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What is courtsiding?

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ArberPro
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What is courtsiding?

Thu Jan 21, 2021 10:33 am

What is courtsiding

Courtsiding is the practice of placing a bet directly from a sporting event or by transmitting information via other means to a partner that places the bets quickly on a betting platform. By doing this, you can take advantage of the delay/latency of the data transmission or a slow-moving umpire. With this technique, you can easily beat sportsbooks or the markets on exchanges by placing bets before the in-play odds update or by entering trades before the market reacts.
Courtsiding is mostly done in tennis but it can be done in a very high number of sports, the basic rule is that a sport should have a high number of points per game (like basketball, volleyball)

Courtsiding back in the day

When I first started doing courtsiding, it was fairly easy, you could just go to a tennis tournament with your laptop and place the bets, no one would ask you anything. Many people were travelling around the world to tennis tournaments and bookmakers were bleeding because they did not understand what is happening.
In 2012-2013 things started to deteriorate, tennis tournament officials caught on they started implementing bans on laptops in the venue and started to monitor spectators. Courtsiding became harder but also technology improved so people who did this full-time would still be able to do this using different techniques like phones or Bluetooth devices. But while everyone was looking at tennis tournaments for courtside, they were not paying attention to other sports. There was a year when we started to go to hockey matches where there were no rules on courtsiding. We could stay with the laptop in our lap and place bets on markets like the next goal and it was a great success.

Contemporary Courtsiding

It is far harder to do courtsiding today, firstly now if you get caught at a tennis tournament and get banned, your picture will be provided to all other tournaments and at higher level competitions they use facial recognition to spot courtside. In 2015, at Wimbledon, it was the first time I saw this happening, a friend of mine just entered the venue and in 15 - 30 minutes security came and kicked him out. He didn’t even attend any tennis match, but he was already in their database.
Courtside face tougher times but is this still doable? Now the laptop is replaced with a smartphone with custom apps that let the spectator just click when a point is scored and the data is transmitted to someone who places the bets, I even saw shoes made for courtsiding, one tap to transmit. Everyone is paying attention to tennis, but other sports are the hidden gems for courtside.

Is it legal?

While you may be breaking the tournament's rules in most countries you will just get banned from the venue and in the case of tennis your picture to be saved in a database.
In some countries, it is illegal to do courtsiding. The first case was at Australia Open in 2013, where a British man was arrested but later released, another case was in Saudi Arabia but in the majority of countries, it doesn’t break any law.

If you want to start courtsiding you should research the legislation for the specific countries where you want to do your work. Be prepared to invest as it isn’t cheap to travel around the world and buy tickets to sports events, sometimes you may finish in red after some tournaments. Being tech-savvy is a big plus as tournament organizers employ a variety of techniques to spot you (facial recognition, Bluetooth scanning) and do not go with the flock, search for new opportunities. Maybe that hockey event that is happening right next door could be much better than a Grand Slam.
Last edited by ArberPro on Thu Jan 21, 2021 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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arbusers
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Thu Jan 21, 2021 3:45 pm

Thank you ArberPro for the very informative article. Your post is a bomb.
Last edited by arbusers on Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
acaciomacedo21
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Thu Jan 21, 2021 4:14 pm

it was possible to do this in some bookmakers when football restarts during the pandemic, using a fair stream.
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Thu Jan 21, 2021 9:20 pm

This is really interesting. I was courtsiding in a little team during the years 2009-2012, actually I got banned in three grandslams, wimbledon, melbourne and paris. I did not try to make my personal grandslam. The most interesting (and terrifying) thing was when I friend of mine got into prison for one day in moscow. This is when I and my partners/friends started to focus on a different approach. I'm normally not talking about this time a lot, but I really think back of these days. Maybe we met in person, because in the early years you could tell when someone was doing the same ;)
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arbusers
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Sun Mar 07, 2021 8:53 am

I believe 100% of any tennis game spectators are going to the game with a smart device. However, the organisers or any authority has absolutely no problem with that. This makes me believe there must be a database of ''dangerous individuals'' which is the one making potential Courtsiders and easy to detect target. Just a hypothesis and nothing more.
kapetan1122
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Sun Mar 07, 2021 12:03 pm

arbusers wrote: I believe 100% of any tennis game spectators are going to the game with a smart device. However, the organisers or any authority has absolutely no problem with that. This makes me believe there must be a database of ''dangerous individuals'' which is the one making potential Courtsiders and easy to detect target. Just a hypothesis and nothing more.
uploads-ssl.webflow.com/5b9ca955e60a71ee4f6c58c7/5c350eb43fc1665a816b29c8_GAME%20SET%20CA%24H.pdf

Very interested read about tennis courtsider and what problems they had,bear in mind this was 5-6 years ago and that situation get worse in recent years so its not that simple like it looks, but in golden age of courtside trading some people was earning millions just on grand slams,there is story that one group took 10 million $ in first year of Betfair trading just on US open GS.
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arbusers
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Mon Jan 02, 2023 9:27 pm

I wonder how court-siding goes during the pandemics.

Also, after reading this very long story, I find it difficult to believe court-siding being blocked by ''Folders''. Sorry guys, this is the big data era. Having seen so many big data companies being born in the gambling sphere, I believe there is another way these people use to stop court-siding.

Allow me a parenthesis. If you have ever been in one of these very central and luxurious London hotels, you might wonder why security guys stop certain people before entering the hotel, while others pass freely with no delay or harassment.
The same applies to the banks of Zurich. Ever wonder why people in Arabic dress get the vaults with out even being asked their names?
In both cases it is big data that makes decisions. I am sure big data makes decisions on who is court-siding and who is not.
Just my 2c.

Also, there was no mention about the master mind of the other side. There must be someone coordinating acton against court-siders.

And of course, a big thank you Kapetanio for sharing this story.
kapetan1122
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Tue Jan 03, 2023 9:14 pm

My two personal stories, i had a guy that i met over some forum from my country and he decided to try courtdsiding, it was WTA tournament in my country so he give it a try, he said he was catched first day in the middle of second match and second day after 15min beeing on stadium, this is not big turnament and there is not much spectators so this was his disadvantage,after this he decided its not worth time/money to try on some other event, just to remind this was 2.5 years ago.

Second story is i was at Wimbledon and for fun i was just looking if there is some delay,after watching and checking for 7-8 matches i come to conclusion that there is still oportunity to do this but main part in this plays on judges of the match,it seems like i read in book and find out later from some other sources that all ATP and WTA tournaments are connected to main scoring board and when judge of the match put point in main computer all data is send to all parties connected and it seems that almost all bookies are getting same data delayed for 2-3 seconds after judge put point at live match,this mean if some judges are slower in doing this there is still opportunity to take advantage of it.

Interesting video to watch:

youtube.com/watch?v=kvT_yIVI2Qw
adotaCannasog9f
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Tue Jan 03, 2023 11:51 pm

There are people at the stadium being paid to be faster than you. They are called scouts, they are the ones telling the data companies domar spa, and in turn, the bookies, who are attacking what happened, when a goal is scored etc.
Last edited by adotaCannasog9f on Fri Apr 02, 2021 6:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Thu Jan 05, 2023 7:31 pm

adotaCannasog9f wrote: There are people at the stadium being paid to be faster than you. They are called scouts, they are the ones telling the data companies, and in turn the bookies, who is attacking what happened, when a goal is scored etc.
Can confirm this. I used to work for Running Ball as a scout for bookies and always met other scouts at the games. But this does not apply to all games, usually only the ones that aren't televised, because it's much cheaper for the bookmaker to buy access to a tv-stream rather than a scout.

I think tennis is difficult nowadays, since you almost every bookmaker closes the current game set market when serve takes place. You can still bet on the match, but that wouldn't guarantee you any winnings unless you cover yourself as an arb.
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Fri Jan 06, 2023 9:01 pm

kapetan1122 wrote: My two personal stories, i had a guy that i met over some forum from my country and he decided to try courtdsiding, it was WTA tournament in my country so he give it a try, he said he was catched first day in the middle of second match and second day after 15min beeing on stadium, this is not big turnament and there is not much spectators so this was his disadvantage,after this he decided its not worth time/money to try on some other event, just to remind this was 2.5 years ago.

Second story is i was at Wimbledon and for fun i was just looking if there is some delay,after watching and checking for 7-8 matches i come to conclusion that there is still oportunity to do this but main part in this plays on judges of the match,it seems like i read in book and find out later from some other sources that all ATP and WTA tournaments are connected to main scoring board and when judge of the match put point in main computer all data is send to all parties connected and it seems that almost all bookies are getting same data delayed for 2-3 seconds after judge put point at live match,this mean if some judges are slower in doing this there is still opportunity to take advantage of it.

Interesting video to watch:

youtube.com/watch?v=kvT_yIVI2Qw
Pozdrav :)

That would be me :D
Yes, it was 125k WTA.
I had problems with 4G signal as stadium was in the hills. I had also pinger which directly went to server and forwarding that to my Betfair bot (i had a colleague) which saw that someone is hitting before us.
TLDR.
We had delay around 750ms behind live and someone was 300ms faster , i doubted it was one guy close to me (but more and more i think it wasnt him,someone is sitting either comfy either by the court with permission or watching raw feed) and yes, even that rubish tournament had people who monitor for such things.

- Security guy who threw me out said to me no bad feelings man, sorry but i had to do it, they have people who search for guys like you :)
He took a picture of me, asked where i am stationed and that he is hoping that we will not see each other tomorrow.
Some people/group/company has a monopoly on data and it is going by raw data from the court.

I have done fair share of MM-ing on tennis on Bf. Late 2019th me and colleague were nice chunk of early ATP rounds and challengers. But as they changed the delay to 3s it was not viable anymore. (colleague still doing it but guy is a monster, he knows ins and outs of the market mechanics bla bla...+ it is a dying job)
All in all if you somehow have opportunity of low costs to attend and transmit data maybe you can earn some monies ..but even then you need liquidity on the market not ghost town and 4 bots running around chasing each others tail. No, simple click from mobile wont do it..fastest guy is 300-350ms behing live (+delay of course--assuming we all have the same delay..or.. :) )

Few years ago or even before it was such easy money that i start to cry immediately that i got late into the game.
Even sat feeds worked until late 2017th-18th circa...no more raw feeds for the last two years almost etc.

I quit in early 2020 after some outage from Bf in which i got hit and they didnt want to hear about refunding even a bit even with my turnover etc.

Crypto is the main circus in the town, plenty of money ;)

Best regards

P.S. Ostavi se balota :D
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arbusers
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Sat Jan 07, 2023 9:36 am

kapetan1122 wrote: Interesting video to watch:

youtube.com/watch?v=kvT_yIVI2Qw
I have serious doubts if the procedure as it appears at the end of the video is correct. At a point you can hear the player's scream. Are they kidding? The procedure as it appears there is very slow andI am sure bookmakers would easily beat it. There must be something more automatic than voice orders.
ConnorKelly
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Sat Jan 07, 2023 4:50 pm

So glad this was posted. Answered a lot of my questions as to how and where...
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Sat Jan 07, 2023 10:32 pm

I dont like the negativity in the posts like this was something of the past and now it cant be done. Bonus abuse is something of the past. matched betting is something of the past. In the sense of making serious money. But court siding, is more difficult than ever but still very profitable business. Problem is, it is cheating and not straight forward smart gambling.
Hamps_boy90
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Re: Courtsiding and sports betting

Sun Jan 08, 2023 10:28 am

Good morning.
Here’s a question I’ve always wondered about. What is the delay in live games, from Eastern Europe for example, to when the betting companies suspend betting?
Like with tennis courtsiding can this be done with relatively unknown football? Youth games/reserve leagues on the continent

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