Smarkets closing accounts

Charlatan chancers, steer well clear!

From their piratical Ts and Cs;



Clearly Erroneous Bets Policy

1. Erroneous bets

Smarkets may consider bets to be clearly erroneous in cases of obvious and significant input error, whether with stake, price or identification of a contract, and where best price execution cannot account for the error and bring the bet within the defined boundaries of the ‘fair price’ as described below. Please note that the price differences noted below are in absolute difference in percentage price unless stated otherwise. For example a bet matched at odds of 50% (2.0 in decimal format) is considered 10% different to the price of 40% (2.5 in decimal odds).

In cases where best price execution can only account for a part of a bet, we would still consider any other portion of the bet to be clearly erroneous if it falls under the definitions below.

This policy is designed to protect customers, however, where one or more counter party to the erroneous bet trades out of their position, we may not be able to recover the full amount and the customer who placed the erroneous bet will remain liable for the difference. The customer placing the bet will be defined as the one placing the order in the first instance.


2. Filing a complaint

In order to raise an erroneous bet complaint, a written request for the bet to be investigated must be received by Smarkets via email to support@smarkets.com within 60 minutes of the bet being matched and, in the absence of exceptional circumstances, this must be received before the result has been decided.

For this purpose, exceptional circumstances shall include but not be limited to, bets that are matched just moments before a market is decided and where contacting us before this would be impractical. The request must include the following information:

The time the bet was matched
The contract and market the bet was placed on
Price the bet was matched at
Reason for believing the bet to be erroneous

Please note that it is still the responsibility of users to manage their own bets in-play in unmanaged markets.


3. Outlier transactions

In the case of outlier transactions Smarkets may, at its sole and absolute discretion and on a case by case basis, carry out investigations into trades beyond the 60 minute reporting window or after events have been settled.

Outlier transactions are defined as bets matched at a price that exceeds +-20% of the determined fair market price at the time the bet was matched.
4. Defining fair market price

When a complaint is filed, Smarkets will use any available resources, including but not limited to, recent trades on the Smarkets exchange and prices available elsewhere at the time, to determine the fair market price at the time the bet was matched. If the erroneous bet was matched at a price of +-15% of the fair market price at the time, Smarkets reserves the right to void the bet.

In addition to recent execution prices and prices available on other platforms at the time the bet was matched, Smarkets may also consider a number of additional factors when deciding whether a bet is clearly erroneous.

These include, but are not limited to, system malfunction, the volatility of the contract, new information becoming available in the public domain that may significantly alter the price (such as team news for a football match), whether the result of the bet had been unconditionally decided before a complaint was raised, whether betting on the market was recently halted and resumed, the start price of the selection and if the complainant had taken any steps to limit their exposure to the erroneous bet.

For example if the price of a contract is particularly volatile at the time a bet was matched, due to new information becoming public or otherwise, it is less likely bets will be voided under this policy as the fair price would be more difficult to determine objectively.

In cases where Smarkets cannot provide a reasonable determination of the fair price of the contract, no bets will be voided.
5. Reviewing bets on Smarkets’ own motion

Smarkets may also conduct reviews of bets on their own initiative. In normal office hours, and excluding the case of outlier transactions, users will be alerted to the investigation and informed of a decision within 120 minutes of the bets being matched.

Where the erroneous bet occurs outside normal office hours, a decision will be conveyed by 18:00 GMT on the next business day, defined as Monday to Friday and excluding national holidays in the UK.





So, any whinging loser who says `I made a mistake, pressed the wrong button! Yes, I was happy with it until the market went against me, but now that I`ve lost, I`ll scweam and scweam until you bail me out!`,  can have the bet cancelled, even after the event!  As for this whole `fair price` boll0x, well, if bf applied such stupidity, I`d never win a penny! Worse, they seed their own  markets, so many `erroneous` and `unfair` prices cancelled will be them saving themselves money, for their own mistakes!

And to compound it all, you could have a decent winner Friday evening, whisk the mistress off for a nice celebratory weekend in New York to spend all your winnings, get back Tuesday evening, just in time to receive an email telling you the winning bet was now, and only now, four days later, being void!

These rules are beyond outrageous, so nanny-ish! Man up, cry baby losers!

About Smarkets
Smarkets is an award-winning, product-led, sports betting company headquartered in London that processes billions of pounds in traded volume each year.

We operate two main products - the Smarkets exchange, a sophisticated betting exchange and prediction market platform and SBK, an app that delivers industry-disrupting odds by drawing prices from the exchange and presenting them in a sleek, sportsbook interface.

Ed - you'd think that as an exchange, you're their ideal customer generating £20k of commission over ten years, while not losing a penny to you.

If Smarkets are an exchange, why would they ban customers? The suggestion would be that they are not really an exchange at all.

What I have heard is that you will only get banned if your account shows a profit.
If your account is showing a loss than you are welcome.
So it appears it's the place for fun bettors only.

Their markets are almost entirely funded by a handful of API market makers. I dont know exactly what the agreement is between the two parties but I do know that the market makers do get gievn access to some user information and that then affects the ways the markets behave.
So, for example, lets say a horse is available to lay for £10 @ 4.0
If a new customer lays £100 @4.0 that will get matched within seconds...something like £10 every hald a second.
If I lay the same horse @4.0 for £100 the £10 obviously gets matched but then all betting on that horse will disappear for several hours....possibly even right up to the off.
On some events if I lay a selection all the money for all the selections will disappear.

With some accounts laying the £100 @ 4.0 will result in the £10 being taken...then another £10 after 5mins...then another 5mins. Whereas a new account - pretty instant.
The markets makers clearly have some customer info.
They also apparently have some pull with the bosses and can (now) ask them to close accounts that are consistently in profit.

They've never been a true exchange as only the privileged few ever had access to their API. Those market makers have smarkets over a barrel and probably have more say that what happens on the exchange than smarkets own staff

I had api access for a while.
The problem now is they are asking for Source of Wealth docs and suspending accounts while waiting for approval. However I have read of some people waiting 2 months or more for approval.

To me they felt like BF's more upmarket, thinking man's little brother.  I should've started using them before 2018, but I just thought there won't be anything there you can't do here, and here are more markets, sport, punters and turnover.  It was the premium charge and the fact that they were making profits that made me open an account.  Seeing as they've made a loss on their last three published accounts when I last looked (maybe that's four now), have been hit by 2-3 months of no sport through COVID and a whopping fine last year which I think was 10-15% of their annual revenue, (excessive imo) it didn't come as a surprise that they closed my account.  I think it would have been smarter on their behalf to limit me to say 100 bets per month though.  There are things that they do on their market making side that I don't understand the rationale behind.  Feels like they are throwing money away to me.  Maybe it's a betting form of transfer pricing.

Smarkets offer horse multiples which was news to me. And commission free for the year, if you sign up now.

I had an email from them saying my photo id was about to expire and they require a new photo id.

To me this is ridiculous, they already have my photo id, I think it's time to withdraw and stop betting with them. I don't think these companies want any customers.

Covering their backs IMO - they don't want a regulator demanding evidence of KYC checks having been performed on customers and being challenged over out-of-date docs.

Especially smarkets after they got hit for a six-figure fine for AML failings.

So by asking for updated photo ID, are they suggesting you might have somehow morphed into a different person?

Or perhaps sold the account?  People do that, allegedly - one used to see people on here offering to sell lifteime-losing accounts to wannabee PC-avoiders?