Having spent a lucrative 12 or so years betting with bookmakers it became tiresome trying to avoid the inevitable closures online and phone of betting accounts. I then moved into the city centre and started betting in shops thinking anonymity would last longer there. Alas this was not the case although my fitness levels increased substantially from sprinting from Cafe to Bookmaker around the city centre. At first the shops were welcoming, £50 here £100 there but as they realised that I was taking more out than putting in they soon started to refuse bets. My final option with the bookies was to employ students as runners. Again this worked but only for a short space of time as once again they too found themselves banned from placing bets. Finally after a few years running a highly successful tipping line I gradually realised that exclusive betting on Betfair could be very profitable but it required a different mindset, turnover, expectation and in some areas method than my previous existence as a bookmaker bettor. Now I would advise all punters to start out with Betfair as you will end up there eventually if you have the skill to be profitable and you will save time learning the skills needed for Betfair first rather than later.
With bookmaker betting I had a medium turnover of bets, around 4,500 per year with a ROI of about 12% to 15%. The first change was to recognise that my line of attack on Betfair was to go for a much higher level of turnover with both backing and laying and settle for a much lower ROI but higher actual profit. I was also happy to have threads to my betting that achieved small returns over break even simply because they help to lower commission rate. With this vast increase in action came the need for automated betting. Thankfully my background in computer programming enabled me to quickly get to grips with the Betfair API. Manually betting to the level that I do would be physically impossible without an automated approach. Why the big difference between ROI on betfair and with the bookies ?. My bookie betting used to focus on morning prices and liquidity on Betfair is weak in the morning so expecting to get the same amount on during the morning is not realistic.
The other aspect to large turnover coupled with low ROI% is you have to accept that micro monitoring progress is no good for the sanity. Things happen very slowly and this kind of betting is not for the ‘how can I make £20 per day’ brigade. My starting point with Betfair was that the takeout is about 1 to 1.5% and I have to tilt it so its a similar amount in the opposite direction. When you think of it this way it does not seem such an unsurmountable climb. Automated betting also allows you to continue playing even whilst you are on holiday lying on a beach. Something you could not contemplate with a manual bookmaker based approach.
So if you are running into your umpteenth bookmaker closure and are feeling bruised and battered simply trying to get bets on then contemplate a total switch to exchange betting. I fully expect that you won’t miss the bookmakers once you have explored the virtues of the exchanges.
Brian Hewson said:
Totally agree with you Mark. I was a subscriber to your tips, did well, bookies accounts closed, ran with Bet Butler for a while and then started the transition to only Betfair, which took a couple of years to make a success as completely different from following a tipping portfolio
Paul said:
hello, as you make more bets than possible to place manually does this mean you are trading in and out of markets or are these flat bets?
Thanks
smartersig said:
Hi Paul No these are flat bets and lays I do not trade at all. Actually I did try a trading strategy using the API but after about a week it laid a horse 10 mins to the off at 22/1 and then Betfair went down making it impossible to back back. You guessed it, the horse won costing me 2k. Since then I have not dabbled with trading but stick to straight win and lays
paul said:
thanks for replying, im struggling to find any kind of winning strategy so its great to be able to ask you questions, well i hope you dont mind anyway!
do you limit yourself to certain odds for example would you still have laid that horse at 22 if you knew you couldnt back it? id presume you would be laying short price favourites.
also forgive my ignorance but iv failed to fully grasp this sentence
My starting point with Betfair was that the takeout is about 1 to 1.5% and I have to tilt it so its a similar amount in the opposite direction. When you think of it this way it does not seem such an unsurmountable climb
are you saying your looking for an roi of 1 to 1.5%? i dont understand what you mean when you say you have to tilt it
finally! do you mind me asking do you back or lay more than one horse in a race?
thanks again for your time
smartersig said:
You can always back something back povided Betfair is up and running. Of course if it had contracted to less than 22/1 then I would be backing it to potentially trade at a loss. The key of course is that there are more postive trades than negative ones and in the final analysis you make an overall profit. Having said that I must reiterate that I do not trade.
Some of my bets are subject to price ranges and yes I do have multiple bets and lays in one race which is good because when I calculate returns from a historical perspective during research I deduct commission on every transaction. In live betting that is not the case because some losing bets within the same race offset winning bets. this means that my research commission deduction is pessimistic and not really as bad as it seams.
The tilt I refer to simply means that blindly backing all horses would lose you about 1 to 1.5% before comm’ as opposed to much more to bookie SP. The hill you are climbing therefore is not as steep. You have less to overcome in order to turn a profit.
paul said:
thanks for the explanations