Gambling forum quick questions thread

[blue4578]

Not sure if anyone else does this but if I am having a flutter on an in running football match i tend to always have the match odds up on screen. Occasionaly, I will be browsing other web pages. Is there a way of betfair making a noise to alert me the market has suspended?

Futbol24 will play a noise when there is a goal or sending off in a match. That's probably the best you're going to get, and that is quite quick.

Bet 365 have sound effects for goals, whistles for pens, ht/ft etc which is quite useful.

Anyway my question, does anyone else use the Betfair app? It used to work fine for me but now once I go to place a bet it shuts down so I've been using the betfair mobile site which isn't as good.

The Betfair iPhone app is rubbish, always has been when I've tried to use it. iBetMate is a much better version of the same thing.

[Adam]

I use the Iphone app most days and have never had a problem with it.

[blue4578]

Give iBetMate a try Adam, it's a definite upgrade on what Betfair offer.

Better odds refresh, much easier to manage current bets, price graphs are available, app doesn't crash or fail to work like Betfair's does quite often. Only slight downside is that you have to be logged in to view markets.

[Cowden til i die]

Not really that quick but I received this. Is it ligit and how do I go about getting my account details?

Dear Murray

Important Account Information

This has been sent to all customers as it contains important account information.

It's been a very long time since you have used your Ladbrokes account and we are writing to inform you of the choices that are available on how to manage the credit balance that remains on your account. If you do not take action then after a minimum period of 28 days from the date of this email we will begin to charge an Inactive Account Fee (as per section 15 of our Terms and Conditions) on your account. Full details of this charge are included later in this message.

To avoid paying any charges, please review the following options and choose the one that you prefer:

1) If you choose to resume betting, all you need to do is log in to your account and place a bet using the credit balance.

2) If you've decided you no longer wish to bet with us you can log in to your account and withdraw your current balance. It is possible that your card and account details are out of date so you may wish to check and update them first to enable you make a withdrawal.

3) You may choose to donate your balance to the Ladbrokes in the Community Charitable Trust which donates funds to good causes throughout Great Britain. To do this, email us at AccountQueries@Ladbrokes.co.uk, expressing your wish to do so along with your username or Customer ID.

4) In addition to options 2 and 3 you may wish to close your account for good, in which case after withdrawing your funds email us at AccountQueries@Ladbrokes.co.uk and ensure you include your username or Customer ID with your request to close your account.

If you take any action as described above your account will be protected from the Inactive Account Fee for a period of no less than twelve months from the date of activity.

If you experience any issues with the above options you can contact our customer services team by detailing any problems you are having to AccountQueries@Ladbrokes.co.uk. Our customer services team will be pleased to help you through the process but as we are experiencing high levels of correspondence at the moment it may take us a few days to get back to you.

Don't worry, we have notified you with plenty of time to spare so please be reassured that your email will be actioned before any charges (see below) are applied to your account. In the meantime you may find the Frequently Asked Questions useful.

Inactive Account Fee details:

This charge will only be applied to funds in your Ladbrokes account and will apply at £2 (or currency equivalent) or 5% of the balance of the account on the date the account becomes inactive (whichever amount is the greater) and after the first day of every following calendar month until the account balance is reduced to zero. The total of funds in each wallet (e.g. poker, casino) will be used as the basis for calculating the charge. If at any time you reactivate your account by carrying out betting activity or you withdraw your funds the charges will cease. At no time will any request for payment of funds above and beyond those already in your account be made.

Many thanks for taking the time to read this email.

Kind regards,

Ladbrokes.com

[Nightmare]

That might all sound too hard to understand, so in simple terms, let's say I think that all three outcomes in a football match are equally likely, ie 33.33%, to 2 decimal places. The fair price for this would be 2/1, or 3.00 in decimals. Therefore if I want to make a profit, you need a profit margin both sides. In this case of me calculating that all three outcomes are 33.33% likely, then when it comes to football, I would look to back all three outcomes at 3.35 and lay all three outcomes at 2.8. This isn't set in stone, if there are some uncertain factors in play, or if I just don't particularly want to lay or back a certain outcome for whatever reason, I can increase the margins. I also tend to start the week with higher margins, and decrease the margins as match day gets closer. I might be backing and laying 3.8 and 2.5 respectively on Monday, but be backing and laying 3.35 and 2.8 by Saturday morning for the same outcomes.

Dragging up this post from a few weeks ago here...

I've just begun trialing this method of backing and laying all outcomes to a certain percentage, but I've been a bit confused with the what percentages to go with. Do you go with the prices currently in the market and mark them up to the price you want to back and lay yourself, or do you start the whole thing from scratch and ignore the market, going with the percentage chance you think each team has of winning regardless of what other people think?

And if it's the latter, how do you go about finding out these percentages? Like, what sort of statistics do you use to say that, for example in tonight's match that Braga have a 30% chance of beating Benfica?

Edited May 5, 2011 by Nightmare

[mid-table]

I've just begun trialing this method of backing and laying all outcomes to a certain percentage, but I've been a bit confused with the what percentages to go with. Do you go with the prices currently in the market and mark them up to the price you want to back and lay yourself, or do you start the whole thing from scratch and ignore the market, going with the percentage chance you think each team has of winning regardless of what other people think?

And if it's the latter, how do you go about finding out these percentages? Like, what sort of statistics do you use to say that, for example in tonight's match that Braga have a 30% chance of beating Benfica?

Ignore the current market, remember it is about your judgement. If you are a good judge of football matches, you will win. If you aren't, or haven't got a very refined model, you won't.

As for the last sentence, that is what gambling is all about. You won't find a truly successful gambler giving that sort of information away. I'll throw it back at you. What sorts of things do you think are used by an odds compiler when he or she has to price up a game?

[Nightmare]

Ignore the current market, remember it is about your judgement. If you are a good judge of football matches, you will win. If you aren't, or haven't got a very refined model, you won't.

As for the last sentence, that is what gambling is all about. You won't find a truly successful gambler giving that sort of information away. I'll throw it back at you. What sorts of things do you think are used by an odds compiler when he or she has to price up a game?

Yeah, that was a question too far, wasn't it?

I'd imagine league position, form (home/away), head-to-head are all involved, but then you've got to take into account what teams are playing for (will 1 be more motivated than the other?), do they have any injuries, and maybe a couple more things. Quite extensive, I suppose.

[blue4578]

I've just begun trialing this method of backing and laying all outcomes to a certain percentage, but I've been a bit confused with the what percentages to go with. Do you go with the prices currently in the market and mark them up to the price you want to back and lay yourself, or do you start the whole thing from scratch and ignore the market, going with the percentage chance you think each team has of winning regardless of what other people think?

And if it's the latter, how do you go about finding out these percentages? Like, what sort of statistics do you use to say that, for example in tonight's match that Braga have a 30% chance of beating Benfica?

You ignore (to a large degree) the current prices. You certainly don't let the current price influence how you're pricing things. However if you're wanting to be laying something at Evens for example, and you find that the market has people wanting to back that outcome at 1.3 for decent sums, you'll have to seriously reconsider your position. Or perhaps you're so right that you can ignore this and lay the 1.3 for a lot more than you were originally planning to lay at Evens.

As to how you work out those percentage probabilities of outcomes occurring, there is no one way to do it. It's not like tossing coins or rolling dice, where you have a definite probability for each outcome. You'll struggle to find two people who do things in an identical way. I'd be quite happy disclosing most of my methods, safe in the knowledge that as it's far from being purely statistics based, no one would be able to replicate it in the same way and therefore undercut me by one tick on betting exchanges.

The other percentage, the book percentage you're backing and laying, when it comes to laying if you want to be safer lay to higher percentages, and back to lower percentages when backing. The closer you lay to 100%, the more bets you'll get matched but the easier it is for people with better knowledge to pick you off. That is if there are people with better knowledge. High street bookmakers can lay awful odds as the idiots in the shops will take them anyway. It's more competitive using betting exchanges so if you're laying awful prices you usually won't get matched.

[blue4578]

I'd imagine league position, form (home/away), head-to-head are all involved, but then you've got to take into account what teams are playing for (will 1 be more motivated than the other?), do they have any injuries, and maybe a couple more things. Quite extensive, I suppose.

You'd struggle at the start of the season then.

[Nightmare]

You ignore (to a large degree) the current prices. You certainly don't let the current price influence how you're pricing things. However if you're wanting to be laying something at Evens for example, and you find that the market has people wanting to back that outcome at 1.3 for decent sums, you'll have to seriously reconsider your position. Or perhaps you're so right that you can ignore this and lay the 1.3 for a lot more than you were originally planning to lay at Evens.

As to how you work out those percentage probabilities of outcomes occurring, there is no one way to do it. It's not like tossing coins or rolling dice, where you have a definite probability for each outcome. You'll struggle to find two people who do things in an identical way. I'd be quite happy disclosing most of my methods, safe in the knowledge that as it's far from being purely statistics based, no one would be able to replicate it in the same way and therefore undercut me by one tick on betting exchanges.

The other percentage, the book percentage you're backing and laying, when it comes to laying if you want to be safer lay to higher percentages, and back to lower percentages when backing. The closer you lay to 100%, the more bets you'll get matched but the easier it is for people with better knowledge to pick you off. That is if there are people with better knowledge. High street bookmakers can lay awful odds as the idiots in the shops will take them anyway. It's more competitive using betting exchanges so if you're laying awful prices you usually won't get matched.

Ok, nice one.

And with all this in mind, I assume that it's better to get your backs and lays in as early as possible, to try and get people to take your prices before the market starts to take shape and you might be priced out?

You'd struggle at the start of the season then.

True. Then again, is that not the case for everyone at the start of the season? Sometimes teams might look good on paper, but just don't perform, and you're never going to know until they play some competitive matches (unless you take pre-season form into account, which I imagine would be gambling suicide ).

[blue4578]

And with all this in mind, I assume that it's better to get your backs and lays in as early as possible, to try and get people to take your prices before the market starts to take shape and you might be priced out?

Yes, that's something I've said here many times, including on this thread. Although to be fair, there is very little action early in the week outside the Premier League and other high profile games.

True. Then again, is that not the case for everyone at the start of the season? Sometimes teams might look good on paper, but just don't perform, and you're never going to know until they play some competitive matches (unless you take pre-season form into account, which I imagine would be gambling suicide ).

Not at all. If you know who is going to be good you can really cash in. This is particularly true if a slightly unfancied team turn out to be among the best in the league. Sometimes it's obvious that a team is going to struggle when they are quite fancied. Research done over the summer is important and can be extremely valuble. Ante-post betting is completely different, but you can really hit the jackpot with that too if you have a good feel for the teams before the season starts.

[UltimateDAFC]

Right quick question here. I'm wanting to do a bet on the football and want to do the 5 teams, but including 4 folds etc also? How would I go about doing this, as I usually just stick with the accumulators. (Its instore betting btw).

Edited May 6, 2011 by UltimateDAFC

[UltimateDAFC]

There isnt any, solved the probem by just writing it on a blank slip

[Adam]

Anyone else had issues getting onto Betfair today? I've been OK placing bets on my mobile browser, but trying to get on with my laptop has been a no-go since about 10am today.

They really do take the fucking piss at times, I'm seriously tempted to tell them to shove their account up their arse (not that they would care that much) and bet exclusively with BETDAQ.

[mid-table]

Anyone else had issues getting onto Betfair today? I've been OK placing bets on my mobile browser, but trying to get on with my laptop has been a no-go since about 10am today.

They really do take the fucking piss at times, I'm seriously tempted to tell them to shove their account up their arse (not that they would care that much) and bet exclusively with BETDAQ.

Nothing to do with service issues, but I signed up to Betdaq today, as commission is 2.5%.

Put £300 on Manchester United to beat Chelsea at 2.35.

Then put £20 on Lucas Glover to win the golf at 7.2

Not had a loser yet, currently on £815.38

[Nightmare]

Me again, questioning another aspect of this post...

My back percentage is nearly always 88%-89%, but my lay book percentage tends to vary between 105% and 113%, although is mostly under 110%.

Specifically about this. I'm stll in the trialing phase, but I'm looking at the 'price/volume over time' graph and stats on Betfair, and I've noticed that pretty much none of my backs would get matched (even at 90% rather than 88% or 89% like you're saying) if I'd put them up, whereas a decent percentage of the lays do (I just started off with a default 106% on these, although I understand in some instances that this could be increased and would still be matched).

What I've been doing is creating %s for all three outcomes in the match, and then pricing these up/down to the percentages previously mentioned. For example:

Nottingham Forest - 40% chance (2.5, marked up backing at 2.78 and laying at 2.35)

Swansea - 32% chance (3.13, back 3.47 and lay 2.93)

Draw - 27% chance (3.57, back 3.96 and lay 3.35)

For that game, I would have had 4 out of 6 matches (all lays, and the Swansea back).

Basically... is what I've done here, what you mean by the quote above? Or have I missed the point and am doing it wrong?

But like I said, other than for this game, I seem to be finding it difficult to get matches, especially with the stakes when backing outcomes. Lays are ok, I have about half of them matched so far. You mentioned that only about 30% of all your stakes get matched; are these heavily weighted towards the laying side of what you're doing as well, or am I just getting unlucky?

[blue4578]

That's pretty much how I do it, although your three percentages add up to 99% and you'd have to round your odds if you're using Betfair as you can't back or lay 2.35, 3.47, 2.93 or 3.96.

There isn't really such a thing as "doing it wrong", unless you're laying a 95% book or backing a 105% book or something along those lines. The method I described in previous posts is just what works for me. I've tweaked it slightly over time, but it's just what feels right for me and someone else wouldn't necessarily agree. I deliberately set the back percentage to around 89% as I don't want to get two backs fully matched very often, as only one of them can ever win. It does happen occasionally, which basically means you're laying the other outcome for double the amount or more as your lay on that outcome will inevitably get matched. I'm a lot more flexible with my lay percentage as when I tried rigidly setting it to 106%, I ended up laying bets at prices that I didn't really want to be laying. Over a month I pretty much broke even doing this, when before and since I was making a lot. So sometimes I lay 105% and sometimes I lay 115%. The more uncertain factors there are, the higher this percentage tends to be. I can also decrease the back percentage on occasion if I'm wanting more margin for error. If I'm out on a Tuesday evening at a game for example, I can't really analyse all the team line ups before the games and adjust my prices accordingly, although an iPhone 4 does help with this. I have to trust the team news and take my chances, therefore I need a bit of margin for error as if some team leave out a couple of key players, the odds will move and I'll probably end up backing them and/or laying their opponents.

If you want to get more backs matched, back to 94% if you're laying to 106% and it should be about the same both sides. I'm not wanting that to happen so I adjust my percentages accordingly. Obviously over the course of the week, the ultimate thing is to see action on both sides, either two or more lays get matched, or a back and a lay on the same outcome get matched at very favourable odds to you. It's just about playing about a bit and seeing what works. What works for me might not work for someone else and they might have completely different ideas about how to go about it.

I've got a website set up, which I will be using to post several updates per week on my betting activity as well as some general betting articles. I'll have everything available on an RSS feed and will provide Twitter updates. I'll post a link up in a few weeks if anyone is interested. I probably won't be posting here very much at all when it's up and running.

[Nightmare]

That should have been 28% on the draw. Mis-typed it. And yeah, I discovered the need to round up the numbers on Betfair as well.

It's not that I'm too concerned about wanting to get all my backs matched, because I understand that the more I try and change the prices to get more matched, the lesser the profit. I just wondered if it was mainly the backs that made up the majority of your non-matches, but I didn't even take into account the fact that by getting more than 1 back matched, only one can win so unless both the respective lays are matched as well, it's actually a disadvantage. Which obviously is why you're setting them at 88/89%. A slight oversight, that.

Seeing as I'm not going to have the bank to be covering full cards of matches (only going to be able to do a few at once), would you advise going for games which are closer, like the Forest-Swansea one was, or games where I'm more sure of the winner?

Definitely would be interested in reading any of your betting articles on that site, btw.

Edited May 14, 2011 by Nightmare

[fanny paddery]

I've got a website set up, which I will be using to post several updates per week on my betting activity as well as some general betting articles. I'll have everything available on an RSS feed and will provide Twitter updates. I'll post a link up in a few weeks if anyone is interested. I probably won't be posting here very much at all when it's up and running.

Blue I would like a link if thats ok !

[blue4578]

You can bet to tighter margins. However the smaller margins you use, the better you have to be. I'll tell you a little story to prove my point. I know some guys through Betfair who have found a way to make money. They use bots to take prices from bookmakers and lay them on Betfair in slightly more obscure markets where they have a good chance of getting them taken. Stuff like baseball, winter sports, rugby league and so on. I was speaking to one of them and he said that they got absolutely murdered during the 2008 Olmypics. Centrebet were pricing up every gold medal, so they took Centrebet's odds and layed them on Betfair. People who knew the Olympic sports inside out just picked them off and took the good prices and they lost a fortune. Centrebet probably did too, although maybe they were only letting people bet £5 a go. This is why most bookmakers don't bet to low margins, particularly on more obscure sports. If they can get plenty of business, and a little action on both sides, they don't need to offer really competitive odds. They don't need to offer odds at all on things like Olympic sports either.

As I said, you could easily back to smaller margins. If there is still perceived value in each price you're putting up there, you should still end up in front over time. My own personal preference is to look for more lays than backs to get matched. You could in fact easily do it the other way around, ie back to 94% and lay to 111%. If you adjusted the stakes accordingly, that is just a different way of doing exactly the same thing. In a three outcome event, laying one outcome is just backing the other two and vice versa. It's all down to personal preference and playing about with it till you find something that works. I've been playing about with it for 10 years so I've reached a point where I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing.

As for which matches to get involved with, I think that's very simple. I would make the effort to get involved in as many as possible, if you've got the time to research properly. So if you were going to do £20/£40 stakes on 10 matches, if you can do £5/£10 stakes on 40 matches. You want your eggs in as many baskets as possible as there is then lower variance in your results on a weekly basis. If you bet on less matches, your results will be a lot more up and down week to week. Again though, that's just my preference. The long term result should be roughly the same, but I prefer to win a steady amount week to week with maybe one losing week in twenty, rather than having two weeks where I win big, and then one where I lose most of it again. Closer matches are more conductive to backing and laying in this way as prices tend to move more.

As for the website I'm going to have for next season, I'll post a link in my signature when it's ready to go (will be July at the earliest).