Hi Michael,
I feel your angst Brother.

I and a number of my friends have been contacted with a similar warning letter emailed to them.

__________________
Cheers.

Bhagwan, I wonder how many of us Aussies Betfair has contacted about the minimum bet? If there are many then they might think $5.00 is too high, seeing that we can have $0.50 bets with the TABs.

Because of the potentially high liability I (and maybe others) like to test Lay methods using small bets.

If this prevents people from using BOTs then Betfair might just end up shooting themselves in the foot.

In spite of that, the minimum bet rule may hopefully be a blessing for me because my current Lay method is still steaming along after 201 races.

Michael,
isn't that the point? A $1 lay @ $10 is really a $9.00 bet on a 10/1 on horse to lose. If your liability is $9.00, so your bet should be considered as such.

Den

Correct but there chance of winning may be much greater than the odds taken.

As with conventional win betting it is still about obtaining value. Since I have been experimenting with the lay method detailed by Mark on another thread I have come across some outstanding value odds for horses that IMHO have no hope of winning.

That being said my concern with Betfair markets (on Aus races) is that the lay odds on offer are generally too long and often do not represent value. As we know if you can't get value in the long term you lose in the long term.

Contrast this with UK races were there is much more activity, liquidity and obviously people doing more trading with robots. There the lay odds appear to be much truer and shorter.

Dennis G, I agree with what you say regarding the layer's bet. However I would assume that Betfair looks at it in a different way where their takeout is the prime factor. If the layer wins with his $1 bet, Betfair only gets a maximum of $0.05 in commission. But conversely, if the better wins, Betfair then gets their commission on the $9. Is this as bad as betting $5 on a very short fave where if it wins you could be paying much less commission than that of the $9 as stated in your example.

If I remember correctly, Betfair mentioned in their email that I was disadvantging the bettor with my low bets. If this is so, I fail to understand how that can be. Its a pity I no longer have their email to check this. Yesterday I had some of my $5 lay bets matched piecemeal - a few cents at a time, and I don't think I was disadvantaged. And obviously some others are betting way below the minimum allowable.

Reckless, I think many of my lay bets here in Oz probably represent value as my profit on them is quite impressive (touch wood), and the selection method is completely different to Mark's. Yet the method has not been so successful when I applied it to U.K. racing, admittedly there were only 3 days of testing with half a dozen races.

Yes I agree the UK seems to work very differently. I am studying it now but haven't formed any definite conlcusions - although I have subscribed to a UK rating service which I am evaluating.

Probably I should also speak with some serious punters in the UK about what makes it tick. Those large pools are very attractive from a betting perspective.

Reckless, with my limited experience with U.K. racing, I am under the impression that more of the larger outsiders win here than over there.

If this is so, maybe it could be due to us having more race tracks, so that a horse may have little or no experience with some tracks? Some states have clockwise and others anti-clockwise directions. Some tracks can have very tight bends whilst others not. Unpredictable weather so that some days we have all four seasons in the one day - running on a good track and then its next race on a rain affected one?

Of course, this may just all be conjecture on my part, but it does seem to me that fewer outsiders win in the U.K. than they do here.

Hi, Bhagwan.

When Betfair emailed me they made no threat of my downloading/copying it. They did however say that they had confiscated my winnings from the below minimum bets which I naturally considered unacceptable, so I immediately checked my account to discover that they had not interfered with it in any way.

Then the next day they again contacted me to correct the original email. They confirmed they had not deducted the winnings from the under minimum bets, and that if I made a similar transgression they might cancel my account. I interpret their second email as meaning that if I have another below minimum bet then the door is open for an explanation from me which would determine the future of my account. Maybe they are now not as draconian as when you received your ultimatum?

I have been successfully testing a second lay method, but as it is based on the neurals and with only about 25 races so far, I am uneasy to have $5 bets and have consequently stopped, resulting in lost revenue for Betfair. And if I ever want to test more lay methods I would think twice about experimenting with $5 bets. And I would be surprised if I was the only small betting punter with this outlook particularly if the method was based on laying horses that are not favoured in the market with a large liability.

As you say, if Betdaq can profit on a minimum bet of $0.50 with a 3% commission, then why can't Betfair whom we are told are making massive profits???

You got it right B.

My problem was the opposite, could not be matched for the full amount I wanted, ever, because of the low liquidity.

If they don't let layers test their systems, and once tested, put real money on the table, we backers will look elsewhere.

Well, they think they know best, so let's wait and see who's got it right.

Good luck

..... it says a lot for the good old TAB. Not if your betting shorties though I must admit. The odds are pretty good for everything else but of course you can't do lay bets on the TAB. They would never get away with some of the things [garnishing profits?] Betfair aspires to be able to do.

Sounds like England is the go with Betfair. They have the large betting pools!

I'm not going to mention any names here but like most on-line betting services, with a bit of research you will find that most of them are registered in the Channel isles [tax havens] and all bets actually go through there, not here. Most are also international companies, not Oz.

One rule [you agree too by signing up whether you know it or not] I found in one of these on-line services [haven't checked them all] was that they have the right to void any bet without explanation!