if someone has won 25k on average for the last 10 years...id say well done... weall aspire to win here but why should betfair charge them more than some dimwit thats just joined?

i had my biggest winning market a few wks ago, won 16k, paid the com 600 and nearly 3k pc.  joe blogs signs up and if he'd placed the same series of bets would be 3k better off. Now if this market had been settled with me in the super pc net, id have been pc'd for about 8k+...now thats bonkers.

dont worry mardock... atleast you now have a buffer on the next few winning weeks.
 
is..another bonkers thing on here that i often find amazing when people mention it.  Happy to lose to off set future winning weeks - crazy.

Maybe I am cynical, but I am surprised no-one has mentioned the timings of these trials.
The fact that the trial period for 0.5% comm on Asian Hcaps is (initially) from today until the 17th August means there will be little in terms of football matches of any real volume, given that English football starts 17th August.  Maybe some of the high volume European leagues start before then?

A quick look at today's in-play matches (8am 20/07/2013) shows for all matches only GBP 8,026 has been matched (on "Match Odds" markets). Will be circa £0 on Asian Hcaps I would guess?

The cynic in me says, when 17th arrives and there is no improvement in volume, it will be scrapped, but at least the shareholders can be told "we have trialled 0.5% etc".  Why not hold the trial until the 31st October like the transaction charge trial period?  Seems too convenient for me... anyway, I hope to be wrong :)

Why not have the 0.5% trial on "Match Odds" markets?

I've found some matches where it's 0.5%. The friendlies today (e.g. Indonesia XI v Liverpool), the Danish Superleague, and Swedish football.

For the matches where it's 0.5% on Asian Handicaps, it's also 0.5% on TOTAL GOALS. So if people could move from over/under markets to Total Goals that would be great :) And hopefully some of the match odds money finds its way to the -0.5 Asian handicap markets.

Also can anyone confirm if it's still 3% implied commission on these markets? You should be able to tell from how many Betfair points you got from any losing bet on these markets. (If so it's a great change also for PC payers.)

Personally however I'm on holiday right now, and will not be placing many bets before the 18th of August however nice this change is. Fingers crossed that they don't cancel the trial before proper football starts...

To reply to myself I can say that it looks like goals already scored in the match DO count if you bet in play here.

Mr.Anderson
Date Joined:     07 Oct 10
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[...]
For the matches where it's 0.5% on Asian Handicaps, it's also 0.5% on TOTAL GOALS. So if people could move from over/under markets to Total Goals that would be great :)
[...]

Total Goals has always been an inherently better market than the over/unders anyway, as you save on commission when betting on multiple selections (when you have positions backing say 3 or more and laying 2 or more etc. you pay commission on the whole thing rather than each individual market in the over/unders.

I started out trading only total goals. I moved to over/unders when my trades got bigger, due to the far superior liquidity. The terrible tick size in asians and total goals discourage market makers as well.

Clydebank: It's not (yet?) 0.5% for all matches. I gave some examples above. Today it's 0.5% for the women's Euro, and most, but not all of the friendlies. If you look at matches further into the future it usually still says 5%.

This is copied from Sweden (W) v Iceland (W)/Asian Handicaps: "Commission on this market
0.5% Market Base Rate (minus your discount)". For Total goals it says: "Commission on this market 0.5% (no discounts allowed)". So maybe you even get a discount on the Asian Handicap market? I had a win on Total Goals yesterday, and paid 0.5% (no discount as expected).


Investor: I agree Total goals tick sizes could do with a change.


Getafix: Yes, that's what the help file says: "In addition, commission on these markets is taken from total winnings on the market across all lines." (http://en.learning.betfair.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5380).

Just like to add my voice to those welcoming this as a potentially positive move. Generally find myself in agreement with those voices who worry about the negative direction of betfair in recent years and would be delighted to see a change in direction.

0.5% on asian handicaps needs much more than a month to show real results. We all know that the real business of football is done on the asian markets, an area betfair appeared to have abandoned in recent years, but it will take time to re-build liquidity and volume.

A step in the right direction.

Does the removal of Transaction Charges effect everyone or just people who have "Premium Accounts"?

I can't see an official announcement anywhere.

Trouble is how can the liquidity be generated from the levels it is now? They are starting with a very small trial time and it doesnt appear to being advertised.

There is immediately liquidity elsewhere of at least £10k (for all but the minor leagues) at a combined book of 101-102% with no commission and more importantly no PC if you win over £250k.

Its going to be tough to get the genuine punters to move over and traders dont really need a cut in basic commission.

Its a positive step but if they were really serious they would say winning bets are excluded from PC calcs and guarantee that these terms will be inplace long term (e.g. 18 months min to take us through the next world cup).

They would also need to attract the east asian punters like they have the asian cricket punters.

Transaction charges prolly don't effect more than 50 people imo.  No need for an official announcement.  The Football Asian Hcap markets are priced up in running by only 1 person.  Prolly they want more competition and better prices for advertising/comparison reasons.

A quick calculation, I see Hazel joined betfair in 2001 (forum at least)...  The earliest member of betfair, from the forum, I have ever seen is year 2000. So if Hazel did well from day 1, an average over 12 years works out at about 21k per year (considering a total of 250k winnings).  Anyone, deciding to punt for a living is risking many things, including future employment etc...I can't see many employers seeing a gap of 12 years as a good thing.  Hazel, I see, was one of the first to join Betfair, loyalty rewarded by a 60% tax rate!  Not even the government (UK) taxes people as high as 60%!  The government doesn't also backdate tax based on past performance, it is based on the previous 1 year - something betfair could possibly learn from!

One thing, not often mentioned is the impact PC has on high net individuals, 250k profit is not much to someone who can afford to bet large amounts on a regular basis (bets in over 1000 markets - easily done over a few years imo).  This type of customer will no longer bet on betfair which has a huge impact on the "ecosystem". 

On another note, transaction charges... these have very little impact on PC players, the amounts such players bet means they pay large amounts of commission which offsets the transaction charges by quite a margin (for position takers).  This therefore only benefits the heavily botted PC traders (where watching the market dynamics is more important than estimating form etc).  This can only mean one thing, a heavier burdon on BF's servers and probably more problems when Betfair can't cope with the high number of transactions (i.e., Saturdays around 3pm).

The Asian h'cap market is an automated market, probably about the best example of a bot derivative market.  Someone's got to build a bot to compete with the guy that has the only bot running the market, which takes time and why build a bot if you think the market will revert back to a base rate of 5%, because surely you'd have done it already.  You are not going to stick up prices manually on a derivative bot priced market, unless there is a lot of action, so I don't really know where this particular move can go positively, since they seem to be only targeting premium account people to provide prices on essentially dud football games.  Although saying that they maybe only need to persuade 1 extra person.

Hazel is not that unusual. Well, he might be, but his situation isn't.

As has been suggested above, anyone earning close to an average UK income since the early days will have reached 250k by now, which would include all the pros, or at least all those who had an average paying job previously. It's these people I feel most sympathy for. Imagine quitting a job, and all the hidden benefits (pension, share schemes, paid holidays, future promotions etc.) to trade full-time, and then find that your 5% commission increases to first 20% and then later to 40%, 50% or 60%. The way these charges were introduced is of course inherently unfair - some people may have been over 250k already, while others like myself were already close enough that the higher rates were inevitable. People made their money based on the rules at the time, and the rules changed overnight. And they may well change again. That 250k limit could easily become 100k or 10k. It's hard to think of any other business that could have got away with this, but the answer is that Betfair are a de facto monopoly and can do what they like.

The recent transaction charge changes don't help me one bit, I have never paid any, and the Asian Handicap trial at 0.5% simply means I would pay less commission at settlement tome, and more at PC deduction time. The 3% implied commission on AH losses might come in handy though.

The reason the premium charge was/is both retrospective and lifetime, rather than the much fairer option of from scratch at implementation, and annual, is because if you have an annual exemption or non retrospective charge, people will be inclined to bet up to their exemption or profits limit.  By making it retrospective it locked people in, in terms of both the maths and the psychology.

well said hazel

that what i have been trying to say

can be   as low as

to win £20 per week from now on I will continue to pay 60%.

that  no high roller 

it deffo  need to be looked at

To be on 60% you have to have only paid a max of 5% of your total winnings in commission. To do this you are either an exceptional punter (on 2% commission you are talking about a long term 20% return on stakes) or you are trading or market making.

It seems the 50% and 60% are attempting to claw back previous high winnings that whoever devised the scheme was jealous of. If it wasn't there would be no need to set some people at 40% and some at 60%.

Wont last 5 years if the current exchange trend continues imo

Furthermore Betfair have also reduced the base commission rate to 0.5% for Asian Handicap markets in all Football matches. Again this is on a trial basis but the timings for this are from today (19th July) to 17th August when we will review the outcome.

I see the matches are back up to 5%, is that it then?  Was it deemed a failure or is this still being reviewed?