Betting Exchange In-Play

[rogerha]

I wanted to make public an idea, to see if anybody has tried it, or thought about it. Its not really trading as such, but it will be of interest to some people.

We all know that Betfair run markets in-play for horse racing, but I used to work in the field of IT and I have a potential theory for utilising these in-play markets.

You may or may not know, that nearly all of the In-Play data is delivered to bookies and TV's stations via one company who specialises in providing these satellite feeds. What you also may or may not know, is that there is one individual that paid to receive this feed direct to his offices. Why I hear you ask, well its simple.

I have read of people attempting to make money by watching the TV whilst trading in-play. However many compain, that even with the TV or radio, they are always slightly behind the market action. My theory on this is because there are at least two satellite bounces involved in this (each is 220mS minimum for all the geeks out there), as well as the relay through the TV network etc. In short your average in-play punter is anything between 1sec and 4 seconds behind the actual events. The reason they are missing the bets is the one individual above with is live feed is only 220mS behind the action, and is grabbing and laying bets before anybody has a chance. (Trust me I know this individual exists, and has a very lucrative business doing this with a few traders in his office etc)). In fact I have read, that some people are placing bets on the in-play markets up to 4 seconds beyond the end of the race.

So how can we benefit from this ?

Simple really. A mobile phonecall to somebody logged into Betfair is faster than Satellite. Even better, a Laptop at the racecourse with a 3G card would be even quicker than that ? You can be in on these trades before the guy with the satellite feed (in theory)

Just wondered if anybody had thought of it, or tested it ?

 

[stevespray]

Hi Roger,

Nice post, you raise some interesting points in there.

As someone who has used Betfair I’ll try and add a few comments from my own observations / knowledge.

Firstly, your comments regarding ‘Live TV’ appear to be correct. I have been at a cricket match which was also being covered ‘live’ by Sky Sports. The game was being shown in the Bar. This presented the opportunity to observe the size of ‘the delay’ in transmission. I observed such a delay to be around 2.5 – 3 seconds. The does therefore appear to be some substance in what you have stated.

My question is this – Don’t you think that Betfair would have considered this when writing their software. I have placed bets on ‘in play’ events such as football. I have always found that ‘in play’ bets are delayed for a few seconds – when you go to place your bet a delay is automatically introduced. My guess is that this is done on purpose to prevent such activities.

In soccer Betfair suspend the market whenever there is a goal / sending off / penalty kick. This gives punters time to remove their old orders and establish new ones thus reflecting the change in circumstances. After a period of time the market reopens. I did a little experiment some time back. I thought that I would use ‘Soccer Saturday’ on Sky Sports to see if an advantage could be gained. They normally have about four panellists covering four games. Whenever there is a goal / penalty you hear about it in real time (bar three or four seconds). I’ve had a ‘match odds’ market open on Betfair at the same time as a goal has occurred – I have noticed that the market is suspended within a fraction of a second. This is very quick indeed and I suspect that they must have someone at each game which allows ‘in play’ markets to be opened and closed. So far as I am aware there is no other way that their system could react so quickly. The old fashion ‘vidi-printer’ runs a good 20 odd seconds behind the real time events. I would love to know exactly how they know so quickly that an ‘event’ has occurred in one of there matches.

Moving onto horse racing. This would appear to have more mileage in my opinion. The only question relates to the use of a laptop in the grandstand at the course – is this permitted?
Your greatest advantage is always going to be obtained if you are actually at the event yourself. I have noticed that horse racing does not incur a delay in betting like the football does.

Quick thought – Can Betfair be used via a PDA ?

Has anyone ever been at a course and compared prices ?

Steve.

 

[Roberto]

Hi Roger,

You are quite right. As Betfair warns punters under the "Rules" tab on nearly every page: "Users should be aware that transmissions described as live by some broadcasters may actually be delayed".

Many people exploit this by betting in-play, simply using a domestic SIS subscription, as alluded to in your post above. At the moment this costs about £6,500 per annum, which is nothing if you can make a living doing it.

This subject is discussed in some detail in several books, including (recently) in "Lay, Back and Think of Winning" by Nigel Paul.

 

[rogerha]

Yes well all commercial organisation use the SIS feed you speak of. But in all honesty, it is nowhere near as fast as phone (even mobile phone) technology.

I have (before I became keen on the idea) seen people on phones and laptops on-course, so the course themselves don't mind. Indeed most of the reps of the larger bookmakers that are on course, use PDA's.

I mean if you were serious about it, you could try it with somebody on-course on the end of the phone, laying horses that fell or pulled up before the punters got into it, and backing the eventual outcome. As I said I know there is one chap who definitely does this for a living using SIS, but ultimately you 'could' in theory be faster than him.

As for PDA Access on BF, I suspect it will be a matter of time. You can also speed things up by using something like STW (which I have also been Beta Testing), and using coupons etc in-play, since this uses the API you'd be in like a shot.

I was only really thinking of the horses, but when you see £10k matched in play on the eventual winner, there is definately money here, if you have an edge. I think the speed would give you the egde.

 

[Roberto]

I take your point, Roger. But I suspect that whereas the number of people subscribing to SIS is now increasing exponentially, and the turnover on the exchanges with it as more and more people are making a living this way, the number of people actually able and willing to attend race-meetings or send someone on their behalf is (by comparison) almost infinitessimally small.

 

[rogerha]

Interesting, so people getting the SIS is quite big business now ? I had no idea.

Oh well, it was nice in theory ;-)

 

[stevespray]

Roger - Not being from a betting back ground could you explain SIS, STW and API.

Many thanks in advance,
Steve.

 

[rogerha]

Of course no Problem.

SIS is the company that provides the data from the course to the Bookies/TV etc etc.

STW is Sports Trader Workstation which is an up and coming trading platform for Betfair, I have been involved in the Beta Testing, and I have to say its very impressive. It uses API.

API - Is Betfair's development interface which allows third party software to work with Betfairs 'trading platorm' so you can use all of the BF functionalilty in a stand-alone third-party applicaton. So it can place bets, lay bets etc.

Hope that helped.

 

[stevespray]

Roger….

Thanks for the explanations – I didn’t want to lose track of what was being discussed at such a key stage.

The STW sounds good – one imagines that it will allow much faster interaction with the various markets offered.

Moving on to strategy. It appears, based on what has so far been written that the only way to really gain any kind of advantage is to be present at the race course.
Being of a stock / futures market back ground I can already see that being present at the course effectively offers the potential to ‘seize’ value from the offered prices before they reflect what is actually going on.

My question would be…What individual strategies would you use in order benefit from your obtaining of this slightly better ‘value’ when placing bets?

Someone already mentioned laying a fallen horse for example – in reality is it possible to manipulate what ever software you are using in order to place the order quickly before the price is pulled?

My own thinking was more along the lines of having a predefined bet typed in and ready for execution – ie one click / half a second away from execution. For example it might be laying the favourite – you would simply lay the bet at the moment it became obvious to you that the favourite wasn’t going to win – there will of course be times when you make a bad call and the favourite goes on to win but the essence of the strategy is that, over an extended period of time, you would slowly accumulate value based on your few seconds of advantage.

Any thoughts,
Steve.

 

[rogerha]

Hi Steve,

Apologies for the delay, was in France yesterday.

Let me tell you that STW does single click betting with nor confirmation (amongst many other things), bets get filled in milliseconds. So yes, the best way of taking advantage of these opportunities is always with STW for me. STW even allows you to catch the in-play market as the horse comes home, which you need to be very fast for most times.

One of its other clever facilities (and there are many more), is laying and backing coupons, allowing you to back/lay in-play (or not) multiple horses for a profit. Therefore if it is a '2-horse' race in the final furlong or two, you can either back or lay both for a profit (depending on odds).

There are many potential strategies you could use. Obviously backing the winner if you can clearly see it coming home. Laying fallers, unseated, pulled up etc. Another excellent thing would be to lay horses as they are 'ridden along' at early(ish) stages of the races, since it looks likely the horse is having to try to hard to even keep the pace. Of course also there are the multiple selections I speak of above if you have a breakaway pack etc.

These are just thoughts, and if you watch tv and Betfair at the same time, they are good thoughts, the trouble is, the TV doesn't give you the edge.

Roger

 

[l'estranger]

You're right, tv doesn't give you edge, because of the delay you mention. I often work on shows like 'soccer saturday' and the feed I watch is ahead of the off air. I don't think this would give me an edge tho' because betfair build in a delay. Also the feeds I watch are slightly delayed (5 matches straight into the building). I'll see if I can run a virtual book during a match and see if I gain any advantage - I doubt it (and the 'bloke in the office' won't be watching anything less delayed than myself). But I'll give it a go and let you know how I get on.
Live radio would be a better bet than soccer saturday, if you want to keep up at home (incidentally - the sound feed for sports news and presumably soccer saturday 'cos I've never reset it, is slightly delayed into the gallery (control room) to match with the delay caused by all that ticker tape stuff - only about 20 ms but it shows that there's 'live' and there's live.)
One of our directors does a lot of live betting and I've never seen him try to get ahead of the game by trying to exploit the delay in the off-air feed, so I very much doubt it'll work.

 

[rogerha]

Hi L'Estranger

Very interesting, what a great job/opportunity you have. I will be interested to see how you get on particularly with horses (if you can).

I am not sure Betfair actually do purposely build in a delay, since they only open and close markets and obviously they use a data feed in order to co-ordinate this which is naturally delayed. But, the punters generally don't have this data feed which is why horse races (particualrly short ones), sometimes are finished before all of the available bets are matched. This is punters still laying off money with delayed information !

Roger

 

[bizmanny]

Would be similar

API - Is Betfair's development interface which allows third party software to work with Betfairs 'trading platorm' so you can use all of the BF functionalilty in a stand-alone third-party applicaton. So it can place bets, lay bets etc


Is there anything for binary bets like this which you can use in binarybet.com. Any software which can open and close position for you. I will appreciate any insight.

Of course no Problem.

SIS is the company that provides the data from the course to the Bookies/TV etc etc.

STW is Sports Trader Workstation which is an up and coming trading platform for Betfair, I have been involved in the Beta Testing, and I have to say its very impressive. It uses API.

API - Is Betfair's development interface which allows third party software to work with Betfairs 'trading platorm' so you can use all of the BF functionalilty in a stand-alone third-party applicaton. So it can place bets, lay bets etc.

Hope that helped.

 

[MichaelDB]

Most UK tracks are happy to accommodate traders in otherwise unused hospitality boxes. They don't advertise this facility but it happens, its a nice earner for the racecourse. They provide a live feed 4-5 secs faster than anything you will connect to off-course - you simply wont beat these on-course traders/punters/layers for speed - thats not to say its impossible to trade in-play successfully.