Betfair Question??

decies

Just joined betfair the other night and am complete novice.
Have a few questions for the words of wisdom in here.!!!

Read the help file and just placed a few small bets on the grand national.
i understand most of it,am just one of these people who have to understand every thing !!
I have no intention of laying a bet just backing.Just for my piece of mind say i was going to lay a bet against waterford utd v Shels irish league game ok.It says on bet fair site Lay 34 €2.say i lay 10 euros against waterford if they win i lose 340 right if i win ?.how much do i get back in total ?What does that €2 mean in the lay box and if it was €40 how would that effect my winnings if it would?
Sorry to annoy ye -:(
Ger

ninebeanrows

Well it's much harder than that im afraid..

The money beside the odds indicate the amount that has
been placed on those odds for the game..

To find out what you would win when laying it is best to go to the payout and
possible loss buttons. Usually you dont lay unless the odds are down to about
3 or 4 or less. Say you enter a stake of 4 Euro on odds of 4 you would stand
to loose 6 Euro and could win say 8 Euro making a 2 Euro profit..

But if hte odds were much longer ie 50 If you placed 4E as a stake you would
stand to loose probably around 200E and would win around 205E
Making a 5 Euro gain..

To be able to lay for certainty you need to have a very large bank
and to be able to play risk

chump

Ignore the 'advice' above.

Let's say you go along to betfair and see that you can place a bet on a particular horse at 3.9 (this is ~ 3/1, infact 2.9/1). You will see a certain amount of money availible to be 'matched' at this price. In the 2 boxes to the left you will see the next best odds that you get if this money in the 3.9 box all gets matched.

You decide you want to lay.

Let's say you decide to offer 4.0 (you can offer any price) on this horse. Ie. You decide to lay the horse. (You will more than likely see in the lay column money that is 'waiting' to be 'matched' at 4.0)

So you decide how much you are willing to lose if this horse comes home. Let's say 12euro.
So 4.0 = 3/1 ... you're odds are therefore 1/3.

But betfair makes this easy.
You type in the Backer's Stake box 4. Immediately to the right of this you can see your 'Liability'. Ie. How much you stand to lose.

In this instance you will see 12 euro.
You obviously stand to gain the backers stake, in this case 4euro.
Ie. 1/3 of 12 = 4

masterK

The one piece of advice I would give you is to watch the markets and how they develop for a while before making any bets. Keep and eye on the betting history and pay particual attention to market fluctuations just before the off as the price can suddenly vary a lot just before the off.

Also don't jump in too early in a market, quite often the early prices offered on events are just attempts to catch a few suckers out. Always look at the market overround (the % number at the top), if it is over 105% on the bet side you can be fairly certain that most prices will increase.

Hobart

Weathercheck wrote:

Well it's much harder than that im afraid..

The money beside the odds indicate the amount that has
been placed on those odds for the game..

To find out what you would win when laying it is best to go to the payout and
possible loss buttons. Usually you dont lay unless the odds are down to about
3 or 4 or less. Say you enter a stake of 4 Euro on odds of 4 you would stand
to loose 6 Euro and could win say 8 Euro making a 2 Euro profit..

But if hte odds were much longer ie 50 If you placed 4E as a stake you would
stand to loose probably around 200E and would win around 205E
Making a 5 Euro gain..

To be able to lay for certainty you need to have a very large bank
and to be able to play risk

Weathercheck, I have asked you before to restrain from commenting on issues you know sfa about. From your reply quoted above it is obvious thatyou have absoloutely no idea how a betting exchange works. The initial poster asked a very valid question. A question which has a right and wrong answer. You are so off in your answer that I have no inclination to explain to you where and how much you are wrong. If I see any more crap from you on this forum you will be banned for a week. 1 more indescretion from there on and it's permanent.

My reply may seem harsh, but we are talking about betting here and I will not tolerate any crap. Is that clear?

ninebeanrows

I am so very sorry for being perhaps slightly off the mark with my
reply Hobart..

At least i tried to help and that's how i see laying working on betfair

The Higher the odds the smaller the gain and the higher the possible loss

The Lower the odds the higher the gain and the smaller the possible loss

And the money beside the odds is the amount traded at that price..

I was trying to type the post pretty quickly as i was heading out..

Oh and thanks for your explantation Hobart im sure it was overally
helpful to the poster in question

ninebeanrows

in from commenting on issues you know sfa about

I'll have you know that i will be contacting the owners of Boards
over your smart comments.. :cool:

chump

Ban him I say! :rolleyes:

sceptre

Weathercheck wrote:

I am so very sorry for being perhaps slightly off the mark with my reply

Slightly? Good lord.

Hobart

Weathercheck banned for 1 week for trolling.

Beau

Sorry for bringing up a very old thread.

masterK wrote:

Always look at the market overround (the % number at the top), if it is over 105% on the bet side you can be fairly certain that most prices will increase.

Can someone explain to me what exactly that percentage means?

Secondly, what is the motivation behind laying? I can only see 3 instances where it would benificial to do so:

1. In horse racing its alot more likely that a horse is`nt going to win
2. If the odds for your team were below 2.0
3. Laying a draw in a rugby match

Otherwise I just don`t see the point in laying (I realise the market can`t exist without it) why not just back something where you have a possibility to gain more than your stake rather than have the liability of losing more than your stake.

I hope I`ve explained my confusion well enough. I am new to betting nevermind betfair.

Crumbs

Beau wrote:

Can someone explain to me what exactly that percentage means?

It's the sum of the percentage chances of each horse in a race, where these percentages are determined by the odds on offer for each horse.

Thinking logically, if you allocate to each horse in a race the percentage chance that you think they have of winning, those percentages should add to 100 but if you take a bookie's odds on a race and change the odds to percentages, you'll see that they add up to more than 100.

Eg. A 5-horse race with odds and their percentage conversion:
Horse A: Evs = 50%
Horse B: 2/1 = 33.33%
Horse C: 9/2 = 18.18%
Horse 9/1 = 10%
Horse E: 66/1 = 1.5%

Adding those percentages gives 113%. This is called an overround book. The book is over by 13% which is the bookie's edge. In theory, no matter which horse wins the race, the bookie should still profit. (Of course, sometimes it doesn't work out for them if they take a disproportionately large amount on one particular horse, which wins, and they haven't taken in enough bets on the losing horses to cover the payout on the winner. But in the long run, it all works out for them.)

So the larger the overround percentage, the larger the edge the bookie has over punters. The lesser the percentage, the more value for punters. In the big race today, the Paddy Power Gold Cup at Cheltenham, the book at starting prices was 120%, whereas on Betfair you would be betting into a book of around 101%. The first race at Naas today had a book of 176%! :eek:

On occasion, you might see the figure drop to less than 100 on Betfair. This is an underround book and in theory, you should be able to back each horse at the price on offer and guarantee a profit.

Beau wrote:

Secondly, what is the motivation behind laying?

Strictly speaking, to make money.

If you were supremely confident that a horse wasn't going to win (or place), you could lay it for whatever price people were willing to back it at. Maybe you've studied the form intently and deduced that there is no way in hell that the horse has a chance of winning or maybe you've just been in the horse's stable and injected 6 syringes full of xylazine into its ass!!

Laying at big odds is the same as backing at short odds and laying at short odds is the same as backing at big ones. So all reasons for laying are directly related to the reasons for backing.

For some layers, they lay a few or all horses to try to have an overround book and guarantee a profit. Others would just lay one horse they think can't win or lay a horse they think is too short a price.

GMoney76

Good answer Crumbs - been on Betfair 4 years and couldn't better that!

GM:)

Beau

yeh seriously that was ace. Thank you very much sir.

Betfair rang me today to see if I had any questions which I thought was pretty cool.

I`ve withdrawn all I deposited at this stage and am playing with my winnings. Its something I`m really enjoying doing and making a tidy profit too!