Topic of Racing

[razor68]

I heard through the grapevine that the UK offers betting on in running. Site called Betfair. My buddy mentioned it to me..

Anyone hear of this site? and have tried it out?

[razor68]

I just heard from someone that the catch is they got live feeds and have everyone else using feeds 5-10 seconds behind what they use.

Would not be a problem if they were not the ones seeding the markets also....

Ah well forget that idea.. must just be good for crooked trainers to lay horses.

[SG4]

Betfair's exchange wagering has already come & gone in the US, don't think there are any plans on them giving it another go-round any time soon as it never got the traction or availability it needed to be a success.

[Dave Schwartz]

It is a very high-tech game.

To be competitive, your connection (i.e. bandwidth and software) must support 22 updates per second or else you are getting old pricing news.

[classhandicapper]

Maybe being at the track live and putting your bets in via laptop/IPAD/Phone would be an advantage.

[castaway01]

Those who have been here for a while have seen the discussions about Betfair's attempt to offer exchange wagering in NJ. I'll just say that if you think it's easy to make money that way...it ain't. And now it's gone because it never got enough people using it to offer big profits to those who understood what they were doing.

[classhandicapper]

I don't live in NJ. So I don't know why exchange wagering failed there. But I played on an exchange for a few years. They were some of best years I ever had. The fact that it failed in NJ leads me to believe it wasn't given a fair chance to succeed (namely those with a vested interest in it failing made sure it did), the people running it were incompetent, or horse players weren't smart enough to take advantage of the occasional bargains that pop up on horses you were going to bet at the track anyway (not to mention the ability to book bets where you hate a horse but have no real positive opinion to take advantage of it). I wish I could wager at Betfair or on a exchange in the US.

[razor68]

OR maybe Betfair were not very good at making fair negotiations to spread the product around the US?

Frank Stronach prob didnt help matters.

[Onesome]

Wasn't one of the reasons for not getting traction is because tracks wanted sky high commission rates of ~12ish% while the standard in UK (and most of Australia) is 5%.

[razor68]

Greedy tracks. Shame on them.