that what a f-cking exchange is meant to do....bookmakers hedging would mean the exchange is working....a exchange is not meant for betfair to try and keep 100% of all f-cking money

Anyone one that doubts the big 480 customers at betfair may be bookmakers is living in cloud cuckoo land, in my younger days I remember seeing a manager from william hills placing a wad of bets on at ladbrokes and this sort of thing is well known, also take into account how many contacts the big three bookmakers have in the racing industry, there ownership of greyhound tracks and the fact they
always know which horse should start at odds on in maiden races or the fact that the have security pages in there LBO warning offices about limiting the bets on particular runners, this I know because a few years ago a friend of mine received tips from a biog bookmaker from these very pages but of course other bookmakers refused to take any big bets on the runner that won at 6//1

Its not rocket science to work out that the big bookmakers are placing hefty wagers on certain runners and hedging many events on exchanges at the loss to these exchanges as they make less comm charges on this money that is taken from all you normal punters, winning or losing ones.

what is an Exchange for then?

What are bookmakers for then when Andy Blacks father an MP wanted them shut down many years ago, there parasites feeding punters with addictive ways and throwing winning punters on the streets, how dare bookmakers use exchanges, the bookmakers should be banned from using exchanges in my view, bookmakers cant be trusted.

Of course they have a bookmakers license but its probably more the case that betdak are acting as a bookmaker now with 1bet facility in place and I cant see where they can be hedging there bets if someone is betting beyond the capacity of BF and BD liquidity so it brings into question there at the moment there is only one true exchange, luckily for us its also still the best[;)]

P.s. Nairda there is no  reason for bad language on  a public forum how ever much you value your own importance its very rude and not the British way of engaging peoples attention.

i'm not British, so f-ck off

P.s. Nairda there is no  reason for bad language on  a public forum how ever much you value your own importance its very rude and not the British way of engaging peoples attention

Quite right. The British way of engaging people's attention is to chuck a bin through a Footlocker window and set fire to a few cars.

Getting back to my 10.33 post yesterday. I was going to make a further point, but decided to wait and see how this thread might pan out. (A point that seems more relevant now)

Can you imagine some bloke meeting up with an old friend and  recommending Betfair to him? He tells his friend about the 20% better odds, the commission structure, how he gets 14/1 for a 10/1 shot and how he can even lay horses he doesn't fancy etc.

He also mentions that there are plenty of different forums where he can join in discussions, especially his favourite punting of choice.....horseracing.

He tells him that his own favourite forum is general betting, where all the sharp minds exist and that's the place to really concentrate on. (rightly so imo)

Anyways, his friend, (being a decent reader of the form)is mightily impressed, signs up for what he thinks is going to be a long and fruitful relationship with Betfair.

He doesn't have a bet at first and decides to sample the GB forum and by chance pops into this thread.

He reads it all and his eyes roll back in horror at what reads, finding it all a bit much to comprehend. He doesn't like all this gibberish about a PC charge, how it works, how much does he have to win until he pays 20%, is it possible he might even pay 40%?, or even 60%?, of his winning if as he thinks, he has a good chance of being successful?

He has second thoughts and withdraws his balance, knowing full well he'll have to troll around the city placing his bets on with the big three and others, as he's already been banned from a couple of shops for his stealing EW doubles and trebles.

However, he always has that little trick up his sleeve which has served him well in the past.

He's cunning and knows that if he frequents the big bookies that are always full of chinese punters throwing away their hard earned cash after a long shift in their kitchens tossing their woks for hours on end. His £200 bets are hardly given a second glance as the chinese bombard the counter with their multitude of horseracing and dog bets.


He tally's up his winnings for the year.....30k, very impressive he thinks to himself, knowing full well that it would have only been a maximum of 24k if he had stayed with BF.......less all that commission.....

Far fetched???? Not really, just another good liquidity provider lost to BF because of the crazy PC charge, along with many others.


PS I thought I would keep this post brief rather than tedious....

Well wouldn't the person above be shooting himself in the foot?   Surely, if he's only placing bets when he can do it under the cover of multitudes of Chinese wokwanglers, and is making a good profit from those wagers, then he really ought to be betting rather more than he does?   

If he was on Betfair, he wouldn't need to wait for the few moments when he can slip his bets past the bookmakers unnoticed. Instead, he could bet every day, and in as large quantities as liquidity would allow. If he makes twice as much over the course of a year, he's going to end up with considerably more in his pocket, even if he's paying out 40%. And under current rules (and I appreciate the threshold may come down), he's unlikely to pay more than 20% until he's made his first £250K in any case.

I'm not saying that the person in your example wouldn't be put off. Just that, for now, he shouldn't allow himself to be. If he's making £30K while playing cat and mouse with the bookies, he could probably make £50-£60K on Betfair with greater ease. If Betfair changes its rules again, he can always go back to doing what he currently does with the bookies, only he'll probably be doing it with considerably more in the bank than he would have had.

But none of that is really relevant. I'm not saying he has to make more than £30K a year - just that he probably could, using Betfair.    If he wants to make £30K a year, he can choose to do it by wasting a huge number of hours standing around in bookies waiting for those odd moments when he can slip a decent sized bet past the counters.     

Alternatively, he can set £36K as his target (£6K of that being the 20% commission - not that he'll necessarily be liable to pay that for a while). He can then bet from the safety and comfort of his own home. He can decide exactly which bets he wants to play without worrying about whether his money will be accepted, and without having to smuggle it through.  Almost certainly he'll find it much much easier and faster to make his 30K on Betfair then he will trying to fight the bookies. Somebody making £30-£36K a year almost certainly wouldn't be noticed on Betfair.

I don't like the PC/PC2, but your hypothetical punter would be mad to think it's better to run from bookmaker to bookmaker trying to slip through a bet - unless, of course, it's the thrill of being in the bookies that attracts him, in which case he probably wouldn't be a BF target to start with.

Absolutely right. He could. And that might well be his first choice - I'm most definitely not arguing that Betfair's stupid charges won't drive punters away to the competition.   

However, if he decided to choose following the Chinese woksmen into the bookies over using either of the main betting exchanges, he'd almost certainly be cutting off his nose to spite his face.

Oh crikey...   I doubt somebody so wussy about his privacy is going to be the sort of person who wants to hang out at bookies for large parts of his life. 

And in any case, if those are things that concern him, he probably wouldn't ever want to bet with a betting exchange - and in that case I don't see why he's relevant to this thread. It would be the privacy issues that would be putting him off. Nothing to do with the PC debacle.

the fact that only a handful are affected by pc2 is little respite for the millions that aspire to do so and as an example;



How do you know it's only a handful bff? Are you privy to all Betfair's figures? If not, where are getting this information from?

thread could have been done and dusted with a couple of "no"s and a "thank you", imo

Stewart betfair stated that some 480 will be charged the pc2



And you believe eveything Betfair state do you? I will take that figure with a pinch of salt.

Pray tell, how many clients did they state were affected by PC1?