Question for Arbers

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Derek27
Posts: 23478
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

I think the only way you'll get an answer to your question is to do what spreadbetting suggested, put in a few small bets on the exchange and see if or how quickly they get matched. I'm sure there are a few arbers who would bet £100 just for a guaranteed 50 pence, plus there will be bots that automatically scour the market.

I doubt you'll get £1K on by drip-feeding. I can imagine you might have to wait 20 minutes to get £5 off - the markets are very quiet the night before.

What I don't understand is that by placing bets just under what the bookies are offering you are letting the bookies decide what price you are taking, and you'll be getting a worse price than what the bookies are offering! BSP has an overround of roughly 100% so there isn't much value in it.

If you were previously profitable using bookies with best odds guaranteed and now you're thinking of betting on the exchange at worse prices and without BOG, wouldn't that make the difference between profit and loss?
nikigatrell2
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon May 14, 2018 3:47 pm

Derek27 wrote:
Thu May 17, 2018 9:50 pm
I think the only way you'll get an answer to your question is to do what spreadbetting suggested, put in a few small bets on the exchange and see if or how quickly they get matched. I'm sure there are a few arbers who would bet £100 just for a guaranteed 50 pence, plus there will be bots that automatically scour the market.

I doubt you'll get £1K on by drip-feeding. I can imagine you might have to wait 20 minutes to get £5 off - the markets are very quiet the night before.

What I don't understand is that by placing bets just under what the bookies are offering you are letting the bookies decide what price you are taking, and you'll be getting a worse price than what the bookies are offering! BSP has an overround of roughly 100% so there isn't much value in it.

If you were previously profitable using bookies with best odds guaranteed and now you're thinking of betting on the exchange at worse prices and without BOG, wouldn't that make the difference between profit and loss?
The difference between BOG and just taking the price the evening before is 20% loss but still highly profitable. It's easy putting on 27 accounts worth of bets at BOG with 1 bookie (Bet365 was a dream). But we're struggling to get £25 matched at our remaining bookies for prices over 10/1 and I think we'll hav the same issue with non BOG bookies. Every time we split the stakes further we're doubling the amount of time it takes to place the bets.

We do have somebody who has developed an app which he claims can place bets with the bookmakers for us using a web bot but they want £225 per month per account so roughly £6k. So If I can beat that by taking a lower price and getting matched on Exchange it would be worht it. I may only get some matched and the rest I take during the morning and day but I'll try and let you know how it fairs.

The past 3 days have thrown up some large drifts overnight so the morning may prove t be better but I need to keep recording the data until I have a big enough sample.

Thanks for your input.
sa7med
Posts: 800
Joined: Thu May 18, 2017 8:01 am

nikigatrell2 wrote:
Fri May 18, 2018 12:51 pm

We do have somebody who has developed an app which he claims can place bets with the bookmakers for us using a web bot but they want £225 per month per account so roughly £6k. So If I can beat that by taking a lower price and getting matched on Exchange it would be worht it. I may only get some matched and the rest I take during the morning and day but I'll try and let you know how it fairs.
I've actually been working on something similar. Problem is pages change from time to time so would have to maintain it. PM me with what exactly you're looking to do and I may be able to help out.
xitian
Posts: 457
Joined: Fri Jul 08, 2011 2:08 pm

Tricky one. I'm thinking that the strategy just won't be that scalable if you're going to rely on money matched either the night before or very early morning. But that's true of most strategies that have a high edge or margin - they just won't be scalable, otherwise why does such as massive edge exist. This is why I'd expect it to be rare for anyone to run a syndicate and accept/increase members casually. If it's not scalable then you're effectively giving away money. Why wouldn't you just run it for yourself and scale it as much as possible for 1 person? I suppose maybe it's the thing about having 27 accounts with 27 different identities. It's just not scalable though.

If you're going to use the exchange, you may find that aiming for much higher volume (closer to the start of the event) with a lower margin offers higher absolute returns overall. Of course there's no reason why you couldn't do both. If you know what prices you want to offer up, then just see how much you can match as early as possible, and if you still have remaining stake then just continue to offer up closer to the event. If it's a large amount you want to get matched, then obviously you will need to automate and drip feed it in.

From my understanding of the betting industry:
- UK bookmakers will limit you, so the only way around that is to somehow automate creation of new accounts (which I think some big techie syndicates might do, but they'll have people dedicated to just creating new accounts all the time)
- Exchanges aren't that scalable (especially early in the day), and there can be high commissions
- Totes will have a lot of money, but you don't know what price you get until the start
- Asian books who allow winners don't offer UK Racing

Best option is probably to optimise and automate your edge to work on exchanges. You'd effectively be taking bets like a bookmaker at odds you want, assuming you are the best price and the public are interested. You'd need to refine your staking model though, as it wouldn't be quite as straight forward as just a point based betting system.
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