Exchange Betting vs. Traditional Bookies. Who are the Betfair Winners?. Fact and Fiction. Part 4.

Betting Exchanges. Fact and Fiction.

Reading the media hype surrounding the betting exchanges, you might begin to believe that it must be impossible to lose, that there is no negative side to exchange betting, a true nirvana for all betting punters has arrived.

Like all good things in life you have to read the smallprint.

It is estimated that between 10 and 15% of Betfair accounts have moved into the red but only around 3% make a living on Betfair when classified as £15k+ (tax free) and as for the other 85 - 90% - well you don’t need me to fill in the blanks.

Who are the Betfair Winners?

Betting exchange punters whose accounts are in profit are still very often those with professional inside knowledge of their sport, a high level of expertise in back to win or lay to lose betting.

Those prepared to specialize and become experts in their chosen field of horse racing are usually the most successful.

In essence, all the same assets that professional horse racing punters have always required are still essential to some extent to be profitable on Betfair or the other exchanges.

If horses drift or steam on the day of a race you still have to ask questions and find where the price movement is coming from.

The availability of betting arbitrage and pre race Betfair trading has also created another raft of winners who have less horse racing knowledge but are highly skilled day traders able to transfer their technical analysis skills to the exchange betting platform.

Similarly, while betting tax was abolished in betting shops in 2001, the exchange model obviously required that the exchange betting company gets its profits from somewhere.

The commission of 5% on net Betfair winnings has the same effect on punters winnings as the betting shop tax that had just been abolished.

So although odds are between 10 and 20 % higher on the exchanges the 5% commission on net winnings must then be factored into any concept of value by the betting exchange promoters and enthusiasts.

Betting Exchanges and User Error.

All new punters to the Betfair or Betdaq betting exchange platforms will have to get used to the new style, the new concepts and the new technology.

Online internet betting is not a natural progression for everybody.

Some horse racing enthusiasts simply cannot and never will be able to transfer their age old, hard won betting skills to the high tech world of online betting technology.

But it is surprising how quickly technophobes overcome their fears once cold hard cash enters the betting equation.

All punters will make horrendous mistakes in their early ventures onto the betting exchange platforms.

Odds and stakes can be mistyped, the concept of back one side, and lay the other takes some getting used to etc.

Caution and minimum stake betting are the keys to disaster avoidance and recovery for all new users early betting on the Betfair betting exchange.

In Running Betting. Brilliant but Poisonous.

I demonstrate in running betting in some of my key betting strategies.

It is a powerful tool if used correctly. It can be exciting and extremely profitable.

But it is also extremely risky.

I always advise punters to forget about races less than 1 mile for in running purposes.

The action is simply too quick to analyze, and particularly hopeless if working without Satellite Information Services (SIS) or super fast digital feeds.

Basically whoever has the fastest live pictures will have a huge advantage at in running punting less than 1 mile.

There are large variations in performance between the different providers of live horse racing feeds.

SIS, AtTheRacesTV.com, terrestrial TV, C4 all provide pictures within a few seconds of each other but these few seconds can be enough to be able to grab a profitable position or falter into a failing one.

Interestingly terrestrial TV pictures were slightly faster than the digital ones, but obvsiously terrestrial TV is now history in the UK.

To bet effectively in running one has to understand the price one is taking and the event that it is in.

Life on the exchanges is not about beating the bookmaker anymore. It is about beating the other punters on the system.

There is also an element of poker like trickery that has developed around getting other weaker punters, or new punters who are liable to make mistakes and tricking them into accepting bad value bets.

All perfectly legal in the brave new world of Betfair exchange betting.

Bet Fair and Bet Well Folks.

Mike J Davies

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