How to avoid the Betfair premium charge

[Innertube]

OK, so we are stuck with this stupid charge then. Lets discuss how to avoid it.

Saw this post, it's not this easy is it?

Say you start trading tomorrow. You make £10,000 in the first month. Great. Now you go and find a short priced favourite that you are fairly certain will win. Lay it for £5000 on Betfair and back it for £5000 on Daq (you are up £10k so you can do this). If it loses, you are up £15k on Betfair sure but if it wins as expected, you are now still £10,000 up but only £5000 up on Betfair. I have been doing this ever since the Premium Charge came in and have never paid it. By arbing with bookies and the Daq my Betfair P&L is fairly close to zero, they think I don't make any money. Combined with having two accounts, in different names, one at work and one at home so the IP's never get linked, I am assured of never having to pay a charge unless all of the bookies ban me or Betdaq and WBX cease to exist.

So whilst you are not missing anything, you see that this has nothing to do with juggling a winning trade while it is in play, there is no rush to offset.

But don't wait until you are £230k in front before you start reducing your "apparent" Betfair winnings.

[andyfuller]

There are options open to you if you are new to this game, you don't have much profit if any, you have 'reasonable' Total Charges.

For someone who qualifies for it or soon will do, who therefore has a decent profit and a low'ish Total Charges it is probably too late.

For me it is too late I believe.

But using the above example if you are good enough to ensure you win/lose on the correct exchange/with the correct bookmakers why not just back the selections anyway.

The example given doesn't address the fact that if you get it wrong and you win on Betfair you are effectively on the martingale system now as you now need to lose twice as much on Betfair before the week is out, £10,000. So you have another bash and you try to lose the £10,000 on Betfair but you get it wrong again, you now need to lose the initial £10,000 plus the second £10,000 so we are up to £20,000 lets hope you have enough money to allow you to do this quickly still within the week because if you don't you are about to get hit with the most almighty PC that will leave you thinking why on earth do I even try this. Get it wrong a 3rd time and you win again on Betfair and you now need to lose yet more.

Is it out of the question that 3 even priced selections don't win/lose as you wish. No not at all and when that happens the Sh1t hits the fan.

Though I may have missed something but when I looked at this in some depth the outcome was, if I am that good at predicting the result forget about the PC and trading and just back these selections to win.

Lastly, Betfair read these forums so anything you figure out will mean you are just doing their job for them as they will plug the gaps when they release PC V4 in about a year.

But don't let that put you off and let me know anything you figure out

[Euler]

The flaw in this is that you would have to rack up commission to 40% isn't it? For people who have been going for some time this would be a substiantial figure.

[pedrobob]

I'm just starting to trade and half optimistic that i will be a success and eventually pay the PC. This idea seems reasonable to me and worth trying. I don't think you have to just lay a short price favourite and try and lose all your profit in one hit. I find that the betdaq price is often one tick lower than betfair so you could just back anything that you think will lose on betfair and lay on betdaq. As there is a problem with liquidity you will have to do this on a number of markets or a few liquid markets. This is unlikely to result in winning even more on betfair as you are just randomly punting. What could betfair do about it? They can't check with Betdaq if you are laying off your bets and it would just look like you are a punter.
I understand this is not viable for experienced pro traders but wouldn't this work for a newbie like me?
I would have to do this right away as i dont want to pay any charges - when is the threshold - does PC start at just £1000 profit?
Thanks for any thoughts on this

[enzabella2009]

If (ipotetically) I lost 3000 a day on BF for the next 365 days, will I still be hit by the 60% PC If ( ipotetically) made 1million? I have just remembered that between 2007 and 2008 I was 96K down on my betfair P&L but, in reality I was up several 0000s with some others bookmakers, I was not trying to avoid PC back then. I dont think I need to lose 10000 in one go to replicate what I did unpurposely in 2007-08...what do you think Andy?

[andyfuller]

If (ipotetically) I lost 3000 a day on BF for the next 365 days, will I still be hit by the 60% PC If ( ipotetically) made 1million? I have just remembered that between 2007 and 2008 I was 96K down on my betfair P&L but, in reality I was up several 0000s with some others bookmakers, I was not trying to avoid PC back then. I dont think I need to lose 10000 in one go to replicate what I did unpurposely in 2007-08...what do you think Andy?

If I understand you correctly and filling in the blanks I assume you mean lose £3000 on BF each day for 365 days but win it else where, say Ladbrokes.

You also make £1,000,000 say trading on Betfair over the 365 days.

Your Net position on Betfair would be:

-£1,095,000 from the losing £3,000 each day
+£1,000,000 from the trading
= -£95,000 on your Betfair account

Ladbrokes:

+£1,095,000 form winning £3,000 a day

Overall:

-95,000 + £1,095,000 = £1,000,000

So you come out £1,000,000 up (we have forgotten about commission for this argument).

All sounds great yeah?

But,

If you are able to find bets that allow you to win £1,095,000 with Ladbrokes why not just do that and the trading where you make £1,000,000 on Betfair. Yes you would give them 60% of the £1,000,000 leaving you £400,000 from Betfair but overall you are now up to the tune of £1,495,000

Which by my calculations is £495,000 more so you are better off still paying Betfair the 60%.


Hope that makes sense.

As for the argument that previously about punting at random all you would do in the long run is expect to break even across both accounts and just lose all the commission and in the process transfer no money from your Betfair Account to your Betdaq account.

Betfair only have to suspect you are trying to avoid the PC and they will shut you down. They don't need to prove it. They can just turn round like any other bookmaker and say we don't want your custom.

Seems to me they have it pretty well thought out, I heard of a few people who said they figured out how to never pay it but they never told me how as I am still paying it each week and will be giving up the game I suspect soon enough for pastures new.

[LeTiss]

I stand by my previous point on another thread

For those now paying 60%, it's surely game over. I can't see that paying.

However, the casual punters won't leave BF, they have no need to. So, the traders who haven't hit £250k lifetime earnings yet should find plenty of opportunities to hammer out some chunky profits. They just need to reach £250k before BF lower the threshold even further

[oscar123]

I read somewhere that once you are put into a premium charge bracket, that you stay there?

For example if you have paid under 5% in total charges on your profit, you are in the 60% bracket.

If you change your style of betting, start turning over more, leaving positions open and creating more commission. If you do that and your total lifetime charges rise above 5%, are you now in the 50 % bracket?

And if you are on 50% (10% lifetime charges), but you change your betting, and get above 10%, do you then go into the 40% bracket?

Is this correct? Do they really leave you on 60% even if you are now generating a lot more commission than previously?

[mpendle]

I read somewhere that once you are put into a premium charge bracket, that you stay there?

For example if you have paid under 5% in total charges on your profit, you are in the 60% bracket.

If you change your style of betting, start turning over more, leaving positions open and creating more commission. If you do that and your total lifetime charges rise above 5%, are you now in the 50 % bracket?

And if you are on 50% (10% lifetime charges), but you change your betting, and get above 10%, do you then go into the 40% bracket?

Is this correct? Do they really leave you on 60% even if you are now generating a lot more commission than previously?

You can move up and down between PC charge brackets. I had it clarified myself. I would advise others to do the same though as their T&Cs are a little ambiguous.

[gutuami]

using martingale on horses

cases with favorites winning six races in a row are around 20times since Sep 2008. The longest fav win is 9 races.

[rommel93]

The flaw in this is that you would have to rack up commission to 40% isn't it? For people who have been going for some time this would be a substiantial figure.

So does anyone have a efficent advice for someone who just started at betfair having profit not still premium charged and doesnt want to be?

[THENUTS]

here's some advice from someone who is trying very very hard to get to a stage where i do pay the premium charge. I want to pay the premium charge :

Be consistently profitable first - be profitable for a whole calendar year before the words premium charge even enter your brain. Here is a short extract from Betfair T & C's :

" a small number (less than 0.5%) of our most successful customers will incur Premium Charges "

99.5% of everyone that uses Betfair do not make any money - the other 0.5% take it all ( and betfair take their cut from them ).

If you are not paying the premium charge or you have not been profitable over a whole year - then do that first and don't worry about anything else.

I can tell you something for certain - it ain't easy to be Euler or Le Tiss or Peter Le or Jolly Green - they are very clever people.

Make money consistently first - forget everything else

Remember - over 99.5 out of 100 of you will fail

[andyfuller]

99.5% of everyone that uses Betfair do not make any money - the other 0.5% take it all ( and betfair take their cut from them ).

You can be extremely profitable and not pay a penny in PC. You have understood the statistic incorrectly.

[andyfuller]

99.5% of everyone that uses Betfair do not make any money - the other 0.5% take it all ( and betfair take their cut from them ).

You can be extremely profitable and not pay a penny in PC. You have understood the statistic incorrectly, it is 0.5% of users (is that still true? Also a % figure is very misleading as to the actual numbers that pay PC.) pay the PC not 0.5% are profitable.

[BJGardner]

Everyone could move to Betdaq Im sure PC payers hope Betdaq takes off under new ownership!