Have you got the bottle to be a bookie

[adivadiv]

Hi guy’s,

With the betting exchanges, we can all be bookies now. Well that’s what all the laying services lead us to believe. They are sort of right really. Most bookies use the exchanges every day.
If you can do the math, then you can be a bookie and win a wage.
Forget the – & + % markup/down, bookies get the same math headaches.
I have not got the math brain to give me the bottle to be a bookie.
Can you understand the difference between a 1.25 back price and a quick shift to 1.27 with a 1.29 lay price.
Yikees, now I am really confused LOL.

Ivor

[pod]

I wouldn’t be a layer for a gold clock. Making any kind of worthwhile income from backing horses to lose is all about salami sliced profit margins allied to turnover. I’m personally more temperamentally suited to punting and that provided by a wider margin for error approach. Being that I’m a lot more comfortable with the long-term knowledge that I can tolerate getting my punting decisions wrong a lot more times than a layer can.

Now I originate from the City of Chester, from the late 1940s through to the legalization of betting shops at the start of the 1960s, my late father’s cousin was one of the major illegal off-course SP bookies around the city. And, rather than settle the bets and divi up the money after a day’s racing at his place of residence. For a small fee he would “borrow” other peoples’ houses for the purpose, on the grounds it would be less likely that unwelcome “callers” would come knocking. My grandmother’s house being one such temporary office he would use on occasions but nevertheless, he still took precautions.

As a child I was fascinated watching him lay out a blanket on the parlor floor, close the curtains and empty out a dozen or so clock bags full of coins and betting slips onto the blanket. Now this was no ordinary blanket he used, for stitched in to each of the four corners was a rope handle. “What are the handles for?” I innocently asked my grandmother. “Well” she said, “if I slip out the back door, go down the entry and bang on the front-door, watch him snatch up the blanket by those four handles and leg it out the back door.” I later found out that he would never “borrow” a house unless it had an escape route.

When I got a bit older he would let me settle a few simple straightforward bets and give me the task of counting and bagging all the pre-decimal non-silver coins, of which there were piles. What he would sometimes tell me was after paying out one-shilling-and-sixpence (7.5p) to his collection agents and putting aside a further sixpence (2.5p) for what he referred to as “emergency legal costs” he’d be over-the-moon to clear a shilling (5p) profit on every pound he took. Today’s exchange layers haven’t the luxury of working with the kind overrounds that are built into the Starting Price mechanism as my father’s cousin had in his day. And, also remember if an exchange layer gets it right a lot more times than he / she gets it wrong then Betfair will want their near 5p / shilling in the pound cut.

I have the utmost respect for those layers who have mastered the art of getting it consistently right over time but like I say, it is most definitely not for me.

[Glenn]

And, also remember if an exchange layer gets it right a lot more times than he / she gets it wrong then Betfair will want their near 5p / shilling in the pound cut.

Close but no cigar.

If the exchange layer gets it wrong more than right, or merely treads water, Betfair will want their shilling.

If

an exchange layer gets it right a lot more times than he / she gets it wrong

they’ll want their four shillings and sixpence.

[Author]

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