Id be interested to know how to do that? I can see no options on Betfair to set a price I want to back at [?]

Just select the blue square, say it said $8.50, then adjust the price upwards to $9 or $10 with the little arrows and submit the bet. It gets listed in the market for someone to take (in this case it would show up on the lay side and vice versa).

You'll get the hang of things crash.

I managed to jag $14 on Bowhunter.
Backed it at 11.0, and laid some off at 9.4.

Some advice I can offer is to open options, and tick the top 4 boxes.
This gives you the chance to see exactly what will happen if your bets are accepted.

Thanks Mad and Mark,
It's those little things taken for granted and forgotten about by the experienced that leaves the newbies scratching their head.

Gees Mark, $14 !
Well I guess I should be happy enough that I ended up with a decent profit on my first day.

Translating Mark's enigmatic claim.

Say you:

Back @11.0 for $100
Lay @9.40 for $65

Then you effectively:

Back @13.97 for $35

I confess I had to resort to a spreadsheet to deduce that.

Not bad jfc, but with a Betfair a/c, no spreadsheet is necessary.

Actual bets were $80 @ 11.0, and $60 @ 9.40, which gives a nett position of $281.20/$20, or odds of 14.06.

Just one of the many variations available on BF.

Coincidentally I just tried Betfair's what-if option.

It includes unplaced bets in the calculations, so anyone here can select a market and try out these calculations.

Obviously if you accidentally place the unplaced bets there could be dire consequences.

For the record if you "unplace" $20 @ 14.0 it will show $260/$20 (before commission), so your $280/$20 is decimal odds of 15.0.

In the interests of not confusing newcomers.

I'm thinking of moving to the U.K.
Yet another odds on favourite goes down in a 4 four horse field.
That makes in the last three days only one horse that won @$1.20.
All the rest were profit!

When you listen to the pre race commentary, it seems obvious why they are going down.

Long live the Queen :D

I'll try and get together some figures in the next few days.

37 winners from the last 68 odds on favourites I layed.
This looks apparently within the range, but most of these were not around $1.90, they were less than $1.50.

Chrome,

Agreed --- but I would think that pretty much the same applies here. Simplest was close enough to odds on at the jump in the first at Ballarat. And it seems to happen all the time :)