Greed.

johnny, who would you prefer to bet against - other people or high frequency betfair bots?

" All I want from life is an unfair advantage "

Isn't that what this exchange operator has?

Eddie,

I can assure you that you are wrong.

There has to be two sides to any debate.

Betfair,(or indeed any business), have the freedom to decide on any pricing structure they wish to whichever customers they wish ,changing their minds as many times as they wish.

We,the customers, then have the freedom to decide whether we wish to purchase the goods or services on the terms offered.

The notion that the customers should somehow be involved in running Betfair's business is ludicrous. Yet,we have thread after thread packed with this nonsense.

I'm just keeping a sense of balance to proceedings.

Johnny The Guesser
05 Jul 11 07:55 Joined: 15 Apr 02 | Topic/replies: 224 | Blogger: Johnny The Guesser's blog
Answer me this.

Why is it so right for some of you guys to be able to squeeze every last penny out of the exchange but so wrong that Betfair should try to do the same thing?



Err, because I'm not pretending not to be a middleman.

And there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.  Winners are BAD CUSTOMERS.

Please put that in your next advertising campaign.

What happened to Betfair being the champion of gamblers, the good Betfair against the evil bookmakers?  Winners welcome?  Sharp minds?  Instead, it's "FuKK winners, the money is ours."

Let me tell you, it's against the whole ethos of a betting exchange.  It's not YOUR money, it belongs to the customers.

jtg the high street bookmakers have been squeezeing the punters dry for years, now it seems betfair wish to join them .

in the early days it used to be winners welcome,we do not close winning accounts,well when they tax you at between40-60 percent,i think there saying f--k off your account is no longer welcome

If the winners, and perpetual profit-makers, who use Betfair, were benefitting from good form selection, being lucky, or real betting strategies, then I would disagree with johnny the guesser too.

However, many, if not nearly all the people moaning about the PC - (or at least those who would be hit hardest) are treating the place as a business, and utilising technology, time or other advantages to make a 'living' from the site.

Since when did people make a living from gambling? This is a gambling site, not a means to programme a way into not actually losing by market or other money manipulation. That it has become so is unfortunate for a majority of BF users and genuine punters who, when it comes down to it are the ones actually paying for the consistent profits made by people who couldn't give a toss about results, form or any other factors which usually go into deciding how to bet.

Betfair are partly to blame for this situation in that they have promoted Bots and winning strategy seminars and the like, and have thus created such an unfair situation.

Not that it matters really because anyone affected by premium Charges will probably just operate with someone else's (or an alternative) account anyway.

1st - The amounts of money involved.

2nd, he, despite not using any unfair advantages, doesn't know of need to know anything about form, results or the things in which he 'bets'.
While it isn't in an unfair way, it still isn't within the spirit of things imo, and it still is merely a 'job', of sorts.

I'm of the opinion that Betfair was neither set up to be, nor should it be a vocation. it should be a betting site, for betting. I'm quite happy to lose to people who have a bet against me, but not to people who utilise the betting (or IT) system we use to skim my stakes from me or not be prepared to lose it back to me next time we bet.

Good post SweetFa

Eddie. Clearly there are some shrewd punters on here (and good luck to them) who will now be caught with the new pc hike. Of the 480 or so who will shortly attract the higher commission then I believe that the vast majority are exactly as described by SweetFa - namely business operators utilising time delays and technology to win huge amounts of money.

It's a pity that genuine winning punters will get caught up in all this, but they are in the minority in my view.

However, many, if not nearly all the people moaning about the PC - (or at least those who would be hit hardest) are treating the place as a business, and utilising technology, time or other advantages to make a 'living' from the site.

sweetfa, you may want to have a look at how betfair started and ask yourself if maybe you are betting at the wrong company.


So where did the actual idea come from? “It was taken from the way the stock exchange works and from everything I’d done,” tells Black. “It’s very simple, Betfair is a cross section of taking stock exchange technology to the gambling market using the internet. In my career I’ve worked directly with the stock exchange, I’ve been a professional gambler and I’ve built websites. I’ve been there on all three of them.”

Andrew Black

It's probably reasonable to assume that a vast majority of users of Betfair are not extremely wealthy probably bet in single or double figures (in £ or dollar or Euro), yet a few people - 480?? in the case of the latest premium charge information, are making at least £250,000 in profit in, at the most, 10 years.

In "doing the math", I have come to the conclusion that it isn't particularly fair that so few should benefit so much from so many.
I would also question the methods being used to enable this profit making.

Whatever else Betfair is, it's primarily a Betting site, and to me at least, there is a difference between Betting and utilising Technology, time, and other information which is not readily available as standard for all those using the site.

If I'm wrong and it IS reasonable, then nearly everyone (at least 90%) using Betfair needn't bother.

Somebody suggested stop the API.
Now I'm not a techie.
Would that even be feasible now ?
If so, would it solve the " problem" of persons only winning because of advanced " IT " skills, and not " gambling " skills, if the latter phrase is not an oxymoron.

firstly, it's not possible to stop programatic access to the site by closing down the API; you can write software that spoofs a browser and then just render all the received html to a format that suits your program. (it's what makes the quacks charging mechanism for API access so daft, along with the completely random nature of being a maker or a taker if you bet into the spread in liquid markets).

but secondly what is it with the API-haters?

a few programming skills and bobs your uncle, the path to profits is there for all to see? damn, if only i could write a half decent program i'd be a multi millionaire.

you actually have to have a strategy to get your software to make money which has to work manually before working programatically.

if there are zero risk methods to find free arbs across markets, (rather within them cf. the cross matching) then it's betfair's job to stop it rather than allow it to continue, rather than shutting down the api or taking a cut of the profits.

sorry - it's not their job, but they are within their rights to do so with a model similar to cross matching.

Fine ... they are only concerned with stopping random behaviour by some bots that can drive extreme prices and hit big players ...

No they are not concerned with HFT and rather it is encouraged by exchanges, because each transaction has a charge. More transactions, more money.

has someone written some software that logs into your account and places the bets for you SweetFa?

clever stuff.

No - They haven't.
Fortunately I also haven't been to your school of pompous smugness either.

SweetFA - then nobody is "nicking" your money