Betting exchanges; Losers into winners

[jackad]

Has anyone placed bets on one of the (English?)Betting Exchanges (eg. www.betfair.com)? What has been your experience?
Also, how about the system (Losers into Winners) that selects horses to LAY odds against on one of these exchanges? See www.solosite.net/system/index.htm.
Jack

[jackad]

This is a system that selects favorites to lose. Evidently you can place a bet on the favorite TO LOSE using the betting exchanges. Sounds intriguing.

Does anyone have any reactions to this approach?
Thanks.
Jack

[Rick]

It may not be that easy since a race with numerous entries is probably more complex that just the matchup of all combinations of pairs. I remember them offering bets on who would finish last in Nevada years ago and the general feeling among horseplayers was that it was practically impossible to predict. That's generally true as you descend in finishing position. So, it's harder to predict who will finish 2nd than 1st and harder to predict who'll finish 3rd than 2nd and so forth. On the other hand, if you eliminate the winner, the 2nd place horse is about as likely to beat the rest of the field, so maybe there is some hope. Someone using neural networks could probably answer this question better than I could since I think most of them use the matchup approach.

[jackad]

Rick,
If I understand this correctly, when using these exchanges you don't have to bet on any particular horse to win, you can just bet on the favorite to lose.
Jack

[Dick Schmidt]

This is a reasonably frequent bet offered in England when you have a very strong favorite. Like here, people look at the favorite and see no flaws, yet don't want to accept a very short price. So the bookies offer two different bets that I saw. One is like this, bet that the favorite will lose, though I never saw the point. If you think the favorite will lose, there must be some overlays on the board somewhere. The other wager offered is betting as if the favorite was scratched. Say the 2 is the favorite. You bet on the 6. If the 2 wins, you still collect if the 6 runs second. Bar the Fav. they call it and I've seen it on offer several times. It can make a race with one dominate horse much more interesting for the "punters."

Dick

[Aussieplayer]

I can help you guys out here.

These guys, along with, um, I've forgotten the name of the other one (they have or are, joining together) gone from small pools, to HUGE turnover!!!!

What it does, is that it lowers the takeout to something like 2.5%.

I think you are getting confused with the favourite thing. "Laying" horses etc. With these betting exchanges, you can either (a) bet like a normal punter, taking fixed odds, or (b) you can actually BE the bookmaker, hence, you can lay a horse.

The role of the bet exchange is to "match the buyers & sellers" - oops, I mean the "punters & the layers" (sound familiar?) - hence they deserve a cut of the action. They take such a small cut of the action (with the computer power of these days), that they REALLY ARE a very real threat to bookmakers. Oh, and the tote.

There is rumour going around that they might happen in Oz too. This will be a while off if it does.

There have been no probs. betting with these guys, and I know more than one who uses them.

In fact, I know of one Aussie punter who now only bets UK races & uses the exchanges!

Cheers
AP