Help yourself to free money

I'm not a fan of the free money threads on the Betfair forums as regular readers will know. But sometimes the betting exchange really does offer you free money and in this entry I'm going to outline how you can take advantage of it as a trading tip.

To be honest it's not the best trading tip to offer up. Bit of a cheat in fact. But as it happened twice the other day and I have screenshots of both examples I thought I'd blog about it while it is still fresh and relevant.

Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that in the last week or so I have added a categories section to the right hand side bar. To keep up to date with all the tips I'll be publishing just click on the Trading Tips section there. At some point I'll also run through all my old blog entries and add any old entries that are relevant.

Help Yourself to Free Money

Ok. I've already said it's not the best tip. In fact it's snidey. Not as much as a trap bet. But all's fair in love and war. And besides, if someone is really so desperate to give their money away who says I can't take my share of it? I have in the past and I will continue to do so.

The tip is simple. And it is this........ Leave lays below the true market price.

Eh? I hear you asking after you've read that far for that piece of toss? Well bare with me. And take a look at this graph.... (click it for a larger image)


Anything stand out about this graph from the 1st test between India and Pakistan? Like the massive plunge in the draw price from the mid 2.1x range to 1.36?! What caused this? Well, it's simple. Someone or something (a rebellious bot?!) made a mistake. A bet was submitted to back the draw at a price at least as low as 1.36. For all we know it might have even been 1.01 but finally got fully filled at 1.36.

Now see the advantage of leaving a lay below the true market price? Yes. I've said it's snidey. But if people make mistakes I'm no saint. I'm going to take advantage. It's not as if people don't benefit from my stupid mistakes.

Call me fickle but I distinguish between this and a deliberate trap bet. In a trap bet the price might be 1.5 to lay and someone might ask 16 on the back side in a deliberate attempt to trick someone into laying them at stupid odds. Here there is no attempt to deceive. We're simply leaving a lay up and waiting for someone to make a mistake. And if they do we profit from it. They feel stupid. And learn from the mistake.

OK, I hear you say. But look at the sums involved. Peanuts were matched at the wrong prices. Well it is peanuts to some. But a profit is a profit. And much larger sums are matched during these mistakes too as this graph shows.... (click the graph for a larger image.)

Ok, this screenshot was taken immediately after the mistake so the price movements appear more spread out than if viewed in a longer time frame. That doesn't really matter though. The point is the New York Jets were playing the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys started at 1.1x and their price never got bigger. Yet someone has backed the Jets all the way down to 1.21. And this time it wasn't for peanuts. It took several thousand pounds to get the price that low. Nearly £4k was bet at evens alone. If you had layed that you could have immediately backed it back at 25+, or layed the Cowboys at 1.0x for a huge guaranteed profit. Leaving lays below the true market price suddenly seems a little more worthwhile now doesn't it?!

Alright I hear you ask. But how often do mistakes like this happen? Well, who knows. I guess you could use Betfair historical data to get a pretty good idea. But i'm happy to just know it works. As for these two examples? Well, they both happened last Thursday. I only looked in on a few markets. I wasn't looking for examples. They just cropped up while I was going about my normal trading business. Sure, to see two examples in a day in the 3 or 4 markets I looked in on might be a little unusual. But consider this - there are thousands of markets each day on Betfair.

The irony is most people don't even realise these mistakes are being made. Why not? Because they use the traditional Betfair interface. Their odds refresh every 30 seconds unless they refresh them manually. The action is all done and dusted before they realise it even happened. Fast refreshing trading software makes it all too clear what is going on though. To such an extent that even if you haven't left a lay in at below the true market value you can very often pick off these mistake bets before the person who made it realises what they've done and cancels it.

So there you have it. You can do worse than leave a lay at below the true market odds. It ain't pretty or cultured. It's taking full advantage of the mistakes of others. And it works. Just be careful. Afterall, you don't want to get caught yourself if you are too slow to cancel and something happens in the event you are trading to make your price value! Of course, there's nothing to stop you just leaving the lay up even below that level in the hope...

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