*NEWS* BETFAIR HAVE CREATED NEW PRICES IN ORDER TO SKIM READ ON

The made-up bet at 2.02 is there for API customers as well.  They can't see it, because the API interface hides those bets, but it's still there e.g. the API customer will end up taking the 2.02 if they try to back team B.

Personally I think this cross-matching is a good thing.  Before they introduced it, all the profit from arbitraging between selections went to bot operators.  Now most goes to normal customers (with just the little bit  caused by rounding prices to the nearest price point going to BF).

This issue has been around for....eons.....

Has anyone ever been able to access the extra profit Betfair make through "Skimming" ?

Feck N. Eejit
Date Joined: 10 Jan 02
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08 Nov 11 17:22
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10 Jan 02
| Topic/replies: 6,004 | Blogger: Feck N. Eejit's blog
I agree with JPL66. The cross matcher is about the only good thing ever to come out of betfair towers imo.


They should give the price taker the real reciprocal price, rather than skimming by only matching at discrete odds intervals though.

I should keep my fat mouth shut, because it appears they are also skimming the overround on markets!!!

Taking a look at the SP total market percentages on each race and looking at the data, the figures aren't adding up and there used to be about a 3% market advantage and now it adds up to guess what????

EXACTLY 0%

So it isn't punters getting on the bandwagon, that's for sure.

I have other strategies, so Betfair, what are you willing to pay to retain me?

If someone's been logging into your account from Manchester (and you're not in Manchester, I take it) then you have a much bigger problem than your paranoid fear that Betfair are logging into your account...

I thought that cross-matching was a BF money-making venture but I'm now pretty happy that it's
a square deal and that they are simply making the market efficient. Since they refunded me a
couple of quid for nothing in the Oz market I'm convinced they are being straight about it.

One noticeable thing compared to the "old days" is that you NEVER see a market at 40% I.R. the
way you used to. I can't decide if this is because of BF's bots or Tom's, D1ck's and Harry's.

BTO, if you logged into some kind of leaderboard or points competition here to check your position, a login(from Betfair) will show up in the security section.

how can making a tiny marginal profit from cross matching be a bad thing as there is natural variation between back/lay over-rounds in immature or dynamic markets anyway, are we all looking too make the same small profits from the system as customers ?

Brass, the real skim seems to take place in running where they are making a fortune!
Ever wonder the real reason for the 5 second delay?

Punters know there is a 5 second delay, so they will lay much lower than the current price or back much higher than the current price, hoping not to miss the boat.

So let's say in the lay queue there is :

$1000 @ 1.50
$500 @ 1.49
$750 @ 1.48

And someone dumps a back bet $5,000 @ 1.45 all the money waiting is matched which leaves $2,750 for Betfair to play with.
A portion of it will sit in the queue unmatched, but a portion of it will be matched at presumably $1.55, which we won't see, as it's virtual.
And this is the real scandal imho.

Thinking logically 5 seconds gives them more than enough time to make book calculations and put up virtual bets match them and skim a percentage.

If one punter is disadvantaged by a slower connection or slower pictures or slower brain, it's not going to do anything to level the playing field by delaying everything by 5 seconds.
The same penalties apply whether it's 5 seconds or 50 seconds or 5 milliseconds.

I have long wondered how punters can be so exact in pricing in running, when I see so many wrong (mispriced) trades in running.
If you look at enough inrunning data it boggles the mind just how punters can overall breakeven, when there are so many huge variations to the end result.

When you rob Peter to pay Paul, you have a very angry Peter, but you breakeven.

BTO seems to have taken his ball home for no reason.

longbridge, betfair run various competitions/sites that require you to log in. They're not all hosted in hammersmith so some logins show as different IP addresses than the normal betfair site. If you login into the bdp.betfair.com forum it'll show a login from somewhere oop north can't remember where.