08 Traps to Avoid / Betfair Education / 26 September 2008 / 1 Comments

An oft repeated mistake of novice punters is believing in the 'certainty' or a bet that looks like the next best thing to printing your own money.

When it looks too good to be true, then it almost certainly is! Betfair is a marketplace where you are pitting your wits against tens of thousands of other gamblers from around the world. And without a doubt, they are out to beat you. So when looks too good to be true, sit back for a moment and think about it - there will almost always be a reason why that price is still available.

Examples.

1 - The incomplete market

When a market such as Big Brother Winner or an ante-post horse race is first opened on the Betfair site, the market will be incomplete. This means further options are likely to be added to the field later. So if you see that Market 'To Back' percentage sitting at 90%, that does not mean a licence to print money! (Revisit Market Percentages here)

Always, always, always check the rules first. The Betfair rules gurus have had plenty of practice re disputes, loopholes and grey areas over the years, invariably they are now covered because it will be costly to the firm when both backers and layers have to be paid out because of a rules error.

2 - Don't believe rumours, especially when they are still rumours hours later

A key example of this was the recent (Sep 2008) Next Manager to Leave market when various news sources were reporting Kevin Keegan had walked out on Newcastle. This particular market is only settled by official confirmation from the respective club and nothing changed on the Keegan situation for 48 hours. Those who dived in because they saw 'Sources say Kevin Keegan has walked out' on the newswire lost because the official resignation did not happen until at least two days later, by which time Alan Curbishley had officially left West Ham. The short-priced Keegan backers got burnt because of their haste.

3 - Delayed broadcasts

Just because the icon in the corner of the screen says 'live', that might not mean what bettors consider to be live. I'm not talking about a few seconds in a horse race, but 5, 30 or even 60 minutes in a game. Australia has a ridiculous situation with multiple timezones and local channels wanting to start the telecast at the same time locally as it began in a different timezone. So punters not paying close attention can think they are watching the game live when it's actually almost finished.

In the UK, a similar situation can occur with Channel 5 showing US sport late at night. It says live, but the game might have started an hour beforehand. Check the market, check the official start times, watch how the market reacts to events in the match. TV channels have no interest in revenue from betting in-running, all they care about is advertising revenue. Be careful, check the times.

4 - The price looks wrong on an In-Play event

I must confess to being caught out with this one, seeing a price in a tennis match that I thought was too high, only to look closely afterwards and find out the match was actually best-of-three sets rather than best-of-five. If it seems wrong, think about why.

On, thankfully, very rare occasions, online scoreboards have been known to make mistakes. Some of them should be easy to spot as blatantly wrong. Bradley Dredge was reported as taking a 30 on a hole instead of 3 on the European Tour website during the 2003 Madeira Open, when several strokes clear in the lead. 98% of Saturday hackers would be able to complete that hole in under ten strokes. A tour pro will never ever score 13, let alone 30. At least one punter saw the board, thought all his Christmases had come at once and layed Dredge out to 500. Naturally, Dredge went onto win the tournament by eight strokes and the 'act first, think later' layer in question lost many thousands of pounds.

Scoreboards in other sports - tennis, basketball, football - have been known to incorrect as well.

Be cynical - it is your money you are putting at risk. There is nobody else to blame if you act upon false or unconfirmed information. Think hard before diving it on that 'unbelievable' or 'unbeatable' price or you might end up with egg on your face.