HARIBO

Good evening.

As you all know, Betfair offers markets where unmatched bets are not protected by delays and suspensions, like the Next Manager markets or the Euro 08 Outright Winner market.

What I fail to understand is why a person with an obviously delayed TV feed would not only operate on such a market (by matching unmatched bets), but even put up bets for others to match.

With the Next Manager markets, some might have reason to believe they will learn soon enough when a new manager is appointed. Even if that is the case, this possibility does not exist on the Outright Winner market. What one needs on such a market is the fastest available TV feed and a pretty good reaction time. As soon as a goal is scored, the person with the fastest feed is going to match the unmatched lays for that team (or lay its opponent) and there is nothing the others can do about it.

So... what's in for those with a slow feed or bad reaction time? Surely there must be a reason why people leave themselves exposed in a market they have no control over?

Thank you.

riccardo

Well, one answer is shooting for the over-reaction

If I estimate that someone's outright price should go to 5.60 if they win tonight, I can put up lays at 5.40 and 5.20 (all numbers plucked out of thin air). Quite often I will log in to find both lays matched, and a current market of 5.6+

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"My ASS, No blame!"

HARIBO

Thank you for your reply. I agree, this is a reason for offering prices below the current value, particularly before kick-off or while no team has taken the lead.

However, the Euro 2008 market stays really tight even during the matches. The lowest price to lay a team is usually only two or three increments bigger than the highest price to back it, at least as long as the prices stay below 20. There never seems to be a broader gap even after considerable market movements. For example, when Russia were 1-0 up against the Netherlands with ~5 minutes to go, Netherland's price went to 15. At that point, as far as I can see, only two things could have happened: Russia could have managed to defend their lead, which would have resulted in NED's price rising minute-by-minute (if not faster). Or NED could have scored the equaliser (as they did, which sent their price down to 5 for a short time). Either way -- who in their right mind would lay NED at, say, 10 or 12? When NED's price was 15, there was no way this bet would have been matched without them equalising, in which case laying NED @ 12 would be like burning money with petrol.

To me, it looks like a lose-lose situation. That people would expose themselves to such a situation at a two-digit price level just adds to my confusion. But maybe I'm missing something, and that's why I asked here.

Hacker

So then you need cases where the price would move in a bit, but not as much as it would with an equaliser

A russian sending off or a dutch free kick in a dangerous area would probably do the trick. Not saying it's correct for the price to move that much, but as said before, market often overreacts when things like this happen

You might even find some fat fingers misjudging where a foul has been committed and thinking a penalty has been given when it was only a free kick

I don't think people who operate on an outright market leaving orders to lay a team drifting out of the tournament are the sort of kind souls who like to burn their money - there will be some mugs in there but I would expect the majority of them to get their orders out the way in time if something happened which meant the true price was going to move all the way through them

HARIBO

Alright. But as I wrote in my first message, I believe many of these people were using delayed TV feeds (to my knowledge, all publicly available Euro 2008 TV feeds are delayed by at least one second). I think so because many were not able to cancel their unmatched bets fast enough to avoid being matched by someone with access to real-time or close-to-real-time information. I have seen this happening to people offering (at least) four-digit liabilities.

If someone lays at two-digit odds with liabilities within the four-digit range and above, only to wait for some overreactions, I would have thought he had to be able to cancel his bets in time to be profitable in the long run. On the other hand, I don't have any numbers on how profitable it actually is to feed a volatile market in case of an overreaction. It might be possible to make profits despite being ripped off by those inside the stadium or the surrounding area, I just find it hard to believe.

If there is somebody who was, or still is, operating on unprotected markets during matches -- I would love to read your thoughts on this subject.