Betfair

[AngelEyes]

I have been a horse player for 30 years and a steady loser. In January I joined Betfair (a UK betting exchange ). My account now stands at over $8000 with an initial investment of only $200. I bet only on US Racing. I receive payoffs at an average 20% greater than the race track price. Sometimes I have received payoffs 5 times that of the racetrack. Can' t beat that. Also great to be able to book bets on horses as well if you're good at picking losers.

I will never bet at the racetrack again .....how can you beat the game with takeouts of 16% and higher ????

Luckily I'm Canadian. I understand US citizens not allowed to join. Too bad.

[jfdinneen]

AngelEyes,

I agree with you that Betfair is at the cutting edge of sports wagering (Back, Lay, In-Play, and 5% Tax).

If you have not already done so, you should check out SportsTrader (http://www.stw-sportstrader.com/) and the trading interface software (STW (http://www.stw-sportstrader.co.uk/STWBrochure_1.pdf)) they provide for Betfair users.

Best Wishes,

John

[midnight]

I would like to have a Betfair account. I had one for a few months that I was paying a man in Canada to set up for me. The account was in his name, and everything was done through his server proxy, so it appeared that it was coming from Canada. Then he moved to the States, and that was the end of that. I have a few methods that zero in on very bad favorites (0.50-0.60 ROI, or a 40%-50% loss), and with EHorseX gone, I don't have anywhere to use them.

[cj]

I have a few methods that zero in on very bad favorites (0.50-0.60 ROI, or a 40%-50% loss), and with EHorseX gone, I don't have anywhere to use them.

Sure you do, just bet those races, you almost have to come out well ahead.

[Nickle]

You can get into betfair with American Proxies, what you need is a foreing address but more than that ID for that foeign addrsss. I am sure you can forge one easy and fax to them

[AngelEyes]

Midnight,

Did you try Ibetx . I think they accept US citizens. Liquidity there is not like Betfair though.

If you like, email me .... maybe we can arrange to get you onto Betfair again ... being from Canada. Not planning to move any time soon especially to US anyway. How can they dictate to Betfair who can not join .... What's next ??

AngelEyes

[AngelEyes]

Just caught Digital Delight at Monmouth (1st race) . My payoff was 5.80 , tracks was 4.20 .... looks like positive breakage to me .... great ....

[andicap]

How does it work to bet against a horse -- If the horse is say, 4-1 (5.00 in digital odds) to "back," does that mean i have to lay 1-4 to bet against that particular horse?

[AngelEyes]

Andi,

Monitor current betting at site . To book is = Lay . Site provides all info. on betting.

Good Luck

[classhandicapper]

I've been looking at Betfair for a few months. You can't live in the US (RATS!) and set up an account. To be honest though, for most of the races I have looked at, the odds available were a little bit lower than the track price (or higher depending on what side of the bet you wanted). So there wasn't any edge to be had unless the odds changed in the last few flashes. The problem is that they could easily change in the wrong direction and you would wind up with a price lower than the track. I think the best possible way of getting an edge is if you can predict a certain horse's odds will rise or fall and you get a bet in early - before it changes.

[EmpowerISV]

Classhandicapper,


you are missing the point!!!!

You are taking set price odds and remember returns are shown in dividends of $1 units and not $2 units.

If you take set price and get matched the odds you take are what you get paid at, very similar to a bookmaker, actually exactly the same as a bookmaker.

In The USA you do not have fixed odds betting on horse racing and this is why you are confused I would say.

[EmpowerISV]

Midnight,


Go to our site.

We wager as a group through a central account for those from The USA who can not access Betfair becuase of arcane USA gambling restrictions and laws.

www.empowerisv.com (http://www.empowerisv.com)

Have no problem getting you up and running if you like.

[classhandicapper]

Empower,

I do understand the way the odds are presented.

I like the idea of bookmaker odds. It just seemed to me that the odds being offered at any given time were almost always lower than was posted at the track itself at the exact same time.

So it makes no sense to take those odds, UNLESS, you believe the final track odds will go much lower in the last few minutes.

In other words, suppose I like a horse and decide to bet him at 2-1 or higher. I look at Betfair and it says 5-2. That's great, except that when I look at the track at that same exact moment, it says 3-1. Obviously, I'd rather have 3-1. The trick is in knowing whether the final track odds will FALL to 8-5 or rise to 7-2. If I know they will fall, then locking in 5-2 is great. However, if they rise to 7-2, I'm a dummy for taking 5-2.

That's why I believe the real skill needed to make Betfair worthwhile is in predicting what the final track odds will be so you can lock in better odds early.

[AngelEyes]

Classhandicapper,

Odds at Betfair usually improve as you get closer to post time. In any given race you can identify several horses that yield substanially better odds than at the US track. What I do is put in a reasonable bid when backing or laying a horse.
For example if a horse is around 2-1 I'll put in a reasonable bid at around 3-1 if I want to back it.
In many cases I get my bet covered by some desperate last minute Layer.
As I mentioned above I have got many winners that payed anywhere from 50 to 500 % greater than track price. How else did I turn $200 to over $8000 in less than 7 months. Also note that better bargains appear when liquidity is greater.
Since most of the bettors are from the UK liquidity will be less if UK has races during same time as US racing. Monitor site by viewing range of prices Betfair offered on winner after each race and compare with track price. You will notice that in most situations the closing price at Betfair is usually higher than at track. Note: To view range of odds just click on horse's name ... you will see a graph and a digital chart.... access to this info is only available until race is settled so don't wait too long.
The friends that I have referred to Betfair no longer have any interest in betting at track prices anymore. Wish I knew about Betfair when they first started a few years ago.

Goodluck to All
AngelEyes

[midnight]

EmpowerISV: Thanks, but I'm not interested in being a part of any group who makes bets. I want to make my own bets with my own money.

AngelEyes: Thanks for the offer, and I'll be in touch if interested.

[toetoe]

That's it. I'm moving to Canada. Fair warning, eh?

[AngelEyes]

Midnight ,

"I would like to have a Betfair account. I had one for a few months that I was paying a man in Canada to set up for me. The account was in his name, and everything was done through his server proxy, so it appeared that it was coming from Canada...."

Excuse my ignorance... what is meant by a server proxy ??

Also what about Nickle's claim posted above ??


AngelEyes

[AngelEyes]

Also note that Betfair has a "Refer and Earn" program. When new members join through a referral they receive bonus payments. Unfortunately for me I joined without any referral and received no bonus payments. The "referrer" naturally gets bonus payments as well.
To receive these payments send me an email for my referral code before joining Betfair . We both win.

AngelEyes

[midnight]

Excuse my ignorance... what is meant by a server proxy ??


AngelEyes

In layman's terms, it means I connected to Betfair through his computer, and to Betfair it looked like it was him connecting to them. It's the same principle as if you use Anonymizer (a web-based proxy). The websites you surf to through Anonymizer only see Anonymizer's addresses. They never see your address because Anonymizer shields it.

[classhandicapper]

Thanks. It's unfortunate that I can't open an account in the US.

[AngelEyes]

Sorry to rub it in but just received $7.00 on horse that paid $4.40 - 1st race at Delaware....

[john spencer]

angel eyes . a few good points you have made about betfair . personally i reckon the power of betfair.com (http://www.betfair.com/) is in being able to single out the 'non winners' and effectively playing bookmaker that they get done . ive been following the races in australia on betfair with a bit of success . have found a site called racehorsedata.com (http://www.racehorsedata.com/) that specialise in racing in the south of aust and dediciate a section of in how to identify the 'non winners' and 'false favourities. which is more then helpful. anyway. me thinks betfair will always have an edge over most agencies when you consider the commisions and taxes they charge ( or dont charge ) . happy punting all anyway .



John

[westbridge]

AngelEyes said he got better odds on Betfair. Classhandicapper said he got worse. They can both be right depending on the specific tracks.

I have spent lots of time in the last few months capturing data on BF. I have done some statistical study, mainly measuring the goodness of fit of the odds in BF against the US win pool, to see which pool is more efficient.

For this particular part of my study, I construct the 'implied probability' of winning from Odds. Therefore for the US pools, Prob = (1-track take)/WinOdd, whereas for BF Prob=1/BackOdd then normalize to 100%.

Please note the WinOdds above is converted to the non-US fashion, i.e. $payout/$1 investment. Also note the BF charge 5% on net winning, so it is not entirely "track take"-free. But from my study, if you bet more than one horse to win in a race and since you are not winning every race, the effect track take could be only 2% even without the BF discount. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO NORMALIZE THE BF PROBABILITIES, otherwise you will overestimate the prob.

First step is to check whether this 'implied probabilities' are true (thus, efficient markets) over the long term, with a large number of races. In my case, they are.

I then calculated the R-square of the 'implied probabilities' from WinOdd and from BF, which should be a good measurement of the explanation power of the numbers. For each track, the data is further partition into development set and test set.

Not too surprisingly, some tracks' BF r-square is consistently higher than the WinOdds, while for some track the reverse is true.

E.g. for Woodbine, BF is more efficient, thus BF odds tends to be lower, while for Suffork or Lau/Pim, the US Win Pool is more or equally efficient, thus lower odds. (Also due to larger track take.)

So AngelEys and classhandicapper can both be right, depending which track they are playing.

The biggest potential problem of my study is the small data sample. For most tracks I only have 2-300 races. Ideally I would like to have 1000 or more, but probably will take two years of data capturing....

On a separate note: someone asked here how to calculate exacta odds, and mentioned a magic number of 0.79 for the bias correction. If you are talking about the Gamma correction from the you-know-what-I-am-talking-about paper, you should know that that number could varies greatly from track to track. My own study shows that number could be from 0.5 (i.e. 2nd placing probability more random) to almost 1 (2nd placing probability more similar to the classic conditional probability). So beware.

[AngelEyes]

AngelEyes said he got better odds on Betfair. Classhandicapper said he got worse. They can both be right depending on the specific tracks.

I have spent lots of time in the last few months capturing data on BF. I have done some statistical study, mainly measuring the goodness of fit of the odds in BF against the US win pool, to see which pool is more efficient.

For this particular part of my study, I construct the 'implied probability' of winning from Odds. Therefore for the US pools, Prob = (1-track take)/WinOdd, whereas for BF Prob=1/BackOdd then normalize to 100%.

Please note the WinOdds above is converted to the non-US fashion, i.e. $payout/$1 investment. Also note the BF charge 5% on net winning, so it is not entirely "track take"-free. But from my study, if you bet more than one horse to win in a race and since you are not winning every race, the effect track take could be only 2% even without the BF discount. IT'S VERY IMPORTANT TO NORMALIZE THE BF PROBABILITIES, otherwise you will overestimate the prob.

First step is to check whether this 'implied probabilities' are true (thus, efficient markets) over the long term, with a large number of races. In my case, they are.

I then calculated the R-square of the 'implied probabilities' from WinOdd and from BF, which should be a good measurement of the explanation power of the numbers. For each track, the data is further partition into development set and test set.

Not too surprisingly, some tracks' BF r-square is consistently higher than the WinOdds, while for some track the reverse is true.

E.g. for Woodbine, BF is more efficient, thus BF odds tends to be lower, while for Suffork or Lau/Pim, the US Win Pool is more or equally efficient, thus lower odds. (Also due to larger track take.)

So AngelEys and classhandicapper can both be right, depending which track they are playing.

The biggest potential problem of my study is the small data sample. For most tracks I only have 2-300 races. Ideally I would like to have 1000 or more, but probably will take two years of data capturing....

On a separate note: someone asked here how to calculate exacta odds, and mentioned a magic number of 0.79 for the bias correction. If you are talking about the Gamma correction from the you-know-what-I-am-talking-about paper, you should know that that number could varies greatly from track to track. My own study shows that number could be from 0.5 (i.e. 2nd placing probability more random) to almost 1 (2nd placing probability more similar to the classic conditional probability). So beware.


Sounds a little complicated to me. To take full advantage of Betfair requires patience. Bet only when you get substantially higher odds otherwise pass or bet race at Pinnacle. The bargains are there. Mentioning Woodbine, on 10/16 I caught first race (Sheba) and received $33.40 minus 3.75% commission - at track he paid $17.10. I also caught second race (Legendary Dancer) and received $9.80 - at track he only paid $5.40. Problem with me is that I have no control and bet almost every US race they offer with some exceptions and yet I am still ahead.

Talking about betting exchanges I have come across IBETX which accepts US citizens. Commissions there are less than at Betfair but has less liquidity. Still I noticed that there are bargains to be found there as well just have to be a little more patient.

Angel Eyes

[AngelEyes]

Further to above:

Brisnet supertote offers a feature that lets you see percentage of money bet on each horse instead of the amount. From this you can determine true odds of horse (ie. if there was no track takeout). For example an even money horse at Delaware will have approx. 40% of Win Pool bet on it. That means that the true odds should be roughly 3-2 if there was no track takeout. At an Exchange (ie. Betfair/IBetx) 3-2 is equivalent to 2.5 . Therefore if you like this horse the trick is to try to get it at 2.5 or better. I have noticed that this opportunity occurs frequently... just have to be patient. On another note if exchange odds are lower than track's odds and you don't like the horse just Lay(ie. Book) it. I have seen this frequently as well. That's the beauty of betting at an exchange and remember their take is a max. of only 5%.

[frenchy]

I m with betfair for 3 years now !!! and it s magic, crazy....the only way for betting and became pro !!

[Museful]

Further to above:

At an Exchange (ie. Betfair/IBetx) 3-2 is equivalent to 2.5 . .

You meant 1.5, right?

Ted

[rokitman]

Nope. He means 2.5. That's Digital/Decimal Odds. 3/2 = 1.5:1 For DO you add 1 to that = 2.5.

If tote board says 9:1. DO=10

Reduce odds to :1 and add 1

[westbridge]

If you have details of the pools, the easiest way is to take the dollar amount bet on a horse divided by the total pool amount at the time. This gives a precise estimation by the public at that moment.

I heard Keeneland stopped feeding the detailed pool information to stop people from performing precise calculation such as the above. Apparently the feed has been resumed.

Anyway back to my early reply: your method will work in the long term if and only if the BF estimation is consistently less precise than the US win pool. Therefore tracks where BF odds are consistently higher then the US ones. My earlier point was to point this out.


Further to above:

Brisnet supertote offers a feature that lets you see percentage of money bet on each horse instead of the amount. From this you can determine true odds of horse (ie. if there was no track takeout). For example an even money horse at Delaware will have approx. 40% of Win Pool bet on it. That means that the true odds should be roughly 3-2 if there was no track takeout. At an Exchange (ie. Betfair/IBetx) 3-2 is equivalent to 2.5 . Therefore if you like this horse the trick is to try to get it at 2.5 or better. I have noticed that this opportunity occurs frequently... just have to be patient. On another note if exchange odds are lower than track's odds and you don't like the horse just Lay(ie. Book) it. I have seen this frequently as well. That's the beauty of betting at an exchange and remember their take is a max. of only 5%.

[andicap]

Nope. He means 2.5. That's Digital/Decimal Odds. 3/2 = 1.5:1 For DO you add 1 to that = 2.5.

If tote board says 9:1. DO=10

Reduce odds to :1 and add 1


So in digital odds, 2.5 pays $5 on a $2 wager = $3 profit??

[rokitman]

So in digital odds, 2.5 pays $5 on a $2 wager = $3 profit??

Right

[AngelEyes]

So in digital odds, 2.5 pays $5 on a $2 wager = $3 profit??

That's correct.

[parlay]

Not quite!
It is $3 less your takeout, which can be anywhere from 3-5% on net
winnings on that race.