Arbusers

Ingarb3 wrote: Luctens, I am shocked that you think Smarkets could take on Betfair. IMO they are the last exchange that could take them on. However, I have not even taken a look at their site for the best part of a year now. I will investigate more this season. I have had more accounts closed at Smarkets than Ladbrokes so I struggle to see how they could function as a market leading exchange...

I am a high volume customer at Betfair and am more than happy with my experience there. I am treated well by them. I know many others who feel the same too.

Smarkets and Matchbook may attract the "matched betting" types with their initial lower commission rates - who trade a couple of k a week, but does that really matter? Anyone with decent trading volumes will be using BF for sure. And these are the ones who matter.

I trade in high volumes at both Smarkets and Betfair and I have never had one problem with Smarkets closing my account or whatever and they have said publicly that they welcome all players, professional or recreational onto their site, in fact they are most targeting the professional players.

I do know that they don't take kindly to players trying to take advantage of their market makers and manipulating markets so their market makers' bots offer completely out of line prices and those sorts of practices which is why they brought in a rule quite recently to reserve the right to void these kinds of bets. That rule is questionable to say the least, but it still stands that if you play it straight at Smarkets and take top of the market prices without trying funny games manipulating prices or whatever, then in my experience you will have absolutely no problem whatsoever. So ingarb3, if the reason you have had accounts closed at Smarkets is because you are trying funny games manipulating prices or something, I'm not too surprised they've closed your account. So in my experience, they do accept the highest volume professional players, but they only accept those players that play it straight and don't try funny tactics, which in the grand scheme of things is fair enough.

Hi, im in the UK, and did some arbitrage betting in the past, but sadly got restricted at the soft books. I only ever backed at bookie and layed at betfair to arb. If you use pinnacle and another soft bookie, how does that work has i thought you had to lay it off?
Sorry just learning that way to do it, many thanks.

wayne1983 wrote: Hi, im in the UK, and did some arbitrage betting in the past, but sadly got restricted at the soft books. I only ever backed at bookie and layed at betfair to arb. If you use pinnacle and another soft bookie, how does that work has i thought you had to lay it off?
Sorry just learning that way to do it, many thanks.

You can back at the soft bookie and lay that same selection on an exchange, or you can back at the soft bookie and back the opposite outcome of that selection at a bookie like Pinnacle. It has the same purpose in that you are arbing out the soft bookie price for a profit.

Depending on the Pinnacle and exchange price, backing at Pinnacle or laying on an exchange can give you slightly more or less profit on the trade so you have to compare the returns between Pinnacle and the exchange when you come to make the trade.

There's a lot of information on this site so I would suggest before you do anything else, allocate some time and read as much of this forum as you can and you will learn a lot.

Thanks, yeah will take a look, ive got the basic principles of arb betting has i made money at it before. I just used the calculator to work all the figures out, and placed the bets, it was just searching for them, and been quick to act! Thanks.

It's a minor detail that I've mentioned before but it is really irritating that smarkets charge 2.5% from bank deposits, no one else has a charge like this.

Skaggerak wrote: It's a minor detail that I've mentioned before but it is really irritating that smarkets charge 2.5% from bank deposits, no one else has a charge like this.

Free for me...

Maybe I'm mixing it up with credit card deposits, I thought they charged me before.

maletaja wrote: betfair earnd like 500 million last year. Business is not bad for 6% commision...

They have premium charge that goes as high as 60% .

Arbusers wrote:

Ingarb3 wrote: There will be new initatives at BF to increase the volumes this season. Let's see how they work.

I would like to know some more about these initiatives.

The only responsible for the fall of volumes is Betfair itself. They stupidly implement some policies that harms them and the players. Let me mention some, but not all of them.
1. The 6% commission rate. This is actually making them a sports book and not an exchange.
2. Premium Charges. This is giving the wrong signal to all successful bettors.
3. Withdrawal from key countries, even if the local legislation is not that strong and would allow them to continue operate with little effort.
4. The 8 secs delay. Come one, we are all clever here, we know why you are doing this.
5. The fight against court siders.
6. Their will not to offer key accounts the same way they did in the previous years.
And some more reasons that wouldn't be clever to mention.

As for Smarkets, If everything that luctens says is true, somewhere along the way we will test their level of greed. As i see it, they don't wish to have sharp action.

8 sec delay is a good thing because 5 sec delay in crazy countries could be beaten.
There is a lot of bad talk going on about betfair not fighting court siders but you can understand why this could be true when you see that they have 60% premium charge.

Betfair is a brand now and it will be very hard to take it down. When someone says exchange all think Betfair. The liquidity is falling because a lot of countries like Portugal are banned so less liq is on football for example but horses are as liquid as always. Cricket is a rising star of betfair. Betfairs market is mostly UK and UK sports are doing good. BPL has a lot of liquidity but for example Spain lost a lot of liquidity in recent years. There is on Betangel forum an analasys of the volume over the years so I am not imagining what I am saying.

Think that marketing is the key for betfair, take money from the winners and bring new players all the time. Its really hard to make a person change his bookmaker because they just dont care.

tiha_patnja wrote:

maletaja wrote: betfair earnd like 500 million last year. Business is not bad for 6% commision...

They have premium charge that goes as high as 60% .

Arbusers wrote:

Ingarb3 wrote: There will be new initatives at BF to increase the volumes this season. Let's see how they work.

I would like to know some more about these initiatives.

The only responsible for the fall of volumes is Betfair itself. They stupidly implement some policies that harms them and the players. Let me mention some, but not all of them.
1. The 6% commission rate. This is actually making them a sports book and not an exchange.
2. Premium Charges. This is giving the wrong signal to all successful bettors.
3. Withdrawal from key countries, even if the local legislation is not that strong and would allow them to continue operate with little effort.
4. The 8 secs delay. Come one, we are all clever here, we know why you are doing this.
5. The fight against court siders.
6. Their will not to offer key accounts the same way they did in the previous years.
And some more reasons that wouldn't be clever to mention.

As for Smarkets, If everything that luctens says is true, somewhere along the way we will test their level of greed. As i see it, they don't wish to have sharp action.

8 sec delay is a good thing because 5 sec delay in crazy countries could be beaten.
There is a lot of bad talk going on about betfair not fighting court siders but you can understand why this could be true when you see that they have 60% premium charge.

Betfair is a brand now and it will be very hard to take it down. When someone says exchange all think Betfair. The liquidity is falling because a lot of countries like Portugal are banned so less liq is on football for example but horses are as liquid as always. Cricket is a rising star of betfair. Betfairs market is mostly UK and UK sports are doing good. BPL has a lot of liquidity but for example Spain lost a lot of liquidity in recent years. There is on Betangel forum an analasys of the volume over the years so I am not imagining what I am saying.

Think that marketing is the key for betfair, take money from the winners and bring new players all the time. Its really hard to make a person change his bookmaker because they just dont care.

Betfair is a brand, but it is now a tainted brand, damage that is irreparable. Most of it's customers hate them and when that is the case, it isn't hard to attract customers to leave when there is a viable alternative. Betfair have put a bulldozer through all of their USPs in recent years and they are continually feeling the ill effects.

A couple of years back they decided to amalgamate it's sportsbook and exchange figures so they don't publish their exchange figures separately now. If their exchange was doing well then I'm sure they wouldn't have done that. I don't know what your talking about with Betfair's volume. It is on the rapid decline, anybody can see that, and it isn't just to do with some countries leaving Betfair. For example a 50-60% drop in Euro 2016 volumes compared with Euro 2012 shows that it's a far more fundamental underlying issue with their exchange. It is a sinking ship and anybody who can't see that is deluded.

Matchbook has the lead on volumes when it comes to american markets.

MaxShalamar wrote: TBH I don't see how they can grow other than to have major advertising and have offers on reduced commission

... and change the colours on the ugly website

They really need to do something to attract more customers though - I don't remember seeing any advertising for Smarkets but then I don't watch commercial TV and use internet ad blockers

Allowing geekstoy, Fairbot etc would help them massively.  I would sign up if they did that!

Allowing geekstoy, Fairbot etc would help them massively.  I would sign up if they did that!

Geekstoy works for matchbook. I've been running it for more than a year.

We arbitrage with betmaxvalue which has really high odds and with marathon or pinacle. On betmaxvalue we lose money and on Marathon or pinacle we win. Simple money simple bussines. Please tell us where you do arbitrage betting?

If you are winning money on the books that dont limit you, and losing on the "soft" side, long may they let you keep getting big bets down. Keep hoping and praying it continues!

dealer wins wrote:

MaxShalamar wrote: TBH I don't see how they can grow other than to have major advertising and have offers on reduced commission

... and change the colours on the ugly website

They really need to do something to attract more customers though - I don't remember seeing any advertising for Smarkets but then I don't watch commercial TV and use internet ad blockers

Allowing geekstoy, Fairbot etc would help them massively.  I would sign up if they did that!

They have said that they are currently upgrading their site in order to be able to facilitate these sorts of third party applications so that is certainly in their plans.