Templeton P

best you talk it through with your shrink.

All good....will do so after I feed the unicorns

Marla

Looking through my replay to points you raised I dont see that I asked you to validate anything....(see below)

I was in effect spruiking the upside to Betfair to give balanced viwe to your betfair knocking....

WOW your a PC ..in the 1% of us all.....I assume that means you are a big profit maker from betfair....WD



Marlas Magic
[i]
The point is that for many users it is not a case of paying 5% on the bets that they place.

Some earlier posters seemed to think it was too high...I too think given all opportunities at the touch of a computer screen that 5% is right "coupon rate".....after all shareholders need to be content .....



The technology aspect that you refer to is only really valid if it reflects the numbers of bets that a customer places within a market.


The technology is there 24/7 regardless of whether it is used or not.....one customer may have a minimum bet using the technology features eg. graphs/historical race trading trends etcbut it is there for that punter and the masses...


If I am placing one bet why should I be charged the same amount as someone who places 2000 bets?


Strange and mis-guided comment....consumer thinking....you pay the same rate cause that is the rate.....think of the different levels of "use"...cant cater for them all....(if I buy 100 litre of petrol why should I pay the same as person who buys one litre...CrazyCrazy)....consumer mentality.


The biggest problem with the pricing structure is that Betfair have never spent the resources to actually get to the bottom of it

Bottom of what???missed any connection....do you mean bottom of concept of different rates for different players.....(now there is a minefield!!)


even now the systems in place to monitor it are utterly pathetic given the revenues it generates BF.


Given BF technology previously discussed I doubt if they have any "system" that is pathetic....your comment is a dart thrown hoping to hit something....sadly for you it didnt

Betfair needs to be far cleverer in its pricing structure and needs to go away and come up with something far more dynamic based on the sports involved, pre/in play, volumes of bets being placed, genuine liquidity being added to the site, length of account, etc. The 'one fit all' brush is simply not working and will eventually be Betfairs downfall in the long run.

Working as far as I can see... I am here every day and you are likely a user (perhaps casual but you still seem to be using)

The fit one all approach works for many consumer products....we all pay the same for groceries/petrol doctors etc etc regardless of our usage...


You know the system is fundamentally broken when you cant place pre off bets on certain sports because of the consequences of PC.

I doubt if you ara a PC player...BF say something like 1% are anyway...why do you care what others are faced with.....if they dont want to use then thats their business.......

Curiously last night at the Lingfield Championship meeting ....pools were always $2m + (seemed healthy enough)


What they seem to be missing is that over the longer time period BF will lose so many of these hugely important customers. It is very difficult to maintain that level of success over a sustained period of time (variance, increasing competition from syndicates, less liquidity, etc). Once these customers are lost they wont return readily. These customers are not being replaced. Very few new fish are coming to the exchange. It then becomes shark on shark with BF the only real winners (In the short term). It does not bare thinking about where the exchange will be in a few years time. Its why the share price is utterly ludicrous at the moment.


Such a wide broad unfounded statement or opinion disguised as a statement that best described as CrazyCrazy to the extent that it means nothing.....

Footnote- I dont mean to be harsh just that broad statements defy objective discussion ....

In any event your views will inspire others to think and hopefully any betfair fans (as I am) will also contibute...

All good and GL[/i]

Fixed

I must confess I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist ,,,at least with price manipulation...But I do agree that I dont believe it is one mystery group

I think if I had the money (like some of these large stables and preped horse to lose then I would be showing all the signs of it being a big chance to win.....I anticipate there are bots that can do this... [:confused:'


Maybe someone might know of a bot for this purpose,,,,

Zoot hit a nail on the head RE form analysis, i.e. don’t rely on the same info as everyone else !
If you’re backing horses, from my own experience, I find it difficult to believe that you can get very far without building your own info privy to no one but yourself.

Anyway given all the points going back and forth, I looked at the data for 2010 to 2014 http://data.betfair.com/
Summed up “VOLUME_MATCHED (sums the stakes of both back and lay bets)”  by year and this is what I got for everything in the files not just horseracing.

year	total_volume_matched
2010	11608319617
2011	12596750525
2012	12899611103
2013	12223678649
2014	12407031067

I had to look it up and see but they were at least planning to do so for euro 2012

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/retailandconsumer/9278087/Betfair-to-launch-fixed-odds-betting-website.html

If small population countries like Portugal & Ireland are 3rd and 4th in visiting Betfair that is disheartening I must say for  those of us wanting to see a boost to liquidity on here! :-(

PAW

Great research


2011-2014---12 billion + (subject to my eyes and imaginary columns being correct)

In context ....any variations kind of chump change and variations due to global events eg World Cup (well thought Darlo)

Unless one is a shareholder ....not sure why :

I must say for  those of us wanting to see a boost to liquidity on here! :-(

Plenty plenty plenty ..opportunity for those with the right bots (not me) staking plans (not me) ...commitment to research

Go Betfair....

2008 the first Premium Charge came in with +16% in year leading up to it.
2011 the second Premium Charge came in with +7.9 in year leading up to it.

Other years average 0.5% growth.

Share price rocketing though.

I think the reality is that genuine liquidity has been decreasing over the years and that is borne out by the general feel you get within markets. The volume matched number is heavily distorted by those markets where huge amounts of trading takes place like football, tennis and cricket. Individuals will come on here though and tell you things have never been better...

You are likely to find inplay sports (non-racing) is growing. Cricket in particular. According to Alexa India is second in Betfair's percentage of visitors at 15.2% (UK is 39.3%).

Last season - or perhaps the season before, I can't remember - it was almost always close to the £40m mark. The spotfixing scandal did reduce some of that for late matches. Yesterday's match seemed to be close to the same mark.

zooot - you make some interesting points about efficiency. What do you think about this aspect of the markets in this case:

Take any horse selection as an example, and it will have traded at a range of prices, usually for decent amounts.

Now, not all of those prices can be efficient can they? The bigger priced lays that win, for example, or the short priced backs that lose. There is often a wide range also, not narrow.

If you could price up a horse fairly accurately traders can definitely add a few % extra value through the zig zag moves they create and where a spoofer creates a run in the wrong direction.  If you can't price it up (do the form) any advantage evens out over time with moves against and move towards value.

There is actually a lot of value out there if you have a reference point - can price up accurately.  That is what the really good lone form analysts use to win and the syndicates use to exploit and manipulate.  If you can't do the form / detailed analysis you are chasing mirages.

I have all sorts of analysis showing some really hot spots in certain odds ranges in certain situations and time frames.  I have chased these but some are just random patterns appearing real and disappear. 

Other patterns are real but shift around enough so that it is hard to pin them down for long enough to make money.

Laying drifters is interesting for example.  For periods and some tracks it holds true that laying drifters works really well.  Then it shifts so that laying small dfifts works well and big drifts is a bad idea.  There are often real spike in value at various levels of drift to back or lay. Often this takes the form of zones - hot and cold zones.  But I have found that these zones shift around a lot so you target a hot spot and it lasts a while then a shift occurs so that you have slipped from a hot zone to a cold zone.  The dividing line between zones can be very sharp - step over the line and you go from kadder to snake.  A lot of this is just the apparent patterns in the randomness.  But there is enough in there for it to also be manipulation.

For example, some big players have a period where they push out the odds of the horses they want to back - backing difts seems to wrk to the average punter, then they shift to backing the best horses cleanly and let the weak ones drift as a normal market would expect. They would re-arrange this sequence at their will to keep everyone lost chasing the mirage.

The message is that without the reference point of excellent form analysis you have no reference point to take advantage of value overall and the micro shifts in value due to traders, manipulators and randomness.

A market becomes increasingly efficient the closer it gets to the off. The more money that is staked by a greater number of opinionated punters the more accurate the odds of every contestant becomes.

For pro punters betting late is no value unless you have info that is not generally available to the market. Equally, the later a fun punter enters the market the slower he will lose in the long run.

Overall, analysis of past BF history shows incredible accuracy on a broad scale - once you get to sample sizes of tens of thousands of bets.  Same with my past results.

In amongst this value exists all over the place.  But value bets equal out with the poor value bets just like long term temperature averages are made up of hot and cold days.  It is like you have to somehow out-forecast the thousands of other forecasters trying to pick if the weather tomorrow will be a few degrees cooler / warmer than forecast by the weatherman with a 2 degree handicap (commission).  Easy on many days and it all seems so abvious but over time you get it wrong enough to end up down.

Identifying value with confidence and consistently  is very hard.  The market punishes you if you step outside the value zone and all the while commission is leaking away your profits.  Plus the market is continually shifting and adjusting for a host of reasons so just as you pin something down it shifts.

I once had a system working for thousands of bets and it all seemed logical and predictable and riches bekoned.  Then it shifted for no reason I can pin down and became loss making. Even a large sample size is no guarantee.  You need thousands of bets to know if you have a genuine edge. Analysing past data with sample sizes of say 1000 races, will show up apparent patterns all over the place that will slowly dissappear as the sample size grows.  Some were real and changed over time, some were just wrinkles in the randomness.

By the time your sample size is large enough it is quite possible the market has shifted or adapted and your edge is gone before you were ready to scale up to target it.

The market has a quite amazing ability to adjust itself to remove any advantage someone(s) may spot.  Just like the ocean likes straight and slightly curved beaches and works away at headlands and outcrops to create these, the market nibbles away at the value points to remove them to move towards accuracy.

All the obvious stuff you can forget about such as laying steamers or laying favourites without extra elements to your strategy.  They may even work but commission kills them or else they will work for a while then be terrible just when you increase your stakes.

Spotting value consistently, needs this sort of stuff:
- guts to go totally against the crowd in the right situation
- direct knowledge and observation the masses do not have (e.g. someone who really knows horses and racing)
- inside knowledge
- very high levels analysis way beyond looking at the standard form reading or past data analysis
- manipulation where you are in on the manipulation

A long time ago on another forum I asked guy who seemd to be a tennis betting guru about how much time you have to put into following tennis to be full time betting and profitable.  His reply; 24/7 365 days a year. He was only partly joking. He was at the level of detail of knowing players travel schedules, how many days rest they had, girlfriend troubles, direct observation himself of their matches, calls from contacts in other counties to get info on players, form, injuries etc.  The pros in horse racing have videos of every race and have them all analysed in detail by form experts to build their massive databases. 

That is what it takes to spot value at levels to beat commissiom.

obviously many have considered it that way for a long time.

Horse racing is probably like a highly variable climate with big variations in the daily temperature - but still long terms averages are very very consistent and predictable.  Many big soccer markets are like Saudi Arabia'climate - limited variation and even tighter long term averages.

Even with this varability though in horse racing, it is still just a bunch of horses going around a track watched and studied by thousands of very clever people.  In the end the value edges tend to be squeezed down to 1%, 2% or maybe 3% on average.  Not enough to beat commission for most people.

I have focussed on pattern analysis for a while and although lots of stuff shows all sorts of promise based on combinations of gate, track, odds, odds movement etc. the general rules seems to be:

- if you find an edge of 20% on paper it will end up being way lower than that is real life betting just through the way your bets are taken or not taken in various situations (the value bets will overall be taken less than the poor value bets shifting things against you).  It only takes a small shift in the sample you slice out of the betting opportunities to create a totally different sample to the one you spotted on paper.  So ending up in the zone where commission kills you is a common result.  If commission was 1% or 2% I would be making money all over the place (but if I went big to get the discount I would kill the edges)

- the market is much more adaptable than you would expect and able to shift just enough to respond to your activity to tilt the balance point in your betting from value to non value slightly.  Adjustments to your entry in the marketplace always seem to work against you.  More so the thinner the market which is often where the value lies.

- some apparent advantages just can't be targeted in real life - such as where really long shots show up as winners overall.  Often the match for some huge long shots was only 15 pounds at the amazing odds by some fluke or mistake.  Try to target it and you will be jumped in front of every time.

- repetitive patterns get spotted and copied or exploited, so trying for enough volume of bets is hard as it works against you.

- there are players, very large and some small, playing games leading the market by the nose with all sorts of fake bets, fake volume (self matching), fake momentum in ways that cleverly mix up their patterns so they wrong foot the market and clean up.

- some hot spots in value (where patterns are concerned) tend to shift around like the lights on a disco floor - just as you tread on them they move a little - just enough to mean you miss them. You can see the same pattern you targeted but it moved slightly. The dividing line between a hot spot and very bad spot is often sharp,so these shifts can impact badly.  Someone may have pinned down why these shift and would be cleaning up? 

Trading is probably the "easiest" way for the average person but is tedious, frustrating and can be a dangerous path if you are not an emotionless robot.  The fun days of trading are over.  It is a lot of hours staring at the computer with very high levels of concentration.  Months of work can dissappear with one mistake, hesitation or a computer glitch.  My dog pooping on the floor cost me a week's work once!

Form study is the other main path but this is far from a casual commitment.  I have a friend who makes money on greyhounds.  He is retired, breeds them and races them, knows the scene, visits the tracks and studies every race replay with his own criteria marked up in a little book.  He specialises in 3 tracks. He reckons it is easy.  I tried some of his approaches but without the indepth involvement.  My ratings system threw up nice logical value situations.  It was a lot of work. Interestingly though, the bets where I layed as the odds seemed too low ended up being low for a very good reason. I was laying winners far too often.  The real players in the thick of it had another level of understanding and knowledge I was missing.  As I was not interested in breeding, going to the tracks, talking to the breeders etc. I was always going to be a step behind them.

So paths to profit exist, just are they ones that will improve your life and make you happy??

It might be as hard as zooot suggests for the horses if you are playing in very large volumes.

If you have no more than a low five-figure float on an exchange and are putting no more than 3-4k through the bookmakers a day, then the difficulty is much more likely to be getting on with the High St. and books than it is finding value.

Talk of beating comm. suggests to me that zooot is talking about betting into already liquid markets at closer to saddle prices. That's hard for sure, for the reasons he suggests.

But when you bet at bookmakers, 10-15% of the prices you take never show up on the bf graph--they're better than any price anyone actually matches on here. So your only problem is finding the placers to get on.

The reason to keep on betting on here (smoothing, trading and arbing) when you have made a sizeable bankroll is to maximize your efficiency in using it and (in my case) due to an inefficiently great degree of loss aversion: I've made money and don't want to give too much of it back. But if I was able psychologically to be prepared to lose tens of thousands, then I doubt I would have much use of a bf accnt for betting on horses.

they don't have to say anything. and that's usually done using

1) pseudo scientific language
2) 10.000 words per 'thought'


pawras did the math, so that's basically it

Of course it will continue to drop off. Betfair is only interesting for small traders. We have one affiliate who bets close to a million a month with Pinnacle and hedges some back into the Betfair market through an agent for the lower commission, he was saying betfair is almost impossible for bot betting now. Even the racing has died. I find it all very sad but if they don´t want you don´t hang around!