How BetFair stole Bastille Day from the French —and how Ed Murray became BetFair’s best friend (NOT A HOAX).
Chris F. Masse July 15th, 2008
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Michael Giberson (professor of economics and chairman of our scientific advisory board):
Actually, I would expect the change to improve liquidity, but the real surprise for Ed Murray is that other than his liquidity argument, I pretty much agree with him this time.
It is a better scheme than before, as the exchange will match traders’ bets more efficiently and offer price improvement when available.
As Betfair observes (and Murray notes) the downside is for traders who make a bet in error, and now find the more efficient market has matched the bet before it could be withdrawn. If this is a frequent problem for a trader, perhaps they need to exercise a little more care at the keyboard. But as the Befair announcement indicates — and this time Ed Murray is repeating the Betfair company line! — at least there is the possibility that the trader will be matched at a better price than he would have otherwise.
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- Exchanges & Markets , Liquidity , Market Designs , Mechanism Designs
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The problem with the old bet matching logic was that if someone put in say $100,000 backing the wrong player, as happened with Sharapova v Hantuchova in the graphic I put up a few weeks ago on MO, there is thin liquidity on the underdog, and heavy liquidity on the favourite. Most of the $100,000 would be unmatched on the underdog, and the user would then have 5 seconds to cancel the remaining unmatched part of their bet before other users, seeing a huge price error on the screen, could submit fresh bets to take advantage. Normally, a mistake put in in error will still normally be able to be cancelled for a sizeable portion of the money concerned. The problem was that in Feb/March, the BF trap bet robot would match the $100,000 back at 1.55, with money laying say 1.56 and 1.57 on the other side, and pocket around $40,000+ straight into BF coffers, risk-free, with a zero second delay. The user then had no chance to cancel. Clearly when BF state they try to ban trap bettors from their site, then put their original logic on, which acted in exactly the same way as a trap bet robot (rubbish offers hoping to catch out the unwary), it had to be binned, which it duly was.
, I’m pro-betting exchanges & Betfair, I always have been. Some of the things BF have done have been pretty bad at times, both in respect to sporting events, customer confidentiality, the uk data protection act, and the US anti-gambling legislation. Some of these have been addressed and dealt with, and BF is not a “warts and all” company, there are laws in place for a reason, and when BF respect those they deserve full support. If at times in the past, present, or future they decide that they don’t have to operate within regulatory or moral frameworks, I’m sure there will be many people pressuring them to move the small parts of their business that have strayed back into the correct regulatory & moral framework, something which when they have made changes to fall back into line has been hugely beneficial to both the long term interests of BF shareholders and BF users.
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My gut feeling as a heavy user for many years is that there would be no increase in liquidity - I can’t see why this logic would attract more people to the site, or encourage existing users to bet more. That is what liquidity is. In effect it pools two different markets (backs of player A & lays of player B vs. backs of player B & lays of player A), to make it a more efficient matching mechanism, where prices will trade closer to the true market price. It rids the markets of an inefficiency, of splitting trades up on the board across different selections. The way the markets work in reality though is that there is heavy trading on the favourite, and marginal trading on the outsiders. BF users have compensated for the split selections by trading primarily on the selection with the short odds.
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From what I understand of the BF announcement, if you back player A at 1.9, but the opposite player can be laid at 2.0, BF will match your bet as a back at 2.0, which is great news. Offering reciprocal odds has always been a massive improvement as and when it came in, and it has now done. The downside is that the big bets in error placed by users are most glaring when they are on the wrong selection, and whilst with the old logic only a small to middling amount was often matched, with the chance to cancel a chunky unmatched wedge was often the case, with the new logic there would also be not just lays of player B at say 2.0 that you might take out if you backed player A at 1.03, but the unfortunate player A backer at 1.03 would lay all the bets on player B that are up on the board unmatched right out to 30.0+. There are many bets placed up at all sorts of prices, often far removed from the current market trading price (some genuine, some trap bets), and with the new logic, the user committing an error would be worse off if he not only wiped out everything available to back player A, but also laid everything available on player B. There is no easy answer to this, but what was clearly disgusting was the logic earlier this year would match player B’s back at 1.03, lay everything available at 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 etcetera, and BF pocket the difference. That was completely incongruous with BF’s own policy of tackling trap bettors. It was the biggest trap bet machine in betting history, and unacceptable. At least with the new system, user mistakes may balance themselves out sometimes, sometimes as a recipient of a favourable price error by another user, sometimes the victim of one, but overall, the pool was left with only the normal 2 to 5% rake at the end of it.
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The real advantage from the new logic will be if it can cross match identical markets, such as the 2 goals or more selection on the total goals markets, and the over/under 1.5 goals. The peripheral markets stay peripheral in a self-fulfilling problem, nobody uses them because nobody else does. The real value may be if they can divert the match odds money into the asian handicaps markets as well. This they haven’t suggested with their latest release, but it would be hugely positive for provider and user, and is a logical future step.
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There are arguments about the effects it will have on liquidity, and I’m sure Professor Giberson would recognise that with BF still skimming money from each market that they weren’t skimming in the past before this logic was introduced, that by making it more expensive to use BF, the skimming should be correlated with a negative impact on liquidity. There is another argument, that there are price-sensitive users, and non price sensitive users, and whilst combining cross selection bet matching logic will make the market more efficient, that very efficiency may reduce the amounts traded/wagered. The more efficient the market, the lower the amounts traded is a very real possibility, highlighted by the following
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t.....187780.ece
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An official with detailed knowledge of the dossier of 140 “suspect” matches from tournaments around the world said: “If you look at a tournament, you might see one match for £23,000 [in betting turnover], one for £27,000, one for £36,000 and one for £4.5m. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that something is going on in the last one.”
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Price-sensitive gamblers form their own tissue, and will often use Kelly staking to take prices that appear juicy. With these suspect matches, the price on the last one offered huge odds on one player, attracting much skilled money to back that player, and seemingly much “inspired” money opposing that player (no match fixing has been proven). The further away from the perceived fair price, the more money will be traded in a clash of conflicting opinions.
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Making the markets more efficient (which this bet matching logic does), gives better value to non-price insensitive gamblers, but also makes it less likely that price-sensitive gamblers will place trades on the market. The net effect could realistically be a fall in liquidity, as the inefficiency of the old system encouraged price-sensitive gamblers to place trades in the expectation of a good chance of getting matched at inflated prices, whilst the price-insensitive gamblers didn’t really care what price they got.
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There is real evidence that more efficient markets decreased liquidity on the Financial intras that BF used to offer. Where they used to be hugely popular with manual traders, there soon came people with robots plugged into live updates of the FTSE and other markets, which meant the markets became much more efficient to the true price. They used to provide big scoops of commission for BF, but died as people lost interest from a p2p market which became a bot2bot market. You had a much better chance of getting “matched” - anything out of date by a microsecond was gobbled up, and the market was much more efficient, but the liquidity dropped hugely. Increasing efficiency can, and has at times, adversely affected liquidity, and I would be personally very surprised if liquidity was actually boosted at all by the new logic, bearing in mind the skimming that is still in place, and the increased efficiency of the market. I do think it is a good idea overall, but I cannot see any positive correlation with liquidity.
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And Mr Masse
*the one caveat is that if you do knock out some of the price-sensitive business, which this bet matching logic will do to an extent proportional to the increase in efficiency of the market, (and therefore reducing short term liquidity), you will conversely give better prices to non-price sensitive customers, who i have always thought if you give a better run for their money, they are more likely to return in the future.
, and if that holds (which I think it will at the margin), then its a powerful argument supporting Professor Giberson.
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so if the benefits to non-price sensitive customers, giving them a better run for their money each time outweighs the loss of a potentially significant percentage of the custom of price sensitive gamblers, then long term liquidity will rise
overall, I expect short term liquidity to fall because the markets are less attractive for the price sensitive users, and for the skimming to have a marginal negative effect on short, medium and long term liquidity. however, if by giving non-price sensitive users a better run for their money with prices closer to the market junction between the supply and demand curves, that encourages them to use BF over a longer time frame (which it should) as their money is attritionalised more slowly, then long term liquidity (important) could well rise, even if short term liquidity (less important) from this change is (imo) likely to shrink.
Alas,
Even I shall give up the fight soon, as the masses have become apathetic, and don’t seem to get that even the semi-skim version of the cross matching logic is netting Betfair the equivalent of 3% comission on every winning bet, and Betfair are still trying to pull the wool over their eyes. There is a debate stirred up by me, but alas I fear I am the last pocket of resistance, as Medemi, Adonis and anyone else with half a brian were consigned to never never land.
Figures are in a spreadsheet which can be downloaded from the below link, and the last stand is on the Betfair general betting section of their forums.
http://www.4shared.com/file/55....._Skim.html
Paul
having looked at this
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http://www.4shared.com/get/553....._Skim.html
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a spreadsheet showing how large the skimmed money is, increasing the commission payable to betfair (normal commission + the extra rake bf are deliberately taking by mismatching bets at different price integrals) hugely, I now have to say that I think the new bet matching logic is definitely going to be very harmful to liquidity across short, medium and long term scales.
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there is hostile sentiment again on the bf forum from the few remaining posters who haven’t been censored by BF
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http://site.forum.betfair.com/.....p;iCount=0
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posted by scarecrow 16 Jul 20:17
the worst thing they have ever done imho,as a previous poster stated they should at least let people no what markets it is operating on so they can avoid them if they want to.
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etcetera.
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to be honest, markets work best when there is transparency, openness, and fairness. including a skimming scheme again which people don’t know where its operating, which charges fairly hefty percentages at certain integrals, is a market inefficiency.
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my gut feeling is that long term liquidity will be helped by having a clear cut for the exchange operator, openly advertised, so everyone knows what they are paying. backdoor skimming schemes again make BF look sneaky, as can be seen from nearly every comment on that thread.
It is obvious that if BF increased their commission from 2 to 5% up to say 50%, liquidity would drop off a cliff. I cannot see any realistic argument why increases from the pre-skimming normal BF logic, towards BF raking the pool twice with normal commission plus hidden skimming, can in any conceivable way be good for liquidity.
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Personally if I was running BF I think I’d switch this scheme off if I was trying to look after the long term interests of BF. However, the skimming will provide an initial commission boost and make the share prices rise in the short term, if investors believed that this was a good long term revenue stream, with the negatives from it to BF’s long term interests being outweighed by the positives.
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this is a copy & paste from the bf forum, showing the reaction
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 06:23
It can be downloaded from here also.
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http://www.4shared.com/file/55....._Skim.html
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swift-tuttle 16 Jul 08:09
interesting TM. I can’t pretend to follow it fully but just to take your example of the worst case
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55 1.018518519 £1.85 1.01 £1.00 £0.85 46.00%
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how can you be sure that the effect is at 1.01 (rounded down) rather than 1.02 (rounded up)?
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 08:18
Because of the way they have explained it in the Service section of the forums. {Below}
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With the improved bet matching process we would match your request to back Federer against the customer looking to back his opponent at 2.2, and provide an improvement to the price you requested. Your bet would be matched at the best possible price that is a valid increment on Betfair’s odds ladder, in this case 1.83.
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 08:19
If you scroll down to 2.2 in the spreadsheet, you will see how the figures relate to their example.
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swift-tuttle 16 Jul 08:33
Yes I see, so what it comes down to is that there aren’t enough increments in certain parts of the Betfair odds ladder and, as a result, the calculation cannot be totally accurate and it is Betfair who profit from the discrepancies.
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 08:47
No, what you are seeing is this.
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1. Betfair matching logic was flawed, so people invented bots to hoover up the overbrokes.
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2. Betfair mgt realised that this amounted to a lot of money, so they set up a separte bookmaking arm to do what the bot runners were doing, figuring their customers wouldn’t notice. {They figured if the bot runners were getting the money, they might as well have it for the shareholders bubbly.}
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3. Customers did notice, & a riot ensued. Befair did a quick u-turn & tried to patch up a PR disaster. They decided on this semi-skim version, which still makes them a hell of a lot, but the PR spin they put on it is transparent to those of us who are used to weasel speak.
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Price increments are nothing to do with it. Betfair are quite capable of matching the prices at “Best Execution”, however that is not in their interests.
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They kind of figure we are used to being robbed by the bots, so wh don’t they do it a lillte les & make it look like they are doing us a favour.
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 08:48
This previous increment lark is nothing other than a deliberate skim.
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 08:50
Of course they can always invite me round for coffee & prove it to me. However they should be aware I can read through techno babble as well as weasel speak.
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Colonel Trautman 16 Jul 08:59
^ looks like you are sorted in life…
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 09:11
Off to bed now. 21 downloads & counting. Can’t wait until I wake up.
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Night All
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Nebs. 16 Jul 09:15
So, in a two runner race I put in that I want to back one of the selections at 1.9, because I am too stupid to realise that I would be better off laying the other one at the 2.0 that someone else has alreadyrequested and is sitting on the system, and I get matched at 2.0.
Where is the problem? I am getting better odds than I requested. Sometimes i might only get 1.99, but it is still better than I requested.
This system will help the people who have no idea how the odds work, and just want to bet. It will hinder the bots who, previously, would have laid my 1.9 and the other persons 2.0 and i wiould still have been happy as I got the price I requested.
I am happy to let beffair have a small extra “commission” if it means that I am getting better odds that outweigh the “commission”.
Overall I think that this is a good thing.
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Talented Maverick 16 Jul 09:20
Having your bets matched at best execution is a good thing.
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Being robbed a little less by Peter, rather than by Paul with Peter telling you he is doing you a favour isn’t {Especially as Peter has been deliberatly trying to hide the fact he is still trying to rob you}
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MENDY 16 Jul 10:22
nebs, it isnt a good thing as you say, its a disater
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look at it this way 4 punters on a cricket match, each has a £100 to lose
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end of the match 3 have lost and the other has won £300
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if what talent has said is true, and during the match they have traded £400
betfair have kept £3 in every hundred that maens, although the 3 losers have still lost £100
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the winner has won only £52, and betfair have skimmed £48 in ONE MARKET
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The Calculator 16 Jul 10:45
So that means when Betfair were matching bets at the prices requested rather than doing improvements a few months ago they must have been making more than 100% of what people were betting, and all without anyone noticing. Thats a scandal. Or the maths is wrong. One of the two.
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Nebs. 16 Jul 10:49
I do not see getting matched at 2.0, when I asked to back at 1.9, as a disaster.
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AFC1414 16 Jul 10:51
Mendy - can you explain your figures in more detail - don’t see how the three guys lose 300 and one guy wins 50 odd quid - ???
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swift-tuttle 16 Jul 10:53
Mendy that’s not right - the skimmimg only applies to winning bets
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swift-tuttle 16 Jul 12:39
It would be nice to have a real top class mathematician’s view on all this. Any takers? Info?
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Nebs. 16 Jul 13:03
It doesn’t take a top class mathematician to tell you that you will be better off with Betfair matching your bets at better prices, rather than a bot matching them at rock bottom prices. Unless, of course, you are a skimming bot owner.
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@Ed Murray: “there is hostile sentiment again on the bf forum from the few remaining posters who haven’t been censored by BF”
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People are allowed to express their criticism of BetFair on their own forum, then. Good thing.
I agree it is good that you can criticise them, however as in Medemis case, when they percieve you as too dangerous, all of a sudden off to bed you go, with no cocoa & bedtime story.
No Chris, they’re not. Ask BF for a copy of the thread I got a ban for, which they won’t provide you with. If they did provide you with it (and for arguments sake let you post it up on Midas Oracle), they would look extremely foolish, as many posters who read it at the time posted on the BF forum that my ban was absolutely ridiculous. Actually if you have a BF forum account, why not ask directly on there if people thought I deserved the ban having said absolutely nothing wrong. It was in the heated climate of late 2006, when they were worried about the arrests of the director of Bet on Sports by the US authorities, and another representative of a different gambling firm. The last thing they wanted was any flagging up of any allegations that there may have been betting from US soil by BF customers, which in this post I am not saying happened, I’m saying that anyone who ran any bookmaker or exchange was nervous about the crackdown from the US. Combine that with knowledge that both BF and I have of what was actually happening, well, that’s big business.
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Talented Maverick - your posts are outstanding. I don’t know if it was you or someone else who flagged up how different parts of BF don’t seem to work in tandem with each other. Who knows. Skimming to my mind is a bad idea if the market is operating on an elastic part of the demand curve. If they are operating on an inelastic part of the demand curve they really should maximise profits by increasing their commission rates. (It makes complete business sense to do so, and any business would do that). Skimming is a good idea if they aren’t currently making normal profits, and think they can extract more revenue through skimming. Skimming without being open about it, as happened in spring 2008 is a really really bad idea though.
“I agree it is good that you can criticise them, however as in Medemis case, when they percieve you as too dangerous, all of a sudden off to bed you go, with no cocoa & bedtime story.”
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I wish they would release a copy of the hoovering from New York thread I was one of a number of people who were censored with bans for posting on. It was a totally ridiculous, protectionist censorship. I said nothing wrong whatsoever. I think it would be a real eye opener if Chris was given a copy. They will never release it though, because it would actually make them look completely out of order and unprofessional.
on the new bet matching logic, they should haver programmed it to operate at reciprocal integrals, and have bets on both back and lays showing up as being available on both players.
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for example if you black a player at 3.0, your bet should be shown on the screen as a back of say £50 at 3.0, plus there should be £100 available on the other player at 1.5 for £100 for someone else to back. that is the dream which would enhance liquidity in the way that Professor Giberson and I both think would happen, if the market inefficiency of split liquidities across two or more selections was dealt with.
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where an equivalent lay to ghost reciprocal a back on another selection was not at an exact integral (say 1.5/3.0), then the NEXT best price should be shown on the screen, whilst the user actually receives the actual value (say 1.8333333333, rather than 1.83).
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that would be great news for BF shareholders and users.
the real shame with this new bet match logic is that it deliberately retains an inefficiency.
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a roger federer match will often trade at say 1.02/1.03, with little being matched as everyone is waiting in the queue at both integrals trying to get the respective higher or lower prices to back/lay. I actually initially thought the new bet matching logic was great news, because its side effect would be an increase in granularity. Tennis matches can spend a long time with a player at 1.01/1.02 with little traded, but if a back at 1.01 was matched against a lay at 70, with the backer actually laying 70 rather than backing 1.01, the effect would be a very useful increase in liquidity from the extra granularity.
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sadly the backer at 1.01 with the new logic still only gets 1.01, so there is no incentive for people to use the 60/65/70/75 etc odds on the underdog, as BF are skimming off the difference between 60/65/70/75 etc and 101.0. a wasted opportunity imo.
Chris - thank you for letting me put up posts for the last few weeks on MO. I am pro-exchanges, and pro-Betfair, and it makes me genuinely sad to see things like trap bet robots, and the like. Its bad for prediction markets.
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BF are a brilliant I.T. company, and have achieved a lot. Many things have been positive, but they have had a number of negative impacts too. As someone who is fundamentally against gambling in itself (I think it creates a Pareto loss to society), I am more cautious about the rollout of gambling into people’s homes than most of the betting community. To be fair, the betting community tend to be self-selected (people who don’t like to bet don’t become part of it, whereas people who do do become part of it).
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I think the truth is somewhere inbetween. Regulated properly, the original betting exchanges and later Betfair deserve support. (”Betfair” is not an invention by the way, and if it is, then it wasn’t the first company to ‘invent’ it, in the same way that matching buyers and sellers on ebay is not an invention).
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Some things BF do are excellent, some aren’t. Same with all companies. Personally I think I am very fair, and very neutral, but it is hard to compete when BF make public bans/censorship etcetera, without letting people know the real reason why they censor each individual. I know exactly why it happened in my case, and personally I don’t agree with it. If they are scared of authorities seeing people discussing US betting by people who were actually in the US, stating where they were and what they were doing, all over the BF forum, when they fall out with each other, as you would clearly see if BF were kind enough to show you that US thread, then you would be free to make a clear judgement. As it is you don’t have that information, and BF aren’t willing to release it to you. Personally I’d be delighted if you put a few links up to your broadly excellent work on MO on the BF forum, and encouraged healthy debate. I’m not always right, but i’m not always wrong either, and the end result if you established a community of intelligent contributors would actually be a positive legacy to prediction markets, putting pressure on all operators to keep their house in order. That would be a significant achievement to be proud of. If you feel like posting a few links to your stuff on the BF forum, it does deserve a wider readership, and would help both MO and prediction markets go from strength to strength.
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best wishes
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Ed Murray
Resistance is futile
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Betfair have an obligation to offer best execution to their customers, there’s no debate about that. I don’t know if that means offering 1.83333 in stead of 1.83. You tell me, is that practical ? With binary odds there wouldn’t be a problem I suppose.
It seems we do have a problem with the 1.01/1.02 in-running markets. Lots of overrounds due to the delays implemented by betfair. It’s a nasty business IMO when the operator is profiting from inefficiencies on their own markets (with an unfortunate lack of transparacy on how much, when and where, I should add). A conspiracy theorist would think they were implemented for a reason. Not me though…
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I think the second version of this matching algorithm will improve liquidity in the short term (and I don’t buy Ed’s economic argument). But it will cause a lot of damage from a PR point of view IMO as it seems betfair have distanced themselves from the true P2P betting concept. It’s not what they had planned, but they were forced to come forward after the debacle on the first version of the matching bot.
I’m sure Betfair would love to offer execution to a number people medemi, however, I’m not sure that the type they would offer me or you would be quite what the doctor ordered
Ed, you’re talking to a dead person. Cyber-dead, if it weren’t for Chris. My hero, my savior…
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Here’s a song especially for him.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt0WluTpFTg
I was listening to Jim Cramer yesterday, and as he was talking (on the economic front ) about the damaging effects of the laissez faire attitude of the government, something occured to me, again. We’ll all become victims when we neglect our responsibility. We’ll all pay the price if we don’t pay close attention to matters that involve openness, truthfulness and integrity. That goes for companies, customers, society. There are no exceptions, not in the long run. The opposite is also true, we can all become winners if we only chose to. You just need to detect (and include) the long term effects of our behaviour, actions and interactions. And it’s not just betfair who seem to be failing constantly here - ignorance is all around us. We get what we deserve, and in the end there isn’t a greater form of justice than that what life provides for us.
Are there some betfair shareholders/employees who think otherwise ? Very likely! We should have another chat 20, 30 years from now and see who was right. Thinking about it, 2 years could do the trick.
Jim Cramer has wised up. Most of us do, eventually. Why not do it now ?
posted by Bodger (joined 17 Apr 2001) 16 Jul 21:43
. Shame for TM as he’s done good work with that spreadsheet showing how much BF are still skimming.
“TM and Pablo are certainly very vocal on this issue. As it is of nothing but benefit to all users except skim bot operators they must be in this camp. If not they must have a vendetta against Betfair for some reason”
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Looks like the end for Talented Maverick soon then too. There are hardly any 2001 names that aren’t BF staff. “As it is of nothing but benefit to all users,…..” erm, yes quite mate
Are you supposed to have a vendetta against Betfair medemi? Am I? I’m finding it hard to keep up. I think BF should go from strength to strength with a product which gives value to customers plus long term value to shareholders (I think seeking short term value for shareholders is dangerous business, as it will usually come at the real overall expense of long term shareholders). I suppose if we think dangerous stuff like insiders should be kept off the prediction markets, people should be protected with long enough delays to cancel, or that Betfair should be transparent and open about what its charges actually are (rather than skimming and spin, which erodes trust heavily), perhaps we should be sent to Room 101 for thoughtcrime. Its clearly “not in the interests of all users” to do things which actually are in the interests of all users. Tragic shame.
Ed,
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long term growth (in the broadest sense) comes from offering a quality product to as many customers as possible. I don’t think that’s a secret, yet that’s not what we are seeing. Mostly because betfair have a monopoly and basically they can get away with anything. It’s not a situation anyone wants, and I think (hope) betfair (as individuals) are becoming increasingly aware of that themselves. A monopoly is unnatural because human nature thrives on competition, and without it we are lost. The result ? More dissatisfied customers, more errors than betfair normally would have made, the media becoming more relentless, a lack of progress. The list goes on and on. I probably wouldn’t have gotten involved myself had the market taken care of the situation for us. Alas, it is what it is and we are all going to have to live with it. All I can do is be honest even if that means being disrespectful. I don’t manipulate (although I could be very good at it) because I don’t need to. When your intentions are good and you’re being honest things usually work out for themselves. And I really don’t give a shit if people think otherwise, that’s their problem not mine. I’m fully aware that in the end it’ll be just me looking back on my life. There will not be many regrets.
Good man
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I was thinking that Betfair do seem to have an awfully large amount of people they think of as “enemies”, who want to see them going from strength to strength. I’m glad of the changes that I have achieved to help BF shareholders and users
Yeah, job well done. I told you you had talent 2 years ago.
Did you read the Q&A today, and how they favor a level playing field ? It’s all over the place. Certainly an improvement from “Caveat emptor” and “If you don’t like it, why don’t you just leave”.
Regardless of their true intentions, when they say it often enough they are actually going to believe it.
Did you read the Q&A today, and how they favor a level playing field ? It’s all over the place. Certainly an improvement from “Caveat emptor” and “If you don’t like it, why don’t you just leave”.
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Has Andrew Black been taken off the board?
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Regardless of their true intentions, when they say it often enough they are actually going to believe it.
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Perhaps I should send Mathias Entenmann and David Yu (the people on that forum chat thread) copies of the emails I received from BF’s legal counsel. If Entenmann and Yu do believe in a level playing field, those emails will make for depressing reading for them.
medemi - that stuff about bf caring about a level playing field does look far-fetched to me.
), and hopefully Entenmann & Yu are reading this, then honestly I see no reason why BF should not put this information next to markets or post it up from time to time on the forum. It took me months to work out what exactly it was that people were using to beat Eurosport, and when I bought the equipment for about £1,300, it is 4.54 seconds ahead of Eurosport. i used it once then switched it off in disgust, but that’s for my own reasons (there’s more to life than trying to sit there picking inexperienced BF users off).
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i, and others, have asked them a number of times to publish details for all users of where the fastest legal pictures are available, and have repeatedly put up on here & elsewhere, plus had a number of people put up on the bf forum, details of the satellite equipment needed and decoders.
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if bf are reading this (yes, we know you have some kind of automated scanner checking MO and other websites for comments about betfair
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put up the information on all the channels available, where matches can be watched, how they can be legally watched etcetera. if you protect your users from the snides, your revenues will jump hugely. you’re just wrong not to do this - there is no conceivable defence for deliberately not trying to protect BF users by doing this. it’ll save you a fortune and generate huge extra commission.
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come on betfair, you kicked and screamed trying to resist my request to shut reality tv markets once the result was known, you went back on your word to me and another user to change the game by game markets to the same delay as the match odds, leaving one user making over £10,000 a day risk free from BF users, and forcing me to get the help of the NOTW to protect BF users and BF itself from just incompetence. without me, you would have kept the 3 second delays on darts, snooker, tennis, which were just fast picture heaven, and fleecing off huge volumes of cash from the pool, of which bf only ever saw one rake from.
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publish as much information on all the available legal equipment, and you’ll reap huge extra revenue, which won’t accrue to the courtsiders.
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medemi - i met a chap from Kent (cricket team) who was out in Sri Lanka when England were playing there recently, who met four “professional gamblers” who all raved about how they were making money by placing bets from the venues in sri lanka & new zealand, ahead of the pictures in the uk. one croat, the rest english, all making a living by touring the world, ripping off bf users and bf shareholders. sad.
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come on entenmann & yu, neither of you two were in the room with me and a member of the bf board saying he “rejected if you can’t win you can’t lose”, and how he thought “it is better to leave betfair markets open even if bf customers have no chance of winning their bets, as it is better to give people the chance to bet”. ignore the mccarthyism that has taken place from inside betfair at a range of people, and come on, its obvious this is a step in the right direction. leave the legacy of the “let them eat cake” brigade behind, and do something for betfair shareholders and users, level the playing field, and publish the information for everyone to make an informed choice on what equipment there is out there, to level the playing field. you’d earn my respect if you broke from the remnants of betfair’s past and did this. :-)
Ed, more openness as an industry wide policy is what we should expect from the Gambling Commission. If not, that will be very disappointing, and damaging to their credibility.
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As for betfair offering a level playing field, there is a bit of wishful thinking involved on my part. If betfair announced it as a policy change, that would be mighty convincing. But they won’t.
Talented Maverick - fair play to you, keep up the good work. Fascinating reading your spreadsheet and posts. I don’t fundamentally disagree with the skimming by Betfair - if it is within the framework of their regulation (which it may not be, as it doesn’t make clear to people the terms on which their bets are accepted and what amounts, and what portion is trousered off by Betfair’s skimming), but I do heavily disagree with their “spin” of “helping people to get their bets matched” etcetera, which has more holes than a swiss cheese.
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medemi - there is some very interesting news which is about to become public. I’m disappointed again with Mark Davies’s contribution, this time he is trying to trumpet how Betfair are bringing the codes of best practice from financial markets into the sports arena. I mean seriously??? Trap bet robots?? Betfair’s announcement of their own internal “trading team based in Malta” (from their forum Q&A last time round), plus a raft of markets being run after the result is known. Differentials between GB & non-GB users, and a customer confidentiality ethic which is routinely broken? I have a bloke who has never bet on BF in his life coming up to me with details of my BF account turnover/profitability/margin that have been leaked to him, and BF do nothing about it. Its not just me, its two major sports stars as well. They have no customer confidentiality at all, and the latest leak has just badly exposed Mark Davies. I know one person who has an agreement with BF that nobody on BF except the BF integrity team can see any details of his account, and I think its probably time that the names on each account were taken off from view by either BF customer service staff, IT staff, or the BF board. Its just unbelievable to have mine, and two major sports stars, all having their account details bandied around pubs casually. That isn’t the “best practise from the financial world”.
I keep thinking about the title “How Ed Murray became Betfair’s best friend”. I’d say you love the company, but you also believe the people running it are ruining it.
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It’s one amazement after another for me (in as far as that is still possible) and it does seem the company is being guided towards peaking before the floatation. A few will benefit, most won’t. It’s usually like that, and nobody is going to be able to stop them. However, the few that will benefit are going to pay a price for that, I’m sure of it. All together, it’s another waste of our earth’s resources. Bring in the meteorites.
This is one of the A’s from betfair’s latest Q&A session.
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It’s not clear why you believe that the majority of those customers who use Betfair’s forum are unhappy about the introduction of the improved matching logic. The sport this will most significantly benefit is football, and there’s nothing we’ve heard from our football customers that would suggest they’re unhappy, nor would we expect there to be. Even the thread you refer to has a mix of opinion. We don’t prevent customers posting negative opinions about Betfair (as long as they stay within the forum rules) as you can clearly see from reading the forum, even when the criticism is unfounded. But that does mean that the overall sentiment expressed on the forum is frequently unrepresentative: only a tiny minority of Betfair’s customers post on the forum, and it’s unrealistic to expect that customers would feel motivated to post to say that they’re very happy.
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In a discussion there’s always a mix of opinion. That’s why it is called a discussion. Let me help you by giving you a definition – “An exchanging of views”.
What matters is, where it came from, and where it is going.
Where did it come from ? Evidently some customers are dissatisfied with this change, at which point you should start paying attention. 2 Or 3 people should suffice to get your attention. Where is it going? Here are the last four posts from the thread you referred to:
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Even better if there was no skim at all.
Agreed
even better if it went back to how it used to be.
Even better still if Betfair told it’s customers the truth instead of wrapping it up in weasel propaganda.
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You lose, betfair. And these opinions are not “negative”, they are constructive. Of course, you could always argue that these opinions are unrepresentative because most customers are not complaining, but in my view you would then be taking advantage of the fact that most customers are unaware of these changes, because most people don’t read the forums. They don’t want to, they want to trust you.
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