bit like my dad and certain schoolteachers I've had over the years.
Not a really serious jibe btw.

I used the phrase because the parasites in the financial sector would be the very people that would use it to refer to some poor sod collecting 40 odd quid from the dole.

PS no offence taken.

There is a group recommending people withdraw their money from Betfair on monday...its nmaking ne nervous there will be a run on them like the banks on Monday...

I will be withdrawing my money after tomorrow's racing. It's not so much the 40% as that on top of the fact I'm forced to act as a guide for push button drip feed detectors and have to fill in insiders because of betfair's stupid interface. Absence of rebates is another reason (as is betfair's couldn't give a fk attitude on the matter). I doubt though there will be enough gamblers like me to make a difference. The majority affected by the charges wouldn't even be noticed missing if they left. If I ever come back it will be as a very occasional punter as there's no longer any incentive to supply real liquidity.

We'll all miss your money Feck.
We hope at least you will consider continuing posting on this forum.
That would really be too sad if that stopped overnight.
Talk about withdrawal symptoms.

LOL FAFH. I'm afraid I'll have more time to post as I won't have to spend 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. studying form and drip feeding.

You mean you're not going to carry on betting in volume elsewhere ?
That's amazing to hear, if so.

FAFH, Purple isn't an option for me as they even give free lunches to their parasites. As far as bookmakers go, boxing with girlies has little appeal. I've other avenues besides gambling to pursue.

A non gambling life.
What a refreshing phrase to hear on here.
Could be viewd as rather traitorous though.

Feck why don't you just utilise every ferengi tw@tty lord of the ringy whatevery strategy you know, make your millions and bUgger off into the sunset? You can't be that altruistic.


Or do you need Betfair to get on?

How do you know I haven't already done that Rocket?

because you've made statements along the lines of i'd rather support rangers than.....

I was talking about the millions charlatan.

Is there an overriding belief that you can only make big money being a middleman or a cheat?

it seemed implied in the question that those were the methods to be used.

this is quite simple - pay it or leave! what are you going to do about it? you can do nothing your helcyon days are long gone - go back to working in pc world or what ever you did - betfair is now blunt minds betBOOKY - winners not wanted as we are to big and dont need your stealing value overround theft from the site. go back to the bookies and try and get your bets on with them. Or even become a booky and pay the overheads of tax rent rates staff costs etc and it will be over 60% on income - SO THE CHOICE IS YOURS STAY AND PAY OR GO BACK TO WHAT YOU DONE BEFORE.

yes your right peter, monopolies are great arent they, bet you wish you could give the winners on here a right good beating, have you recently had some problem with betfair winners or pc world staff, i have always found them to be both good at what they do?

Peter Storrie
18 Jul 11 12:30 Joined: 13 May 04

Nice rant.
Black and white world with you innit.

Good post.. Since the post float capers I find it difficult to have any faith in the people in the towers and have wondered just how safe the funds of customers really are???

are u sure about that premium payer ...  as far i was told .... its totally ring fennced ?

" ---any other investment ".
Now that you have to admit is a phrase for concern.
Any real trust lawyers out there with an opinion on this ?

Well Feck I posted a reply to you and it has been deleted. I haven't a clue why.

Perhaps I'm naive, but wouldn't this PC problem be solved if all of the big hitters affected by the charge got together, opened accounts at the purple site and at the same time started trading over there? I've moved over there and there is a liquidity problem particularly on the horses in running, but this would surely be eliminated by the volume of money the big hitters would inject arriving all together. The purple site are extremely accomodating and I'm sure would do everything needed to ensure smooth transition. Is it beyond the wit of people whe are intelligent enough to win big on Betfair to collaborate and solve this problem for themselves?

So they all go over there and start to quickly drain the betting pool as they are doing on here, and the same basic problem reoccurs over there.
How does that sustain the exchange concept long term ?

I don't get it.  Basically, you compare poker to a betting exchange.  Poker sites, take a % out for their profits, and everybody else competes for each others money.  Now you have your sharks there, huge winners, losers.  I would suggest the % of profitable poker players to be around the same as profitable punters?  Say 5%?
That being said, do poker sites have an issue with all the money being taken out?  The losers seem to commit their funds, lose it, put more in, lose it, and the cycle continues.  Doesn't seem to be money problems in the poker world (disregard the obvious legal encounters of the past year, the point is the comparison in funds)....

Maybe it's because successful poker players are viewed not only as having exceptional card playing skills, but more importantly that those skills are viewed as being attainable by many, many of the losers ( however mistaken they may be). So they ( the losers) keep coming back in the hope of learning these winning skills.
Whereas in the non-poker BF sports betting arena it is people with highly developed computer programming skills who are creating bots which are winning all these super profits or at least are perceived to be winning them.
The majority of losing punters cannot either identify with or ever hope to emulate these geek types of winners, and so are giving up faster than they are coming back for more?
But it's all maybe, maybe , maybe, for me at least.
I know no more the reasons than anybody else.

Montie, even if the purple could handle the number of transactions I don't think they are as accommodating and virtuous as everyone likes to think.

They are hailed as saviours of pc-hit but have they done anything to make us think this could be the case?

Montie
20 Jul 11 01:33
Joined:
16 Nov 04
| Topic/replies: 16 | Blogger: Montie's blog
Perhaps I'm naive, but wouldn't this PC problem be solved if all of the big hitters affected by the charge got together, opened accounts at the purple site and at the same time started trading over there? I've moved over there and there is a liquidity problem particularly on the horses in running, but this would surely be eliminated by the volume of money the big hitters would inject arriving all together. The purple site are extremely accomodating and I'm sure would do everything needed to ensure smooth transition. Is it beyond the wit of people whe are intelligent enough to win big on Betfair to collaborate and solve this problem for themselves?

...................

All the winners move to purple.. who are they supposed to win money off? Any betting company needs to attract losers not winners. This means huge marketing campaigns not just attracting a few sharks.

If poker sites allowed certain players to cheat I'm sure they'd want a bit extra off those players in return for setting them up with mugs. Fortunately most poker sites seem to be taking a long term view.

Yes feck, "those" players.  But PC affects fair winners too.  I'm not after any sympathy, I just want to dispel the ignorant myth on here that to be a PC payer, you must have some unfair advantage over others.

I would bet my left nut that in poker losers lose even faster than here. In poker you can play heads-up with a rich guy who has no clue about poker or choose a table where is three pretty good players and one very poor one. Not the case here where everyone has to play on the same pool. I would understand Betfair's fan boys cry if there would be 10 different match market's for the same match and big boys would be always choosing the one with minimal amount of shrood players and max amount mugz.

It is completely true that under 5% of people (could be well lower) has even some kind of understanding about probabilities and should Man Utd be 80% or 70% favourite. But what you are missing here (I think you know the truth but for same magical reason you keep defending what some big boss has said..) that even if 99% of 5 pound players here don't have a clue should the odds be 2.0 or 2.15 it doesn't matter to them cause big professional players are always racing against each other which will always lead to that odds are near what they should be. Driving away most of the sharp guys will always lead to that there is less competition and sharp guy (s) can offer much worse odds and still get matched. Unless they want it...

Any advantage is unfair but there is a difference between having an advantage and cheating

On that score, catfeppo we all have an unfair advantage over, say the blind or illiterate or severely mentally ill but I take your point. 
So to clarify, you don't have to be a cheat to be a PC payer.

No, I don't think anyone should be labelled a cheat unless they are party to result fixing.  Anyone making money here gets my respect for doing so.

A betting exchange has a food chain where it is possible for most players to be both eater and eaten except at the very top and the very bottom. Take away those at the very top and you still have a food chain with the next in-line being promoted. Take away the bottom and there will be some who are demoted to become the eaten.

The top position is held by BF, of course. It is in their l/t interests for the rest of the chain to be as flat/short as possible so knocking out top earners or taking more off them is a win-win scenario - or so it must seem.

What seems to be missing from this view is whether this action increases or more likely decreases overall fish stocks.

Yes feck, "those" players.  But PC affects fair winners too.  I'm not after any sympathy, I just want to dispel the ignorant myth on here that to be a PC payer, you must have some unfair advantage over others

I didn't suggest otherwise 1.01 but one other thing poker is free of is needless middlemen.

I use betfair for fun and I make about £50 per week and I pay the PC.  It's not just the big gamblers that pay it!

True and not all the big gamblers pay it

For the Aussies:

Betfair’s Australian operations are regulated by the Tasmanian Gaming Commission in accordance with the Gaming Control Act 1993 (Tas). Betfair is required to adhere to a number of important probity and integrity provisions under this Act,
including:

 the prevention of wagering on illegal events;
 permitting the Tasmanian Gaming Commission to override any betting exchange rules it
deems to be oppressive or unfair;

Would be if the TGM would determine the 60% PC to be oppressive or unfair (which it is). Make your submissions to the Gambling Reform enquiry.

Bobman
Maybe they would try to determine if it is oppressive or unfair to the majority of users( which is isn't) ?

anybody with half a brain would of worked out by now that having to put brakes on the amount that can be won by at least 500 users says just how successful the betfair exchange system is, bookies can add bonuses to certain bets which is the opposite appliction because.

(1)....combinations of reduced odds multiple bets with hs bookies win at a more lesser rate than there implied chances.

(2).....such a winner wont repeat the win rarely.

(3).....hs bookies have many control methods too control and restrict pro-gamblers.

You cant have your cake and eat all the cake, betfair are allowing winners on pc1 and pc2
as the charges allow the payouts to be sustainable, so why dont you stop going on like spoilt
children and get on with using the betfair exchange and agreeing with the choices of betfair and up your own game the way betfair has done for over 10 years now.