Where is the money going exactly to improve the exchange??? LMAX 20-30 million, betfair casino??? rogue last I checked?? The forum??? Slow as fcuk.. Site performance poor , some pages take over 10-15 seconds to load.....

It will go on yet another poker update.

I read that profits from poker are down again.


So the updates are working really well ;)

So is your point that they are grabbing money and wasting it, or just grabbing it for the sake of its sharholders, or for some " communist" type creed of bringing the rich down to the level of the poor?.

OK then.
So really your gripe is with the efficiency of the BF mgt.
Not the fact that the PC is "targeting" the winners per se ?

Just been looking at their LMAX site, looks really cool, and you can trade on margin so don't even have to put up the full amount of the bet.
http://community.lmaxtrader.com/traders
"COMMUNITY SUCCESS
The success rate of traders who have shared their trades
Profitable    73%
Loss making    27%"
Seems like a much higher percentage of winners there, even allow for a few bull****s, I wonder how long it will be before they introduce a premium charge there, given that the platform has cost a lot to develop and is not yet covering its costs? Does anyone know if they have said whether they will introduce a similar charge there?

What I cannot accept about Betfair and the treatment by the firms as well is their brassnecked audacity to penalise winners. They are in a GAMBLING business for goodness sake ! Do they truly believe that 100% of us should lose ? Apparently so and Betfair is more guilty as they are supposed to be just the middle man taking comm without risk.
If PC qualifiers are costing them money (aye right) then conversely losers at 98.3% of all clients must be compensating for that by a long way. The break level clients are ideal for them because they are going nowhere...just filling BF`s coffers on a daily basis. Even betting shops only expect to get a bottom line gross of...is it around 25% these days from punters ?
Gambling offers us the chance to win for goodness sake, how immoral is it that those that manage to do just that are treated like lepers ? Bookmakers at least can claim their profits are being hit by winners but that is making the same assumption..GAMBLERS HAVE TO LOSE...THEY MUST NOT WIN !

The message to any of the 98.3% that read this is brutally clear.

You are being exploited by whoever you bet with especially Betfair as they are clearly not at risk. You are playing their little game and if by some chance you start to win at gambling, then you are next !
What greater reason do you need to stop gambling ?...what better motivation do you require ? You are throwing money at a company who gobble it up for fatuous reasons like say buying Timeform....and they will attack you as soon as you start withdrawing on a regular basis.
Beware you philanthropists...as soon as you achieve any success, your delight will quickly be dampened by the looming Premium Charge which will no doubt be targeting a lower band next year.
Can there be any greater incentive to give up gambling ? I doubt it and provided to you by the courtesy of the very people taking your bets daily.

The Betfair we registered with 10 years ago simply no longer exists...the company got it wrong and we now know that winners are no longer welcome. Just as the spread firms thought that their spreads would take care of profits from winners and losers were wrong. And finally the traditional bookmakers who also got it wrong, you cannot have people who are actually taking what is offered on the label, only losers are welcome.

In NO WAY am I calling any of my fellow gamblers mugs...but rest assured of one thing...you are being taken for exactly that.

Yes, good post Duncan.

The irony is that gamblers who find themselves here - winner or loser- are almost definitely not mugs, yet are being treated more like mugs here than anywhere.

For gamblers to have landed here they will likely have done at least a bit of research and seen that the odds are usually better (increasingly debatable), and also taken the time to learn the exchange dynamic that allows them to also lay or to trade out to secure a profit.  So your Betfair punter is definitely more profit-oriented than your 'mug' who takes any old price on any old thing for a bit of entertainment (although there's nothing wrong with that either).  Yet, having attracted the most profit-oriented punters they want to squeeze them out entirely should they actually achieve profit- whether now or in the future.  Only Betfair should be making a profit.

I don't think that's what anyone signed up for, and I hope people realise it.  The alternatives are not great (although perfectly adequate) at the moment but at least they are what they say they are.

Yes well said DD...but nobody is forcing you to bet here. There are plenty of other alternatives. Winners will always find ways to win.

that will be 40% of their gross profit five leaves.  Their adjustment would put me up to 47% of my net profits and that is no way near the ceiling of the band (which is 40% and 5% comm) as I'm running at 11.3% and my average commission over the period is prob around 3.5%.  I thought I'd worked out the net band as 41-46% although it seems I must have made a mistake.

I'll have to ask bunnyman what his net percentage is since hes on 60% gross.  You will be too fll when it hits you.  Effectively you will be fooked on here.

Total Bosman...
"The irony is that gamblers who find themselves here - winner or loser- are almost definitely not mugs, yet are being treated more like mugs here than anywhere."

Absolutely right and put better than I managed. The fact is that nowadays there are no bargains on Betfair..however winners will accept the comm..will accept the fact that prices are not netting to much better than the High St.(if you could get on) and have in many cases even accepted the almost criminal PC..and that is the `shrewdies` ! The losers have no excuses...is their money lasting any longer on here than it used to ? I doubt it...but this dark cloud hanging over them that if they dare to start making it pay ? I couldn`t bet under those circumstances.

How are you Jimmy ? Long time no speak, `Jimmy 34.5` must be in long trousers by now ? ..hope you are well.
Nobody is forcing me is true. As I am now a sufferer of the new PC conditions I will undoubtedly have another look across the road....it was always inferior, but now it only has to beat the bottom line after the PC to serve my needs. Like others I guess if BF still returns me a tick or two better(after the dreaded PC) than I can get there I will have to play here...I know where my bread is buttered and I am not going to cut off my nose to spite my face (like them cliches ? !!) But BF don`t care if they never see me again and that is extraordinary.
I am a regular ie ordinary gambler. I do not arb, trade, hoover, play with a marked card,manipulate markets, have fast pics nor play from the course...surely these are the account holders they ought to be be targeting.
My only crime is to actually make it pay on here...and Betfair should hold their collective heads in shame that they want rid of me and others like me.

I'm by no means sure 98.5% of users are wholly recreational, I think a good few more than that would be fairly serious punters who aspire to win long term profits even if they don't already.

And I think this latest stance is a mere stepping stone to similar adjustments to the rules and regs, and if other companies see it is being swallowed and follow suit to some extent, it could seriously bring the whole concept of profitable long term betting into jeopardy.

Betting for serious long term profit could soon be extinct.

I fully appreciate there is a big difference between a best price and a value price - but that what the game is all about - opinions about value prices.

The vast majority have no aspirations about going pro/full time or wish to back their opinions with large sums, but i'm sure there are plenty of profitable long term punters out there who will never get anywhere near paying the PC. 


If there is money to be made, there will be a natural progression - the Cat A players MAY move on...this will then leave space for the CAT B players to step up to the plate and get more of their bets matched. By definition these will not be as good leaving more value for the traditional punters. Some of these Bs will improve and in turn hit PC levels,leave,and the cycle continues.

Bit by bit the exchange moves towards its ideal business model - a seething pack of evenly matched gamblers passing money backwards and forwards between themselves with the commission charge slowly grinding everybody to dust.

I just spent 15 min typing a post on this.... then got a message "You need to be logged in to post".

I AM FECKING LOGGED IN.

I hope they spend some of the money they're about to make putting the forum back to how it used to be.

Still trying to get my head round Betfair`s thinking a few days on. If you read it in a book you`d conclude that this action was a plan to sabotage the company. And what is worse is that the company don`t seem to care. By `care` I mean the reaction on the phone by the poor guy who had the job of phoning us. Any other company losing a regular client would at least show a sign of regret or make a play at least of trying to pacify the angry customer. I cancelled my papers last year as I don`t read them anymore..RPost included. The shop owner wrote to me thanking me for my business and hoped he could serve me again in the future. Betfair`s atitude is that we can just go.
Short term this will likely get rid of the winners or the parasites as BF would call us but haven`t they even considered the impact a) on its vast majority of unaffected users or b)those that would join in the future who, not understanding what this charge entails will be frightened off even if they are 1.01 never to be affected ?

Do the board even understand the damage this is doing to their image (what`s left of it) ?
Betfair `where you pay up to 60% tax` is what that image now entails and as misleading as that is, that will deter a huge percentage of future users. Where is shareholders` anticipated growth coming from in the future when you have the company itself actually deterring punters from their site ?

I just don`t understand it. It can`t be beyond the vision of one freethinker round their table to stand up and announce that they are taking the wrong route. The PC is not written in stone...it stinks, get rid of it and see where BF as a company is going wrong. Completely restructure the commission table. Don`t reward the winners and colossal players by getting them down to 2%, turn it upside down with your new customers starting at 2 and the winners starting at 5 and INCREASE up to a maximum of say 10% by the proportion they win each month/quarter. Folk may even take a sense of pride paying more as they climb the table. Dispose of the ridiculous BF holidays and the even worse decay system. Do anything but ruin the dreams of all punters to make this game pay. Do ANYTHING but discriminate against the punters who are being penalised for nothing more than taking what is on offer here...to win or to lose.

Bert..Mr.Black...if you are out there reading this (doubtful), take a break from the horses, take a break from your excellent blog...and go and knock a few heads together and let them know what they are doing to your wonderful creation and even worse how they are boosting your only serious competitor. Betfair will survive but the damage done by the original PC introduction and even worse damage done by this new version is incalculable. Betfair is in danger of surpassing bookmakers as the most detested company in the game.
In fact it might already have done...and that is irreversible until you employ some people who understand the gambling business.You once marched through the city announcing `the death of bookmakers` how ironic it would be if the assailant itself committed commercial suicide.

There has to be a long term agenda that only the sharp minds in BF are privy to because  as you said Duncan to an outsider it looks like they are trying to destroy their company.

angelo, their preferred suppliers in terms of liquidity are bookmakers. They are trying to freeze all other major liquidity suppliers making a good profit out.

Why wd bookmakers (whose background is in managing risk, not identifying a handful of value bets) want the competition of people better than them, possibly playing an entirely different way and winning? And given that the individuals who win from bf long-term are also able to win (though sometimes prohibited from winning) from conventional books, why wd either an exchange or another betting company want them in the market?

Bf's previous position was that you cd win as much as you like so long as comm. represented more than 20% of yr profits. Why wd they change this? Because the winners are still a loss to them and because they also take from their preferred suppliers, esp. if playing at very think margins to offset the pc.

It's people like betting promotions and quite poss. other High St. players who are more than happy for bf to do this.

Askari1 I think you are the right track with the caveat that I think betfair wants it all and by all I mean that it wants 100% of every cent that every one of its clients deposits. This is what I believe it is working towards.

Completely restructure the commission table. Don`t reward the winners and colossal players by getting them down to 2%, turn it upside down with your new customers starting at 2 and the winners starting at 5 and INCREASE up to a maximum of say 10% by the proportion they win each month/quarter.

DD, I usually agree with your posts, but this one tells me how you operate on here with very few losing markets and it's just a suggestion that would suit your betting style.

  It would however be a disaster for most bigger traditional gamblers/position takers.

Duncan, there is an American sports exchange that does something like this and a small British exchange that has almost exactly this model (i.e. reward losers, penalise winners and try that way to get the losers to provide the fine prices) and there is virtually no liquidity on either.

You need big liquidity providers on 2% because they are not profitable for the volumes they play at much higher.

And in their absence, you have markets w/ big gaps and shrewdie prices staring at each other.

Eddie...I am unsure if you are suggesting that I am a trader but as stated earlier I am a gambler (albeit a layer) That does mean I agree that I have pro rata very few losing markets when compared to someone trying to back winners... especially at the prices I tend to aim at laying. But I`m not sure why a higher comm would benefit me by comparison. By having such a large proportion of winning markets it means I am paying a large proportion of comm amounts.
Perhaps you could clarify why it would suit that style any more than say a conventional punter ie a backer.