Tag: betfair
Three million up
Not my P&L LOL! But Betfair’s customer base, which has now just breached the 3 million mark according to various press comments.
While three million sounds impressive it’s really difficult to know if the relevance of this metric. Where are those three million, what do they bet on, sports, games, casino? One question you can try to answer is how many are active. Last year Betfair said they have 652,000 active accounts and if their active accounts are tracking actual …
Cheltenham – Post-mortem
OK, it’s been a little while since Cheltenham finished, but I’ve been very busy on other projects and I have also been having a bit of a break before the start of the flat season proper.
Lets start from a top level. Measuring the activity to post time in the markets, a total of 26 races generated matched bet turnover on Betfair of £84.3m this year. In 2009 it generated £83m, so overall the matched bet turnover was up about …
Betfair extend cross matching
Betfair today announced that they had extended their cross matching algorithm to include a trail on in-running horse racing markets. Full announcement is detailed below: –
Improved bet matching algorithm trial on today’s in-running markets at Carlisle and Sedgefield
For the win markets on today’s cards at Carlisle and Sedgefield we will be improving our bet-matching algorithm to include cross-selection matching (‘cross-matching’). Cross-matching will only be activated after the markets are turned in-play. Please note that this is just a …
Connection modes on Bet Angel
We have had lots of questions emailed in about API and non API modes on Bet Angel.
Here is a very quick video I recorded back in September last year outlining what a connection mode is. This should enable you to understand how to set up Bet Angel to use connection modes and it also specifically refers to what you should do if you are unable, or unwilling, to connect to the Betfair’s standard API.
More Betfair problems today
Last night there was a significant site outage, followed by issues for international customers. At 11am this morning the API went offline again.
It’s been a terrible week for Betfair. I know that due to the measures Betfair have taken in recent years the stress on their servers much be much lower on a like for like basis than in years gone by. So I am not sure why these issues have been occurring on such a frequent basis this …
No API? No Problem
After continued problems yesterday it appears things are not back to normal today at Betfair, currently the API is offline. But don’t worry, you can still trade with Bet Angel. One of the unique features of Bet Angel is that even if the API is down it can still connect to Betfair and allow you to trade as normal.
Also, if you want to try your hand elsewhere during the downtime. Bet Angel also had similar versions of the software …
Curious
There seems to be an increasing trend for very low matched bet volume on Betfair on a Saturday.
Some of the early races today had much less money matched on them than their significantly inferior midweek counterparts, it’s a curious but persistent trend. In general, I would guess there is less money being matched on horse racing than in previous years, but I’ll have to do some more work on this before I can confirm one way or the other. …
Betfair back, but not SP
Betfair returned to normal about 1/2 hour after it went offline. Apparently their host lost connectivity which was the cause of the downtime and not any underlying technical issues.
For me, I’m annoyed, as I had an SP bet waiting to be matched before the official off time. Betfair are supposed to manually reconcile these bets when there are problems like this. On this occasion however, it was just cancelled. My log in Bet Angel shows clearly that the bet …
Betfair down
Just after the off at the 14:30 at Uttoxeter Betfair look like they have had a serious crash. We haven’t had any news from Betfair at the moment as to what has happened, but the whole site including the API has gone.
If you still want to trade you can use Betdaq if you wish. You can download our sister product Betdaq Angel from the URL, https://www.betdaqangel.com. This is pretty much the same as Bet Angel but works on …
Will I make a profit this week?
Yes and no I guess?
Yes I will make a profit, but technically I will right up against the wall, why?
Last week with the Melbourne Cup, Breeders Cup, the UK racing and the champions league it was a busy week. This week there isn’t a great deal on the card. On Wednesday the premium charge came out for last week and it was a big one. This week I may struggle to get in a day what I managed …
Betfair – Evening Standard article
I went into town last Tuesday evening to meet up with a friend for meal out and to catch up on things since we last met. We spent most of the evening talking about markets and volatility. Gold prices, house prices, stock prices, commodity prices, horse prices! It was great to have some quality time, enjoy a nice meal and to debate various aspects of the markets.
As per usual, I only just managed to get back to Waterloo to …
Betfair Aussie license set to expire soon
With Betfair’s Aussie license set to expire in 15 months time, the positioning and negotiation is well underway by the look of it. It could be a seminal moment, as agreement on a structure and new license will determine how the exchange model plays out down under. With the announcement from the French it seems widespread acceptance of exchanges is still someway from being achieved.
Full story on this link.
French say non!
The French government has effectively outlawed the online betting exchange Betfair after passing an amendment to new gambling laws. Under a surprise last-minute amendment, betting exchanges such as Betfair that allow punters to lay as well as place bets were excluded from the legislation in a move that the company described as “discriminatory”.
Full story by clicking this link.
Simple scalping
We uploaded this video recently and it has proved pretty popular so I thought I would put this on the blog. It’s just a simple guide to the thought process that goes into a simple scalp. On this video we get £40 gross with a couple of quick scalps on something priced at 6’s. Double click the video to enlarge. Enjoy…
The two grand race
Ok not quite two grand and also it shouldn’t have been! But thanks to Betfair’s well documented problems this week, a failure to turn markets in play, I fluked a big gain on one race today. See below: –
To be honest I’d rather forgo the money and have the whole system working as it should do. It serves no one to have a faulty platform and it would be much better to be sure that you know what is …
How many racing traders are there?
I often get asked how many traders are on the exchanges, how much volume do they do etc? The honest answer is that I currently don’t know, but I can confirm roughly how many existed a few years ago.
Back in 2003 Betfair issued a document that actually clearly laid out what a market looked like. In the document they looked at a horse race and showed how many people placed back bets only, how many laid only and how …
Betfair changes matching process
Betfair have just announced that they are to change the way bets can be matched on their exchange. This is a move back to the early days of Betfair and an original concept that is actually in use by other exchanges. Full information is listed here: –
Difficult to judge the immediate impact but certainly a lot of markets will have the illusion of money in them. You are also more likely to get matched more often I would …
Suspended in dis-belief
Despite my nervousness, as expressed in a previous post, I actually did pretty well last Saturday, in fact it wasn’t the delays on Betfair that caught me out in the end however. It was the late suspension of the 15:05! I already had an open lay bet in the market and closed the position as expected before the off. In fact I had several positions that I closed together.
When the market failed to appear in play I took screen …
Biggest Betfair premium charge?
I was passed some information this morning that indicates that at least one Betfair customer paid fees of some sort somewhere in the region of £200-250k in the last three months of the year! Puts things into perspective doesn’t it? It also makes you wonder just how much money is being generated in premium charges? It will be interesting to see where it ends up on Betfair’s next annual report. If they are spending it to get new customers then …
Hereford 16:30
Gee, thanks Betfair. Just started trading this race when they suspended it and put it in-play. No problem usually there, but it was well before the start of the race. Obviously some head scratching went on as I was held in the market for ages with a half finished trade before, just seconds from the start, they brought the market back. What a mess, but luckily I escapted with a 80p profit in running. Phew. I hope you didn’t get …
Blast from the past
I was wading back through my archives the other day and realised I am older than I thought! I actually placed my first bet on a betting exchange on June 5th 2000. It wasn’t on Betfair but on Flutter, Betfair’s early rival. I didn’t start on Betfair till the 18th June.
On the 5th June, I had a whopping £5 bet on the FTSE up or down market. A day later on the interest rate market and my first sport …
Being contrary
Betfair Premium charge portal
Just been emailed this link: –
https://premiumcharge.betfair.com/PremiumPortal/portal
By the look of it it appears to generate your last premium charge statement, or at least the front page of it. Despite efforts to reduce the charge mine still makes grim reading. But I suppose in some ways I should be thankful that is the case.
Financial spreads vs. Betfair
Each morning I spend a lot of time browsing company reports and reading up on companies, industries and all manner of things. Today I was looking at IG index and the spread betting industry. IG are an interesting company and one I have held shares in twice. The report makes
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