Which betting exchange...

You missed smarkets.

I see no reason to use any other than BF unless you are a PC payer looking to avoid that.

Thanks for the reply Longbridge, I forgot about smarkets, I like the betfair layout the best of all the exchanges, I find **** the least user friendly imo,but ut has a very good customer service.

I agree with both of you, betfair is the place to be, like it or loathe it!
Nice to see the General Betting forum getting more use these days

Polymarket calls itself the worlds biggest prediction market, which is just another name for betting exchange. UK Users aren't currently allowed to bet.

Some observations, huge markets in non-sports, circa 500K active monthly traders, they pay 4% interest on tied up money, unmatched bets don't drain from your capital until matched, if you trade or cash out a bet you get the money + profit added to your balance right away not when the market settles, they're planning US launch this fall, not as user friendly as here.

"unmatched bets don't drain from your capital until matched"

I am intrigued how they manage that - if you hae 5 1k unmatched bets on your account, and one matches, what happens to the other 4?

"unmatched bets don't drain from your capital until matched"

I am intrigued how they manage that - if you hae 5 1k unmatched bets on your account, and one matches, what happens to the other 4?

The other 4 get cancelled if your balance can no longer cover it. I've found it's probably not the best to put up lots of unmatched bets because you can lose track, and the bets that become value will get matched and the others cancelled. There doesn't appear to be any fees or they're minimal, maybe they're going for growth before monetizing it. It's a Peter Thiel company with Trump Jr on board, running on the Polygon network. I've put in a small amount to bet that I'm not worried about losing. I bet politics so it's worth it, NYC mayor has less than £20K matched on here and over $55M on there.

Thanks blank, interesting way of doing it.

There is a reason to use Smarkets (or at least there was) but they will close your account if you figure out why and win.  There's only so much liquidity on here for starters.  Their algorithm isn't much cop (well it wasn't) for seconds.

I don't blame them as they wouldn't still be trading if they didn't cull accounts.  But if they'd been more savvy, I'm almost certain they wouldn't have had to close so many accounts

Polymarket is not explicitly illegal in the UK, but it has faced regulatory issues elsewhere and operates in a grey area as an unlicensed platform for prediction markets. While UK regulators haven't blocked access, users are cautioned to seek professional tax advice on crypto profits, and using a VPN to bypass potential future blocks could have legal implications.

AI's response

When I signed up and logged into Polymarket through a UK IP address it wouldn't let me fund the account, saying they don't accept UK users, So I had to go through VPN.

The NYSE has just taken a stake in them valuing them at $9Bn. It reminds me a bit of the early days of Betfair.