Why is the guy who bets less than £2 in every quiet market..............

how much is he offering exactly?  Can you see it in pence?  I'm wondering if it could be a currency issue... I think people who have accounts in say Euros are subject to a EUR2 minimum, which is about £1.66

Of course, that explains it. OMG, I need an account with a different currency. It's such a huge advantage.

I think the minimum in € is 4 and AUD is 5. Not sure about USD but I'm guessing 4 there as well.

ok, if that's true my original question still stands.

There is a number of people doing this quite deliberately. On all the Irish markets (£1.71 ish ) and on UK markets £1.99.

It doesn't fuss me if there is one submarine bet sitting ahead of me in the queue but I will admit that strings of them do p1ss me off.

The whole site is crawling with them. It takes value away for my bots. Now its not the competition I mind, it's the fact it's against the rules and I have been told in no uncertain term by betfair that they won't tolerate me doing it myself.

Currency	Symbol	Min Bet	/GBP rate	£ Min Bet
UK Sterling	GBP	2	1	2
Euro	EUR	2	0.83	1.66
Australian Dollar	AUD	5	0.65	3.25
US Dollar	USD	4	0.63	2.52
Canadian Dollar	CAD	6	0.63	3.78
Singapore Dollar	SGD	6	0.5	3
Hong Kong Dollar	HGK	25	0.08	2
Norwegian Krone	NOK	30	0.11	3.3
Danish Krone	DKK	30	0.11	3.3
Swedish Krona	SEK	30	0.0935	2.805

My superhuman search skills allowed my to find that the minimum bet stakes are: GBP 2; EUR 2; AUD 5; USD 4; CAD 6; SGD 6; HGK 25; NOK 30; DKK 30; SEK 30.

I'm also a slow typer.

One ahead in the queue is not doing much harm but I regularly see two and on football specials up to 10. Sometimes it is handy as they firstly clearly don't appreciate how cross matching works and they sometimes make over broke books.  I will admit to piggybacking with £x + 30p so as to show whole pounds on screen.

Thanks for that Livermore. Euro2 bets is news to me.  Betfair could easily solve this by simply showing £1 on screen instead of £2.

I think I will ask for a Euro account.

Second thoughts, perhaps not.  I am not convinced that currency will be with us for much longer.

yeah - looks like the only currency it helps in is EUR.

But why would I want to place a £1.99 bet?  As I see it:
They show up in the API correctly
They show up on the Traded and Available screen rounded to the nearest £
They only show up on the main screen if they exceed £2

I *think* this is correct...

So do people want to 'hide' the bet so others (who look only at the main screen) will not offer a better price?

I'm pretty sure the minimum in Euro used to be 4. I guess they have changed it ?

It's because of the bots that are programmed to jump over a more generously priced bet.  If the bot cannot see it, then they don't recognise to tick up.

Honk Kong $ also could explain may of the bets placed that look like £1.99.

Mar 22, 2012 -- 1:04PM, Eddie the eagle wrote:

I'm pretty sure the minimum in Euro used to be 4. I guess they have changed it ?

It appears so and presumably recently.

But the bots CAN see it, can't they?  Assuming its an API bot....

I don't think so.  But test it by putting up a £2 bet and see if they hop.  And then a £1 bet and see if they do.  They generally will for the former but not for the latter.



There was a day when any thread discussing sub £2 bets would get pulled.  I hope we are into a new era.

OK, i've had a look. Bots can definitely see the 1.99 bet through the API.

and there do seem to be a lot of them, perhaps more as Lays, (as well as a lot of £1.66 bets on both back and lay sides)

Thanks.

It is the case that £2 gets jumped but less than £2 doesn't, which suggests the bots are either not being ran through the API or arent concerned. But you'd think if its worth jumping over £2 it would be worth jumping over £1.99.

Yes that's correct pumpinslayer. In the early days I tried this out. Hardly worth it as everything I did was manual back then.

I did find that in the Half time score market for instance, if I made a market to £2+ I would get qjumped. If I put less than £2 up, I wouldn't and would end up getting matched. I didn't systematically exploit this, but just did it to figure out how the market making bots worked.

So at least some of the very big market makers ignore sub £2 bets either on purpose or through a design flaw.

I had an EUR account, but when I got the master / sub structure it all had to be in one currency.

Find a quiet market, check that there are invisible bets above the odds currently offered, decide on the price you want to back, put up a £2 lay at one tick below that price and an invisible £1.90 back at your price. You £1.90 will get matched much more often than your £2 bet by the leapfrogging robots, often several times before the robot reaches its liability limit. If the £1.90 isn't matched in the first 20 seconds then it won't get matched by the robots so remove your £2 lay before a human finds it and takes it.

It's hard to feel sympathy for someone who uses the sentence.....It takes value away for my bots.

I like big bots and I cannot lie

You pennypinchers can't deny

When a girl walks in with an itty bitty bet

And bets £1.66 in your stead

Find a quiet market, check that there are invisible bets above the odds currently offered, decide on the price you want to back, put up a £2 lay at one tick below that price and an invisible £1.90 back at your price. You £1.90 will get matched much more often than your £2 bet by the leapfrogging robots, often several times before the robot reaches its liability limit. If the £1.90 isn't matched in the first 20 seconds then it won't get matched by the robots so remove your £2 lay before a human finds it and takes it.

Firstly did you mean to say "no invisible odds" as if indeed there are, the point would be not to fall over these,
by making sure that your requested odds are well clear of them!

Sorry that went off before I had finished!

The main point I was coming to is that you may be celebrating getting your £1.90 bet matched but the euphoria
will be short lived!

Reason being is that the person on the losing end will have his losses refunded!

Aunty Post - No, I mean't WHERE there are invisible prices.

The idea is to check that there is someone playing that market with invisible bets, where they are leapfrogging the best visible price by one tick with a small invisible bet of just under £2.

For example someone is offering to lay 3.0 for £50, and when you check you find that there is an invisible lay offer of £1.70 at 3.05. Now if I am happy to back at, say, 6.2 then I will put up a small but visible lay of £2 at 6.0 and at the same time put up an invisible back of £1.90 at 6.2. I am hoping that the person laying the invisible 3.05 is actually a robot that is instructed to top the best price with a small invisible bet. If it is then I get matched at 6.2 quite quickly, if it isn't then nothing happens and I remove my lay at 6.0.

Often these robots will have a built in maximum liability and they will keep putting up more small invisible bets at 6.2 after the first has been matched, so if they are programmed to keep laying up to a liability of, say, £100, then I will eventually get almost £20 on in lots of small bets. Great if you know the true price is really about 9/4.

The downside is if someone sees your lay of 6.0 and takes it, but that is VERY rare and is why you can only do it in early markets where there is nothing happening.