[acw]

Take your time and enjoy:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=386063

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=386383

[Santo]

I hadn't laughed so much in days as when someone told me about that earlier :P

It's what happens when non-gamblers with no comprehension of betting markets try to be clever.

Cheeky on his way to a Tropical Island -300?

[acw]

It's what happens when non-gamblers with no comprehension of betting markets try to be clever.

But it mainly shows to you how unbelievable incompetent they are at BetFair. It could have been such a beautiful product, but sadly they are going from bad to worse!

[Santo]

Agreed it needs fixing. I still use BF heavily though. They're still the best odds there are for a few of the sports I bet.

[acw]

Most of my betting is on the European football in-running. After winning some 100k Pounds and paying 400k Pounds in commission, I shut the door. I can live with it the other way round, but this is too much! These days on their liquid markets one seldomly finds the best price anyhow (as it seems to be traded with all the Asian books).

[Santo]

I suspect I have less access to Asian books than you unfortunately.

[wack]

Most of my betting is on the European football in-running. After winning some 100k Pounds and paying 400k Pounds in commission, I shut the door. I can live with it the other way round, but this is too much! These days on their liquid markets one seldomly finds the best price anyhow (as it seems to be traded with all the Asian books).

That's all well and good - until you get stiffed by asian bookies for $50k. At least betfair pay and pay fast.

Most of their soccer lines are totally driven by the asian lines anyway, so its pointless playing with them unless you bet outsiders or don't trust the asians to pay up. 2-5% commission vs -102 books, the maths is pretty obvious.

[Arilou]

I can't access BetFair and they don't give you a strict number on commissions. Do they really charge 2-5%? That seems prohibitive, especially considering Matchbook and Mansion's rates.

[acw]

Do they really charge 2-5%? That seems prohibitive,

If it were only that, it would not be too bad, but they also give you unasked/unwanted credit!

[Santo]

Which books are -102? The Asian credit shops? Asian market is a gap in my knowledge, beyond Mansion88 and a couple of others.

[JoshW]

Great read acw, thanks.

[Value]

Does anybody know the end of this story?

[Jamie_UK]

Does anybody know the end of this story?

Yep, betfair zero'd the negative balances for the people involved, they had very little choice really as 1) The debt was unenforceable under UK law 2) The players sign up agreement with BF stated that liabilities could not go over their deposited amounts 3) Most of the players went over their agreed daily maximum liabilities.

The players who got away scot free were those who had little money in their account, like the guy with £300 who racked up £12,000 of dept in an hour, those who had money in their accounts and did not get it out lost their balances.

I think betfair came out of this well in PR terms, conservative estimates calculate their loss at over 100K, but TBF they had known about this glitch and they obviously calculated their risk as being far smaller than the reality of a bunch of numpties from a bonus whoring forum all jumping on the same bandwagon.

There are simple fixes to the problem, add in a reduction factor for market withdrawals like on horse racing markets, or run the markets anti post, but both of these kill liquidity which is the reason Betfair probably didn't do it.

All the FGS markets have since been discontinued , but there are still other markets where it would be possible in the right circumstances for the same to happen again.

[Jamie_UK]

Press article

by Bruce Millington, racing post, 28/02/07

THEY thought they couldn’t lose. They thought they had spotted the ultimate infallible betting opportunity. They were wrong.

A group of inexperienced punters, acting on a tip-off posted on a website that aims to help users save money, were dealt a harsh lesson that there is no such thing as afree lunch after trying to land a coup on Betfair’s Carling Cup final first scorer market on Sunday.

As a result of this amazing episode, Betfair, which had to swallow a loss running into tens of thousands of pounds, has pulled the plug on first-scorer markets until further notice.

The fun and games began on Sunday when users of the consumer website moneysavingexpert.com were alerted to the fact that the lay percentage on Betfair’s first scorer market totalled 140 and that it was therefore possibleto guarantee a profit by laying every runner.

This was, of course, flawed advice. The market listed a larger than usual number of players due to uncertainty over the managers’ team selections, especially that of Arsenal boss Arsene Wenger.

And withbets on non-starters and those who come on after the first goal has been scored being voided, the actual lay percentage was nowhere near 100.

More importantly, and unbeknown to MSE users who were laying away to their hearts’ content in the belief that they were effectively picking up money off the pavement, it would end up, once the withdrawals had been made, well below 100.

Having been under the impression they were all green (in profit) on every runner, they suddenly saw those green figures turnto red and the penny began to drop that their wonderfully easy scheme to boost their wealth was doomed.

One user who had laid constantly until the lay percentage was virtually down to 100, said he was £12,000 in the red once Theo Walcott had opened the scoring for the Gunners.

However, while the get-rich-quick ‘investors’ lost everything they had put into their accounts, they were spared further pain as Betfair opted not to pursue them for the amount they had lost as a consequence of their ill-advised trading.
The exchange’s Tony Calvin said: “This is not a simple matter but the bottom line is that nobody will lose any money they don’t have in their account.

“This incident highlights an anomaly in one aspect of our trading model and as a result we have withdrawn first-scorer markets for the time being while we review and discuss the situation.”

Theoretically, the issue of negative balances could still arise – if Roger Federer withdrew from a tennis tournament when an extremelyshort favourite, for example – because, unlike in racing, there is no Rule 4 mechanism in place to even up the betting percentages when there are non-runners.

There was a similar situation last July when Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, the dominant figures in the Tour de France market, were expelled from the race the day before the opening stage, but the lack of liquidity prevented the panic that was witnessed on Sunday when the Betfair novices realised things had gone belly-up.

But Calvin says Betfair has various potential remedies.

“We have a major rules and regulations meeting very soon and this issue will be on the agenda,” he added.

“We want our customers to have a fair betting experience, and we see it as part of our job to educate people who may fall foul of a situation which is not their fault.

“We have contacted the people whose accounts went into negative territory as a result of this market and explained what happened.

“We are still a relatively young company and this is just part of our development process. It was similar in the 1990s when the spread industry had to make various alterations to their rules as a result of certain incidents.”

One possibility being discussed is to offer first scorerbetting only when the teamsheets have been announced.

[Value]

Thx Jamie. lesson well learned for bet fair. After all it really was their fault