Many people back/lay for minimal profit to keep commission at 2% ?

I don't quite get this.
Surely however big your stakes are the points which are used to calculate commission are based on p or l on each market. If the profit is minimal so are the points. Aren't they ?

He means long term profit/loss Salmon not PL on a single race. So for example if you discovered that backing all jockeys with beard growth at Midlands tracks consistently made a small profit or broke even after comm' would you back them to lower your overall comm'

I still think a minimal profit would make equally minimal difference to your commission. It MIGHT be a way of avoiding PC but even that I can't quite work out.

You pay commission on the profit you make on a race

The OP is taking the p1ss. HTH.

clown thread...again

he does not mean back and lay the same horse in the same market

Have I been hooked ?     

Line and sinker.

how does commission and the pc charge work..............would everyone paying the PC be only paying 2% commission.........seems unfair if they have to pay 5% and 20%

It's more complicated than that cardiffc. I have never been below 4.5% commission but came very close to paying the first tier of PC at one time ( I've used up half my £1000 allowance before they actually charge you. Fortunately 2016 was,I think,my first losing year so I am not in much danger now     

ss............what sort of bets do you do SS ??

trader\ punter\ bit of both\ arber

Most definitely not a filthy arber   
Bit of trading but mainly lay. Almost invariably long these days.

trading gets you into the trap of the pc charge ss...............is that right

if you are a layer that never trades out you should never be in danger of paying the pc charge.....is that also right.

even if you hit the 5k profit

Cardiff, it is just about how much commission you pay relative to your profit , regardless of how you make that profit .

once you have played in over 250 markets , and used up your £1000 allowance , if you win £100 in one week but only generated £10 in commission, betfair will want another £10 ( 20% PC charge )

if you won £100 but generated £25 commission , betfair won't take anything as you have already paid them 20% or over in commission relative to your profit

Went inty a cake shop.
Boy said all cakes £1.
A said can a get that one.
He said that's £2.
A said £2?
He said aye that's Madeira cake

Pablo....I thought only traders and fast picture boys get caught up in the PC charge

Cardiff , probably the majority of profitable traders and fast picture boys pay it, but a few without any advantage also get caught in the PC trap  .

cardiff yfdsc..he's just expalained...its all about how much commission/charges you contribute

simply put cardiff..if you have very few losing bets you will pay it.

willie.......but surely its wrong to penalise any one but traders or fast picture boys...the system is wrong if that happens

willie...........saying someone was dutching say 2 or 3 horses in a race but had quite an high percentage of winners........but  they would have more losers than winners........would they be in danger of paying the PC charge

Do they not look at your history since Day One,and if you lost £60,000 in the first 5 years, you do not qualify until you recover all that and have a large Credit Balance over the life of your Account.
Only then does the PC come into play.
I would have thought very few are affected.
What's all this stuff about the number of markets you play,No comprende.
Surely it's all to do with how much you have won over the life of your Account ,less whatever the annual allowance is.
Wish Roida was here to clarify.

roida is here..roida is willie shafter now

Can you help me with my post 22.06 please

you dont pay until your acc is £5,000 in profit...then it will depends what % your charges are on...

an example....

if you are liable to pay and this week you win £1,000 without a losing bet,lets say you are on 4% comm...you win £1,000...your commission is £40/2 = £20
PC is 20% of your £1,000 = £200....-£20 charges..you will pay £180 PC

if you win £1,000 but have had £6,000 of winning bets and £5,000 of losing bets your charges are...£6,000/4% commission is £240....£5,000/3% losing bets implied commission is £150

so £240 + £150 = £390/2 = £195 of charges...PC is £200 so you will pay £5.

What's all this stuff about the number of markets you play,No comprende.

when you open an acc you are allowed an allowance of 250 markets or till your acc is £5,000 in profit before you're liable.

So if I lost £260k in the first 10 years on Betfair,then won £260k in the single year 2017, no PC charge.
This correct-presumably.

Yes RM as far as I understand it. The ist tier charge is not that difficult tbh pablo fanque has described it well above. The 2nd tier is not that clear imo but I am never going to pay that so not really bothered.

Yes, correct because you have to be in profit over the lifetime of your account to be eligible to pay PC.

Snap.

^ to RothmanMike

RothmanMike    03 Apr 17 22:29 
So if I lost £260k in the first 10 years on Betfair,then won £260k in the single year 2017, no PC charge.
This correct-presumably.

so lets say you lost  £260,000...£260,000/3% = £7,800 +
then lets say you win £260,000...£260,000/4% = £10,400
= £18,200/2 = £9,100 in charges..so you'd then have to be over £50,000 in profit before you went under the 20% PC allowance.

tbf if anybody knows the machinations of pc it is Shaft

rain man

Willie Shafter. • April 3, 2017 10:25 PM BST

if you are liable to pay and this week you win £1,000 without a losing bet,lets say you are on 4% comm...you win £1,000...your commission is £40/2 = £20
PC is 20% of your £1,000 = £200....-£20 charges..you will pay £180 PC
____

This part doesn't get enough attention imo. In the above example you have already paid Betfair £40, but because they divide it by 2 you have to pay a further £180. So you pay £220 in total, 22%.
This is why consistent winners pay more PC; it's not commission paid that you're after, it's commission generated.

indeed..you pay them commission then they want 20% of your gross profit (winnings without commission deduction)

so they norm take 23% or 43%

Unless your username is Zodiac then all the above becomes irrelevant.

aye poor zodie..'the early days wernt so good'

Was that a admission that he doesn't always win...Wow who knew.

Roida why the need to change the name,thought you had a bit of class,old boy.

was an enforced change,

The mystery deepens.

To go back to the original question...yes, 'churning' is a tactic used by some PC players to lower commission %age and increase commission paid.

Implied commission is at 3% so, if your rate is below that, breaking-even is a worthwhile tactic. Time-consuming, though, without the use of bots.

There is not just one way of doing this. Using any other bookmaker for the win half would be the simplest option (As you won't lose money laying off your win) and your winning/losing lay-bet on Betfair accumulates points towards your discount regardless of the result.
But you would still pay commission if you are backing and laying the same horse on Betfair, so this would go towards your points total, would it not?

win 6000 lose 5000

sorted.

Why do people find this so confusing ?, see my original post on jockeys.

Perhaps it is so difficult for people to get their heads round because churning is about long term views and most punters cannot see beyond the next race

Win 5000
Lose 4998
No pts or 1 if you are on 5%.

If you win 5000 across 100 bets over 4 weeks and the same ish with the losing bets then you have generated commission dropping turnover

elaborate

I back Mill Reef today with 500 quid at evens, it wins and I pay commission

Tomorrow I back Nijinsky with 500 quid at evens, it loses

What if Mill Reef loses, Nijinsky loses, and the next two lose? You've lost £2000 trying to avoid PC. Whilst you should break even (minus commission) overall, the variance involved is off-putting.

anyone got a clue what olias is trying to explain please?

ideally , you want a "system" that breaks even or is in profit AFTER commission

lets say you back every fav that run for £100 and at the end of the year you break even , you will have paid a lot of commission which will reduce the overall PC you pay , it will also reduce your commission  rate .

but if the "system" loses only 0.1 percent profit you will lose more than what you have generated , I think .

isn't one point about being on 2% and pc is that if you win 1000 and lose a thousand your actual commission is 200 but your "betfair charges" are (200 + 300)/2 ie 250

£20 comms on win , £30 implied on loss

£20 + £30 /2 = £25 generated

so yes dave , you just added an extra zero I think

...wheres stephen hawking or bigmart when you need them . ??

wrote "1000" then said "thousand" - all in all not my best work

daint worry..only winners pay it..about 2% of people

Can we assume that everyone gets it now ?.

As far the questioner who asked about the offputting variance, well if variance worries you then you are in the wrong game.

OliasOfSunhillow    05 Apr 17 10:31 
I back Mill Reef today with 500 quid at evens, it wins and I pay commission

Tomorrow I back Nijinsky with 500 quid at evens, it loses

im still trying to fathom this bit out.

may olias can clarify what he meant , because in his example you would lose on the commission you pay on the winning bet , so even at 2% comms rate you are £10 down .

*maybe

they didn't take the PC charge out till 20 past 1 today...........thought they had forgot.........normally gone by 12.30...........

The point would be to back and lay, for zero financial risk, not really to make money, but to keep your betting activity up to keep commission down.
The only way to have zero risk would be to back and lay the same horse.

Mill Reef and Nijinsky would be just two bets in a series of bets. At the end of the year the churning bets would be break even after comm' paid. So what we are saying is if you discover a betting strategy that you hoped would make you large amounts of money only to find that it makes peanuts, dont throw it away, it can still serve a purpose.

OliasOfSunhillow    05 Apr 17 10:31 
I back Mill Reef today with 500 quid at evens, it wins and I pay commission

Tomorrow I back Nijinsky with 500 quid at evens, it loses

but in the above example you are losing -£20

They are just two example bets from a SERIES of churning bets

Actually he's only losing £10 at 2%.

But Shafter's point is still a good one. If you have a couple of bets like that every day for a year, then by the end of it you'll have lost £3,650.

Seems simpler just to pay 2.1% instead imo.

churning bets isnt backing 1 result in an event

You wont have a couple of bets like that every day thats the point, they are two bets in a SERIES of bets

the bets need to be on the same event but differing markets..

hth

Does churning work? Is it worth the effort? If "churning" is backing/laying same event, different market, same price.

EG:

No churning: Gross £1000 in a week, pay 4% commish (£40), divide by 2 (£20), PC is £180, total charges £220, Net Profit £780.

Churning: Gross £1000, 4% commish (£40),
Churn with £200 win and £200 loss, win commish 4% (£8), loss commish 3% (£6),
total commish generated (£54), divide by 2 (£27),
PC is £173 (£200 - £27)
total charges £173 + £40 + £8 (£221), Net profit £779.

A lot of effort to lose £1

I have never sat down and worked this out and probably should have.  Doesn't the potential to have losing weeks without full PC "rebate" muddy the waters re increasing turnover (and thus commission paid) through long-term marginally profitable / break-even 'methods'?

So what do you do Mr Shafter. Sticking to horse racing back something to win and lay it in a place market or something along those lines ?

I thought the debate was about 2% commission? 

Finding marginal bets that show a long term slight loss/breakeven/slight win *after commission* will reduce premium charge as the betfair charge credited will always be more than the actual commission paid because of the (2% + 3%)/2 calculation.

@icredd not sure what you are trying to prove with your examples.  I doubt anyone has a regular method of betting that wins 100% of the time.  The better example would be just to start with someone who say has £1000 profit and has paid £100 charges (£900 net), so is due another £100 in PC ie his end position is going to be £800. 

Now let's see what happens if this person makes some bets that will win 50% of the time and are 2.05 odds.  ie marginal bets

Let's say he makes 2 bets @ £1000 and one wins and one loses.  He gets £2050 back when it wins less £42 commission and loses £1000 the other time.  So that is (42 + 30)/2 = 36 in betfair charges and his weekly gross profit is now £1050 and his weekly charges are now £136.  20% of 1050 is 210 so he now just has to pay £74 in premium charge.

So although he has just won an extra £8, his actual winnings go up from £800 to £840 due to reduced PC.

Think that is right anyway.

You're right about not winning £100% of the time, but I've had weeks where commission generated is less than 4% even though my commission rate is above 4%.
Also, if you're winning £1000 per week trading, winning £20 here, losing £10 there, then having single bets of £1000 could wipe out months of profit very quickly.
If you knew that you're 2.05 bet would win exactly 50% of the time then of course it's worth it, but how can you be so sure.

If you knew that you're 2.05 bet would win exactly 50% of the time then of course it's worth it, but how can you be so sure.

obviously you can't, but its just an example of how adding in marginal bets would reduce PC (and it could be 20 @ 100 not 2 @ 1000)

Yeah, in theory it can't be that hard to have a break-even strategy. People always say BFSP is incredibly accurate.
Maybe a more practical factor is how much you need to bet as a ratio to your expected weekly profit and PC. If you're expecting to win £1000 how much do you need to bet in the week to make a worthwhile dent in the PC? If it's relatively low than it's worth it, if it's in the £'000s then maybe not.

salmon spray    06 Apr 17 09:53 
So what do you do Mr Shafter. Sticking to horse racing back something to win and lay it in a place market or something along those lines ?

i dont do anything...60% is better than nowt.