Oh come on Feck. Admit it - you'd be all lonely without us middlemen [;)]

First walk out, nobody noticed. Second walkout never happened because the Ferengi noticed nobody noticed. The famous liquidity = fool's gold.

DivideByZeroError

I think  my most immediate need is more programmers, to build my ideas into bots....

the maths/stats/modeling is also required... and perhaps need to be a second different person.

if I have to do one of the two jobs, I will do the maths/stats one

Feck, I remember the good old days too.  Backers didn't stare at layers across the abyss, they used to either go elsewhere or take a cr@p price.  Great for the layer, I used to have such fun on the F1 markets.  But honestly, with my bot I am providing tons more liquidity at much better prices - that's got to be good for the average punter and (therefore) betfair and I'm not going to walk out, or even threaten to, until I've been swallowed up by the competition that is still tightening.

catfloppo, what's your point?

Who said it was worse for me? I didn't even join back in the "good old days". If you think I joined because traders filled in the abyss with £2 bets you're way wide of the mark. I'm not anti-API BTW (although it would be much less relevant given a decent interface), I'm anti-middlemen.

Let me ask you Ferengi this. If I want to place a bet and the spread's 2.0-2.2 what makes you think I won't place my offer inside the spread? What makes you think the next backer up won't undercut me? And so on (remember existing offers may be shortened up as well). Is your argument that there aren't enough backers and layers to fill in the spread themselves or they're too dumb or what?

Apologies magician.

Due to the pricing structure, it's more likely to be a trader though, as he can profit from small spreads.

Traders need gamblers to fill them in so the trader can only go where gamblers already are or will follow. Your "boldly going where no positional punter would dare to tread" claim is therefore silly.

Imagine there was a market for virtual coin tossing. I'd happily be backing at 2.00 and laying at 1.99. A good old fashioned gambler wouldn't be able to profit, so the only people left in the market are traders and leisure punters. It would be impossible for anyone to undercut me.

So what? You'd still only be acting as a middleman robbing either the backers on one end of your trade or the layers on the other end of a better deal. This is supposed to be an example of how you supply liquidity AND how your presence saves leisure punters money?

Yes, but I'm saying I'll "boldly going where no winning positional punter would dare to tread"

Heads v Tails you'd hardly be needed. Anything else you're assuming the betfair prices would be efficient and you still need the leisure layers and gamblers to tread there to fill you in. You still seem redundant to me.


If you call taking money from leisure punters 'robbing' that is what we are all doing. Just because you are a gambler does not change the fact that you are taking money off the leisure punters just like the traders are.

I'm not the one claiming to be doing leisure punters a favour though.


You seem to split Betfair users broadly into two groups: gamblers and middlemen.

I thought it was you that did that. Does traders saving leisure punters from the big bad evil winning gamblers not ring a bell?

Horse racing is also a different beast to other sports. havent looked at a horse race here in years so god knows what goes on in those markets. When one poster says "try backing a horse, blah, blah" and the other says "team A" they are talking different languages imo

Investor - quiet markets, Contrarian - ir markets. Last refuges of the defeated traders supply liquidity delusionals.

Just checking

I have a few people currently syndicated with various projects - but they most have other demands on their time - so dont have more capacity for the syndicate work they do with me

But I am on the lookout to expand ( with 1 or 2)  full time syndicate members - or service providers (depending on what suits them.

Feck is a legend, and while I don't exactly agree with him on this point (he has many valid sub points), his presence on this thread is bringing in traffic to my little thread that might have died without him.

Long live the 'untouchable' Feck....

Feck N. Eejit
| Topic/replies: 4,734 | Blogger: Feck N. Eejit's blog
Investor - quiet markets, Contrarian - ir markets. Last refuges of the defeated traders supply liquidity delusionals.


If the markets aren't quiet (gaps in the spread) the trader obviously can't make the spread smaller.

My profits are correlated to liquidity: the better the liquidity the more I make. In low liquidity markets my margins are obviously higher, but I only get a tiny fraction matched compared to high liquidity ones.

I find it ironic that during extremely quiet periods such as summer without World Cup or other major tournaments, I got hit with data request charges (2009) for the first time. I wasn't making more data requests, just getting hardly anything matched. So Betfair was penalising me for providing liquidity to p!ss poor markets, and I stopped bothering. I can't imagine that was a good outcome for Betfair. Who cares if someone is making a lot of data requests when the site overall is extremely quiet anyway.

I was making a book for in play Correct Score on several matches that were virtually dead, I got so little matched that a chunk of my (already very small) profit was eaten away by DRC.

Investor, re data charges, how many requests would you have to make to be charged and why would you have to make that many (particularly on a slow changing market)? Are you on the free or paid api? I'm not getting at you btw, I know little about this and I'm asking out of interest.

It was actually through the website. I have multiple screens, and literally have dozens of markets open at the same time on weekends.
I don't get charged, as commission easily covers everything, but this was the exception.

I would suggest using personal recommendations and building a team of more experienced people you trust for model building. Even then I find it is important to keep your cards close to your chest.

In my experience students and new graduates have to be spoon fed and are not particularly self motivated. They also will not have the experience you require. Even with a first in maths/cs they will not be able to add any flair to your ideas and take them forward. If they are the sort of person that could they will be off once they realise how easily/much a decent system makes. I find students/new graduates are useful for specific tasks though such as maintaining code or developing new code around very set parameters.

Also selling the job offer as something around 'betting' is not appealing. It is really project work that can be adapted to different markets. Although I started on here most of my attention is elsewhere now in fields people are much more approving of and willing to work on. Betfair is changing and will continue to change. A year or two from now it could look completely different with far less opportunities (they keep moving the goal posts).

brendanuk1 Joined: 12 Jan 02
Replies: 16229 12 Aug 11 18:31   
Horse racing is also a different beast to other sports. havent looked at a horse race here in years so god knows what goes on in those markets. When one poster says "try backing a horse, blah, blah" and the other says "team A" they are talking different languages imo 

I've learned this the hard way through a zillion different arguments too. I don't think I'll ever properly understand how horse racing markets work.

Paid, Feck.

Thanks Contrarian.

Catfloppo, why do you feel you need the paid one?