Beating the Betfair clock

Daily Result: £59.29

Oh alright then. Beating the Betfair clock is a bit of a fib - that loophole was closed years ago. But if a headline about time and trading, and how you can beat the Betfair clock, interested you, then this will too. Tonight, despite being sat in comfort at home, I knew who had won each point in a tennis match before I saw it on tv. And that's got to be useful right?

When trading televised events it doesn't take a genius to work out that the pictures you're seeing "live" aren't actually live. They're a few seconds behind. A simple example is I recently watched an England football match at a friends. One room was watching on BBC1 through Sky, the other on BBC analogue. We heard the shout for a goal in the Sky room before we saw the goal. More importantly as a trading example, if you're doing a tennis match when you get to a big point you might place a trade, only to see big chunks of money hit the market a couple of seconds before yours does - even though you couldn't have submitted your bet quicker once you knew the outcome of the point.

The reason, of course, is some people are getting information quicker than others. There's a kind of hierachy. With the 5 second in running delay imposed by Betfair preventing those at the bottom of the chain having their bets picked off by those who already know the outcome.

Top of the chain are people at the events watching live and using mobile devices / landline connections. People watching local tv stations in the country of the tournament are next in line. Especially if using analogue. On a par / slightly behind there's people with their own satellite systems intercepting these signals, then there's the vast majority of people like me sat at home watching Sky Sports. Below us at the bottom of the chain you've got the people relying on internet scoreboards. (Though these can sometimes be quicker than tv pics)

Of course, it's perfectly possible to make consistent profits on Betfair watching everything on Sky. But I'm sure fortunes are being made by those at the top of the chain. And if I was younger, and without the commitments I have, I'm sure I would be in there among them trying my luck. Time and knowledge is everything when it comes to trading.

Anyway, back to tonight. How did I know who had won each point in the Henin-Hardenne v Hingis WTA Championships match before I saw it on tv? Simple. I took part in a free trial for a new service being launched next year called In Play Scoreboards. I was being told the score before it happened on tv.

Now before everyone starts counting how much money they're all going to win using it I should say the information was coming through roughly between say a split second and maybe 2 seconds before the points finished on tv. For obvious reasons there were still people ahead of me in and out of the market. And the service did have a bit of a nightmare declaring the match had been won (presumably by HH) at the end of the 2nd set tie break - when in fact Hingis had won the set and levelled the match out at 1-1. This was a trial though and maybe that can be put down to a glitch of some sort.

So the service isn't the key to untold riches. But is nevertheless useful and I could see several ways it could help optimise my own trading over time. Sure, users are still behind the big players with the quickest info but combine it with some one click trading software and it still gives an edge over the majority of traders watching tv. If for no other reason than you get your money in the queue and cancel positions quicker. So despite the glitch I'm looking forward to the next trial and hope the service is reasonably priced when it launches.

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