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On the subject of the quality of oddsmakers, yes there are some of dubious quality knocking about, but it constantly amazes me that people can’t understand the difference between price setting and price taking.
If you are a bookmaker you have to offer odds on all outcomes, not just have the ability to spot a big price here and there…
Bookmakers are routinely scoffed at for restricting bets to £25s and £50s on their early morning prices to some of their customers, but if it was that easy to make money laying these prices to anyone and everyone, then why the total lack of liquidity on betfair in the mornings? Why don’t people stand even the general bookie offer (rather than the stand out prices) for a few hundred pounds?
The reason no-one does is that the people who thought they could make it pay laying early prices anonymously on UK racing have left the building a long time ago.
The reasons for Betfair’s poor early liquidity are much more complex than that.
The earlier I bet the higher my ROI but I still put the lion’s share of my money down close to the off.
Making money as a layer is, if anything, too easy in the early markets as long as you’re happy with tinpot stakes and are prepared to forfeit much of your edge when the real money comes and has piggybacked your opinion.
As a selective backer I’m 100% convinced that my ROI would be significantly higher playing against early layers not blessed with any inside info that my selection wasn’t trying or had some negative that most people didn’t know about (i.e most Betfair layers and bookies) – as a full book layer, I’m not so sure….
What are the more complex reasons why the early liquidty is thin, Glenn? Don’t say the Premium Charge, as liquidity was still poor prior to the PC being introduced.
Betfair doesn’t close winning accounts.
And of course they don’t get closed in places like Hong Kong where the real professional punters play.I was under the impression that Hong Kong operated a Tote monopoly? Vrery hard to get shut down by a Tote!
btw the email quoted in this article is word for word what I got from William Hill a few weeks ago: are things getting tight at Billy’s?
What are the more complex reasons why the early liquidty is thin, Glenn? Don’t say the Premium Charge, as liquidity was still poor prior to the PC being introduced.
Take a view punters were skinned alive by insiders. They eventually wised up.
Bookies run racing completely .. for their total domination of the sport they should pay at least 15% to the levy and not their current measly 10%.
The main reasons are:
a) You’re marking everyone’s card
b) You often get nothing in return as a result as it is too cheap for someone to leapfrog you with shrapnel. At least in the old days there was a quid pro quo – I mark your card, you lay my bet. Now you often mark the industry’s card for nothing. No wonder spoofing is rife!The main advantage of putting money on the screen is you don’t have to pay the bid-ask spread. When markets are weak and volatile that is essentially worthless. What’s the point of putting up, say, £4k at 2.76 when someone can constantly jump in front of you with two quid bets at 2.78?
As the value of the bid-ask spread advatntage increases so does liquidity. If BF want to increase morning liquidity they need to provide a worthwhile incentive to those putting it up, by maybe increasing the odds increments or establishing tougher rules on minimum stake sizes needed to leapfrog.
If you fancy a horse that’s, say 6 to back for a fiver and 6.4 to lay. What’s the first thing you do? Look for a bookie that’ll lay you a few hundred at 5s. What’s the last thing you do? Take the 6s on BF and hope to get matched as then the bookie won’t lay you the 5s or will mark you down for taking it and the price will soon be 5.8 to lay on BF and 9/2 with the books.
Betfair tried with commission discounts and it didn’t work. Paranoia is the name of the game pre lunchtime these days. Betfair morning liquidity is dead forever, its actually a very good working example of what happens when an exchange runs out of layers.
Irish racing is an even better example. Take a look at the Tipperary maiden this evening. 6 unraced 2yo’s and less than 1500 quid matched with 5 hours to post time. That’ll be up to 400 grand come twenty past six. Informed insiders prefer to take rip off over-rounds and/or more efficient exchange prices rather than reveal their hand early.
. Now you often mark the industry’s card for nothing. No wonder spoofing is rife!
.This is the irony. Despite the pitiful liquidity on Betfair in in the mornings, there is enough activity there to wipe out a large number of tissue ricks…
Every day of the week I see prices on the industry tissue that I would be falling over myself to back, but 9 times out of 10 they will have disappeared by the time the bookies have gone up. For the sake of about £20 of impatient leapfrogging punters’ money, what could have been a value price across most of the industry will disappear forever….
I don’t think most people realise how often this occurs…
- Total Posts 17716
If you really are a successful punter as an individual you are a sitting duck and what you need is a certain degree of betting anonymity. You won’t get it betting only on the net.
The problem is as Mark Davies of Betfair once said "we have better information than any other organisation in the world. We can track any single bet to a punter, and then back again."
a bigger problem is they all can!
. Now you often mark the industry’s card for nothing. No wonder spoofing is rife!
.This is the irony. Despite the pitiful liquidity on Betfair in in the mornings, there is enough activity there to wipe out a large number of tissue ricks…
Every day of the week I see prices on the industry tissue that I would be falling over myself to back, but 9 times out of 10 they will have disappeared by the time the bookies have gone up. For the sake of about £20 of impatient leapfrogging punters’ money, what could have been a value price across most of the industry will disappear forever….
I don’t think most people realise how often this occurs…
I do. Lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to bed dreaming of maximum bets only for the early BF/paper price to have vanished before pricing up time, and as you say it’s for peanuts on BF- wish I could form a Betfair union and tell all the pathetic fiver merchants to
Leave it!
until 11a.m. ….
. Now you often mark the industry’s card for nothing. No wonder spoofing is rife!
.This is the irony. Despite the pitiful liquidity on Betfair in in the mornings, there is enough activity there to wipe out a large number of tissue ricks…
Every day of the week I see prices on the industry tissue that I would be falling over myself to back, but 9 times out of 10 they will have disappeared by the time the bookies have gone up. For the sake of about £20 of impatient leapfrogging punters’ money, what could have been a value price across most of the industry will disappear forever….
I don’t think most people realise how often this occurs…
I do. Lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to bed dreaming of maximum bets only for the early BF/paper price to have vanished before pricing up time, and as you say it’s for peanuts on BF- wish I could form a Betfair union and tell all the pathetic fiver merchants to
Leave it!
until 11a.m. ….
It’s unproffesional for a start Glenn – I intended backing a horse a month or so back at Lingfield, off the track a while 14/1 in the RP tissue only to see £5 at 5.6, £4 at 5.8, £2 at 7.0 to back the evening before. No chance of me getting any sort of decent price the following morning and so it proved.
- Total Posts 17716
. Now you often mark the industry’s card for nothing. No wonder spoofing is rife!
.This is the irony. Despite the pitiful liquidity on Betfair in in the mornings, there is enough activity there to wipe out a large number of tissue ricks…
Every day of the week I see prices on the industry tissue that I would be falling over myself to back, but 9 times out of 10 they will have disappeared by the time the bookies have gone up. For the sake of about £20 of impatient leapfrogging punters’ money, what could have been a value price across most of the industry will disappear forever….
I don’t think most people realise how often this occurs…
I do. Lost count of the number of times I’ve gone to bed dreaming of maximum bets only for the early BF/paper price to have vanished before pricing up time, and as you say it’s for peanuts on BF- wish I could form a Betfair union and tell all the pathetic fiver merchants to
Leave it!
until 11a.m. ….
…And they scoffed at Julian Wilson, when he made exactly the same point some years ago.
I think ‘Judge’ Jools’ point was slightly different!
Wasn’t he pleading for his insider bets to be laid under threat of ‘blockage’ if they weren’t?
The
quid pro quo
when laying my bets is that you learn that they’re overpriced on my tissue. The
quid pro quo
with Judge Jools would appear to be: lay the bet and you’ll know the brakes will finally be removed.
If the ‘value’ prices are being eroded for mere ‘fivers’ couldn’t one afford to shore it up until the shops open?
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