Who keeps taking 4 and 5 pence worth of bets on here ?

Probably Betfairs cross matching bot.

If you report it to betfair they do usually ban the individuals involved eventually.

Various ways of it happening, some harmless and unavoidable (people betting in non-GBP currencies), some could be cross-matching (especially if it's on long prices), some maybe abusive (the how is not unknown, I'm not repeating it here).

Which markets/selections/prices would be an interesting starting point?

Thanks lads


It's very often on long prices and many multiples of 4 and 5 pence bets which over time tally up to around 50p worth  maybe.

Happens a fair bit -  just was curious at first as to who would even bother 

I think i would be more annoyed about winning a 100/1 shot having only wagered 5 pence  than if i hadn't .

Not too worrying on long shots - there's not the rounding issues of people taking pennies at carefully-crafted-to-shaft prices.

Bingo bongo is probably right it's cross-matching - though if you think of it as a bot you'll struggle to understand what's going on.

I don't tend to get too frustrated by it, especially when it's at long odds, because they can be so few and far between. But the other week, I kept continuously getting matched by 10p on a tennis market. And I mean after every point for several points in a row. Now that pissed me off. I have once reported it to Betfair because someone kept laying me at short odds for 1p. I cancelled my bet once I had about £1.70 matched. I won the bet, but lost the money because of the rounding errors, hence why I reported it to Betfair. At long odds, it's still a fair bet on both sides; but at short odds, there is the possibility to have a sure fire winner.

I doubt it's cross-matching. The amounts are too consistent. I see it quite alot in cricket. I got matched for 3 cents a couple of hours ago in the IPL winner market. Unless they are exploiting an error in bf's rounding it's difficult to see why they do it. Been going on for a long time though.

Some of this is also a sign of falling liquidity. You wouldn't notice if you were getting matched by 2p if it was interspersed by £x and £x. But when you're putting in even just small bets of £2 and £3 at long odds, and it's taking as many as 20 individual bets to fill an order, it's stark.

If I stick up a stake of £1000.05 (and it can happen, because I work out my stakes on liability) and someone takes
£1000 of it, there is 5p left. It just happens. Who cares?

There does seem to be a minority of punters who take 5p of a £2 bet in order to "hide" it. The solution is to stake £2.10
because they get fed up and go away. They're mugs anyway.

840    £0.01    £8.39

ffs

In many cases it's because there is a hidden £1.95 on the next price up.

I used to offer prices on the top 5 golf market,and I was quickly followed by someone offering £1.95 on all 156
runners at the next price up.

JML - YES ,good point - that must happen a fair bit

The person who backs 1p bets needs strung up.

Yep, it's someone who lays £1.95 or thereabouts across all sorts of markets in a wide range of sports. You can tell Betfair but whilst they say they'll look into it, they're doing fcuk all as it's been happening for years.

The £1.95 bets could be someone or many different people that have euro accounts, their minimum bet is 2 euros which is less than £2 so is hidden on screen. There might be some that take advantage of this with hidden bets but they're not doing anything against betfair's rules.

Good point blank. I'd forgotten the other currencies.

I see $3 (AUD), which doesn't show, at a tick better than the best price showing in a lot of cricket markets, and it's been going on for many years. Why someone would do this, baffles me. Sure, your bet gets taken when someone bets on the best price showing. But if the $3 bet was $5 and showing then more people would bet at the one tick better price.

As for the 3 cent and similar bets, these are bets that are placed against existing offered bets. Someone (or a bot) has to deliberately make those bets. Again, I have no idea why, except perhaps a bot greening up.

Some explanations
1) A bot greening up
2) Betfair's cash out
3) Cross matching

Small foreign currency bets may be "hidden" from some customers - but that doesn't mean that anyone's hiding them. It just means that someone from oz wants to have a little bet. I can't see any advantage to having a teeny weeny bet waiting at the top of the queue so I doubt it's part of any evil scheme. The information on all bets (including small ones) is available over the API so if you want to see where the little money is you can.

The other currencies is nothing more than a convenient excuse. This is a bot.  A bot involved in a huge array of sports and usually when the book is at a decent over-round. Even if it is in another currency, the person knows exactly what they're doing. Try seeding any market which isn't happening for weeks and automatically these sub £2 amounts will leapfrog you.

pxb, the reason they do it is so the manual seeder (a luddite such as myself) doesn't realise it's there and so doesn't leapfrog it.  £1.95 at 1.80 is better than £2 at 1.99.

Just to add cross matching between markets seems to be on now. So if these small bets are on football correct score markets?? - then I think it could be matching someone betting on asian handicaps or team + goals markets.

it is correct score,butr all the same it's with increasing regularity .

it's like a children's playground on here now.

Used to be seat of your pants style betting ,now it's a pale shadow - a few pence here or there .

Well as the cmcm only came in recently I think you can blame bf for at least some of that increase. Of course the overall amount matched on cs should have increased as a result.

Incidently you'd be even more annoyed if you were the customer bot on the asian handicaps or team + goals because it looks to me like its now outpriced by the betfair bot half the time. I guess they were making good profits while it lasted.

Yes I saw that. They've put the football asian handicap bot in the european handicap markets, team +1, team +2, team +3.

It should be called botfair.

Yep, Betfair are about to hit a lot of customers hard with their cross market cross matching bot.  Fingers crossed it somehow results in new opportunities but I'm guessing it won't.

indeed Yom