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Avoiding Limitation

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MichaelVanGunnawin
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Avoiding Limitation

Fri Jun 21, 2013 1:14 am

Hi guys, I am new here :)

I have started my arbing career off very small and am basically learning the ropes with some very small stakes (by arbing terms) in order to learn and check everything over for mistakes. I plan to increase this later on after I have learnt the ropes.

I am a programmer at and have been trading in the forex markets for several years, and thus have developed excellent record keeping skills which I hope to apply to my arbing. I have got a spreadsheet which I am using to track all arbs I place, keeping track of all of my bets. I am currently only placing 2-leg bets so that I can learn.
I have taken the approach of "baby steps" first and have decided not to try to run straight away, I cannot afford to lose anymore than my current bankroll - hence the caution :)

I have a question about bookies limiting people.

It seems that amounts do not seem to matter (I mean this within reason :P I think betting £5k on something random would give you away), and from what other people are saying they frown upon consistent winners.

I have started off with a smaller number of bookies than I would have liked, but this is helping me keep up with my record keeping and hone my skills for it :)
If I aim to take up arbitrage bets that in the long run will "move" cash between bookies in a cyclical manor, do you think this could be used as an effective deterrent? And, further to this, by taking up arbitrage bets where the bookmaker is a 20-40 and betfair is a 1.04-1.06 (etc) could I effectively slowly "bleed" my cash from bookmakers from betfair - this would make it appear as though my accounts at each bookies where only consistently losing.

Here is an example of what I mean :) In the best form I can put it

Starting Balances: £15 at each of
Marathon
Coral
Betfred
William Hill
Ladbrokes
Sky Bet

Okay so now, I take up some arbitrage bets between these bookies. Here is a cyclical example:

Arb 1:      2% Arb with less than even odds at Coral, Higher than even odds at Marathon
Arb 2:      2% Arb with less than even odds at Marathon, Higher than even odds at William Hill
Arb 3:      2% Arb with less than even odds at William Hill, Higher than even odds at Coral

If we assume this is a perfect world, where the lower odds win, I would have a winning bet at each bookie as well as a losing one. This could essentially move my balance around in a circle between them (I am not interested in a small dip/up movement)

If my balances drift too far out of balance, I could aim to take up Arbs which would (at least in the long term) to lower the balance of that bookmaker, and raise it somewhere else.

Further to this, I could take up arbitrages like this:
Arb eg1: 1% Arb with very close to 1 odds at Betfair, and very high odds at another bookmaker. (BACK/BACK)
OR
Arb eg2: 1% Arb with very high odds at Betfair, and higher odds at the bookmaker (BACK/LAY)
By taking this strategy, I should be able to slowly bleed money from my bookmakers into my betfair account, where I am free to withdraw it without any worry about limitations on my account, as Betfair do not care - they just want commission

I understand this would be very difficult to do in practice. But if I make this my aim from day one, I am hoping that I will never have to withdraw money from my bookmaker accounts in any mass amounts - so this should allow me to avoid some of the flags in the systems which I am assuming bookmakers use. Adding money, then withdrawing after a big win I am guessing is an easy flag to getting limited.

What are peoples experiences with being limited? What kind of amounts were you using? Any tips and tricks of the trade anybody wishes to share? :)

Thanks in advance to anybody and everybody who replies :)
Also, I am a programmer at heart, and am willing to do odd jobs for people here and there if they are quick and easy to do :)
I am, if my arbing turns out to be successful, going to setup a system for keeping track of all the trades and scanning all free websites for new arbs etc - I am happy to make it available to all on the web if I decide this is a venture I decide is worth doing. I can make it available for free as long as my server does not get overloaded from lots of use :) I cannot find a similar tracking system on the web, so if this is something you would be interested in, please let me know and I will keep you guys up-to date with any progress I make on the system.
risilloch
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Re: Avoiding Limitation

Fri Jun 21, 2013 8:23 am

lol
who smote the poor guy on his first post!

Welcome to Arbusers Michael  ::)

I have found that stake size is no protection from limits.
Its taking soft lines that gets you fingered in my opinion.

I would recommend scalping bonuses to start your journey.
I hope your bankroll is larger than indicated (and that those are false figures \ bookies in order
protect your identity - you may want to change your login name if its your real one as bookies read this site too) to optimise the returns from scalping.
Arbitrator
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Re: Avoiding Limitation

Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:07 pm

Hi Michael,
I am, if my arbing turns out to be successful, going to setup a system for keeping track of all the trades and scanning all free websites for new arbs etc - I am happy to make it available to all on the web if I decide this is a venture I decide is worth doing. I can make it available for free as long as my server does not get overloaded from lots of use :) I cannot find a similar tracking system on the web, so if this is something you would be interested in, please let me know and I will keep you guys up-to date with any progress I make on the system.
If you are a programmer, you should not focus on "scanning all free websites for new arbs", as your output will be an even more time deferred result than the free services offer, time is money, and especially in arbing this is very true.

You should rather look for API-access, I guess Pinny might give you, don't know about Asians. You should rather play with parsing HTML content to your server from the soft books and put some arber-logic to the table, e voila, Michaels-Arbitrator 2.0 is born.  ;D
More bets, more money.
MichaelVanGunnawin
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Re: Avoiding Limitation

Sat Jun 22, 2013 12:04 am

The hardest problem with parsing from their websites through HTML is knowing which results from each of the bookies line up, I am going to have to try to write something to match it up.
Something like that is what people pay those fees each month for, It is doable but the outcome of that would mean I could just get signups and charge a monthly fee for it lol.

I was thinking to start out with, some simple software to track balances and arbs which can be manually input - for record keeping purposes :)
cortomaltese
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Re: Avoiding Limitation

Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:09 am

Michael welcome to arbusers
I like your thoughts about cyclical money movement , eventhough i consider it difficult to implement as obviously the world we are living is not a "perfect one"
even harder to implement is betting the low odds at BF since that can easily led to the exactly opposite money movement than the one expected and desired.
I also appreciate your “willing to share” your programming knowledge and skills a virtue that you will soon discover (if not already)  is hard to find among arbers for obvious reasons ;)
…So here’s your first welcoming applaud  ;)
Last edited by cortomaltese on Tue Sep 03, 2013 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MichaelVanGunnawin
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Re: Avoiding Limitation

Tue Sep 03, 2013 6:58 pm

Thanks corto,

for anybody who is interested, here is my tracking software.
I am willing to re-write it a little bit to make it available to everybody - I am happy to do it for free or a small donation to setup the website where you can register etc if people are really interested, but it would have to be more than 5 or 6 people otherwise it's not worth re-writing.

Just in case it helps anybody who is wanting to see how others track here are a couple of screenshots of a couple of screens:

Image
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