When does size really matter??

[rails run]

Hi All

Yesterday I tried to back a few horses for the place with a $75 stake. These selections were fav or near fav's with place odds in the range of $1.40-$2.00 on BF.

I had 5 races picked with 1 selection in each and only got $44 partially matched on one runner at $1.67 on BF about 15sec's before the jump.

So, does bet size really matter with BF? (Or could it be a problem with the bot I used?) Monday races have lower pools but I thought more money would have been available at the top end of the market so I was surprised I couldn't get $75 set for a place.

I'd be grateful if anyone could share their observations on the point at which their bets started to hit partials (or none at all).

Assuming bet's aimed at, say, a $2.50 win odds runner, what is the largest back bet you've managed for the win or place? Does the size of the betting pool effect one's chances of getting a wager set?

Thanks in advance.

[thorns]

Sounds odd, particulary as they were well fancied runners, usually huge amounts on BF when you have short priced favs. Could it have been that the price moved as your bot submitted its bet? If the bot fired off a bet at $2.0, and as it did, the market price shortened, it might explain it? You would have managed to grab some of the $2.0 before the market moved, leaving the rest of your stake unmatched, and if the price didnt drift back out to $2.0, its not at the front of the prices to be layed.

[thorns]

Sorry missed the part about it being for place odds. The place markets on BF in Aus racing are poor in liquidity, and wouldnt surprise me at all to hear you are having issues being matched unfortunately, even for amounts such as mentioned, especially on midweek racing.

[Mark]

Thorns, your first reply was probably the reason. If you're not there at the market it doesn't matter how much you want you're not going to get matched unless the price gets back to where you are. For all we know there could have been thousands traded just under what rails run wanted.

[lomaca]

Hi All

Yesterday I tried to back a few horses for the place with a $75 stake. These selections were fav or near fav's with place odds in the range of $1.40-$2.00 on BF.

I had 5 races picked with 1 selection in each and only got $44 partially matched on one runner at $1.67 on BF about 15sec's before the jump.

So, does bet size really matter with BF? (Or could it be a problem with the bot I used?) Monday races have lower pools but I thought more money would have been available at the top end of the market so I was surprised I couldn't get $75 set for a place.

I'd be grateful if anyone could share their observations on the point at which their bets started to hit partials (or none at all).

Assuming bet's aimed at, say, a $2.50 win odds runner, what is the largest back bet you've managed for the win or place? Does the size of the betting pool effect one's chances of getting a wager set?

Thanks in advance.Welcome to the club rails run.

Not only do you not get on with any sizable bet for the place, my usual place bet being $150.00, you also have to run the gauntlet of falsely offered odds that change as soon as you match them, on Sunday I missed out on a potential $750.00 return on
5/02/2012 SUN R4 #2 ZAROXIE SHANE ARNOLD $5 third.
by trying to get on and after the fifth time as the odds kept coming down I gave up and went back to the TAB only to miss the race altogether.
Now what is better? A potential $5.7 divi you cannot get or a fair dinkum $5.0 that is there for the taking?

The same day I missed out on a winner on
5/02/2012 ELW R9 #1 KID KOBE J TODD $5.6 $1.8 by being mucked about on BF so long that I was late to put the bet on the TAB.

It annoys me no end when some people here make comments like:
"Why anyone has anything to do with the TAB is beyond me & one is paying 18.5% impost for it.
Especially if using real money."
when they are not in the knowledge of all the facts and perhaps they doing something entirely different, something that suits the way BF operates.

Good luck

[rails run]

Thanks for all your responses. I had the bot set up to chase the odds as they moved (2 ticks) but it didn't seem to help. Looks like lomaca has experienced this issue before with his larger bets. May be 'best of tote' for me then if I want to continue with place betting.

Has anyone been caught in the same position with Win bets and a large stake?

[norisk]

rails run, I bet the BF place market most days turning over anything from $500 to a few $k & rarely have an issue getting on an acceptable price, although Mondays/Tuesdays can be a bit quiet.

One issue may be with getting your bets on so close to the jump as I find with place markets that most of the larger amounts get traded before that point, but that may just be my experience.

I should add though that I place the bets manually to try & ensure best price.

[Bhagwan]

With the Tick Adj

Is that set at +2 Ticks or -2 Ticks?

So that we dont miss too many bets , I find -3 Ticks works well.

[lomaca]

one is paying 18.5% impost for it.

Good luckI forgot to add that the "18.5%" argument is a bit of a red herring too, because while there is certainly an app. 18% takeout it does not manifest itself in an 18% price difference between the TAB and BF prices. What you see on the TAB is what you get while you will have to deduct the 5% from the BF price.

Never seen BF being 23% better on most prices, which it would have to be if you believed the 18% tosh.

[Shaun]

Depending on the runners you are targeting you may even get less than betfair.

[michaelg]

I think deducting 5% from the Betfair price is not always 100% accurate.

For example, if we had $5 on a $2.00 winner and 5% was deducted from the price it would reduce the price to $1.90. A $5 stake would therefore return $9.50, for a profit of $4.50.

What Betfair does is deduct 5% from the race's profit, not the price. The gross profit in this case would be $5, and deducting 5% from the $5 ($0.25) would produce a profit of $4.75 as opposed to $4.50.

I learnt of this "anomaly" when backing multiple horses but could not manually calculate the profit - it was always more then I expected.

[lomaca]

I think deducting 5% from the Betfair price is not always 100% accurate.

For example, if we had $5 on a $2.00 winner and 5% was deducted from the price it would reduce the price to $1.90. A $5 stake would therefore return $9.50, for a profit of $4.50.

What Betfair does is deduct 5% from the race's profit, not the price. The gross profit in this case would be $5, and deducting 5% from the $5 ($0.25) would produce a profit of $4.75 as opposed to $4.50.

I learnt of this "anomaly" when backing multiple horses but could not manually calculate the profit - it was always more then I expected.I stand corrected Michael, may I add that I actually pay a lot less then the 5%, but my point still stands.
If you compare the prices there is nowhere an 18% difference, maybe in certain price ranges where the horse has an absolutely minimal chance, then yes.

[michaelg]

lomaca, yes, you're right. The larger-priced horses often even double their TAB prices.

I've also looked at Place prices. There does not seem to be much difference, except for those at $1.04 with the TAB. I think my best Betfair price I obtained for a TAB $1.04 was about $1.30.

[rails run]

Thanks Bhags. I might try 3 ticks as suggested. Thanks to you all for your advice.

[Bhagwan]

Where one finds the big difference between TABs & Betfair is when one is doing mutii-bets such as Dutching.

Example
Dutch 4 horses to a Book percentage of say 70%
Commission paid on profit.

Try doing the same with say a TAB
You wont get anywhere near this percentage on the same runners.
The commission is built into the price whether you win or lose on all runners , not just the ones that win , you pay through the reduced price in the form of their Over round on Book percentage which is usually 118.5% which includes their other trick of rounding down of divs, which no one likes talking about.

Example of Rounding down
e.g. If calculated divis actually 1.99 they round down to 1.90 they just keep the difference - funny that.

What about the 1.00 divs one often sees - that's funny too.
No one wants to talk about that either.

I would not want to do business with any one who blatantly snips punters in this manner, but they see nothing wrong with it - funny that.

I now know what the TAB means by chancing your luck.
Lucky to just get your money back after risking a ...
100% Liability .
Possible Zero div if successful, but you wont know until after the race, because what you see before the race, is not necessarily what you get.
100% loss if unsuccessful.

==========================

CONVERTING BF PRICE

If one wishes to convert the Betfair price to a net price with com taken into account.
Then take 5% com off its Fractional odds, (not decimal odds.)
mutiply fractional odds say 4/1 x .95 = 3.8/1

Then convert to Decimal odds = 4.80


Example
5.00 horse.
4/1 x .95 = 3.80 + 1.00 = 4.80 Net BF price

Now this can be compared to TAB price.

[Chrome Prince]

This is spot on Bhagwan.
To reduce the commission paid, the more runners in the field you have your total stake spread across, the less relative commission you pay.
Those concentrating on one runner per race are really struggling with commission.
The worst case of course is short priced horses because they have a high strike rate, single bettors who like the longshots don't suffer quite as much.

There are cases where the profit gained outweighs the commission paid relatively because the profit is much more by ratio, but the general rule is, the more horses you back or lay per event, the less commission on total profit you end up paying as a percentage.

[rails run]

Thanks to some good advice here I may have found a fix to the initial problem. I set the bot to 4 ticks and 60 seconds before jump and had them all matched (except 2 that had odds <$1.40) for $75 bets. Problem solved by the wise guys again! Thanks

[Bhagwan]

Yar .Wise guys .

No chump change round here, seeee ,yar.

[rails run]

LOL... Bhagsie Malone?