Betfair/BA Back and lay difference!

[bobcn]

Must be getting tired. I meant that here is a big difference in the money available with Betfair and B.A. on that market.

[GaryRussell]

This is not a problem caused by Betting Assistant. It is the same for all applications that use the API. Here is a message posted by Betfair on their forum on 8th May 2009.

As we promised last year, we’re planning to improve the way unmatched bets are displayed to website customers in many of our exchange markets, by reintroducing functionality the exchange had when Betfair first launched. Customers who’ve been with Betfair since the early years will recall that the website used to display unmatched bets in every way that they could be matched. What we mean by that is best illustrated by a simple example: an unmatched bet to back Andy Murray to win a tennis match at 2.0 would be shown in both ways that it could be matched – as an available lay of Murray at 2.0, but also his opponent as available to back at 2.0 too.

We expect to introduce this improvement on the morning of Tuesday 12th May. We will not be making changes to the way bets are matched. This change will mean that the display of available bets is consistent with the way bets are matched.

We’ve tried to answer some likely questions below:

Q: Why are you making this change? What is the benefit for customers?
A: If you put a bet up on the exchange we’ll now display that bet to other customers in every way that it can be matched, giving you a greater chance of getting matched. Customers coming to a market will see a greater range of available bets, and are more likely to find the bet they want at a price they’re willing to take.

Q: Which markets will be affected by this change?
A: We plan to roll this functionality out to all odds markets on the site, except those which can have non-runners (like Horse Racing win and place markets) and those where runners can be added (“Next Chelsea Manager” for example).

Q: Betfair used to have this functionality. Why was it switched off in 2002?
A: The calculation of which prices to display used to be done in our database, and we had to switch it off in 2002 because the site struggled to cope at very busy times. We’ve now found a way to calculate the prices to display that doesn’t involve our database, so we can reintroduce the functionality without affecting the performance of the site.

Q: Is there any downside for existing customers?
A: For the majority of customers, no. Customers who have automated strategies will find fewer riskless arbitrage opportunities, and customers whose strategies rely on offering prices less competitive than would be achieved by placing opposing bets on other selections will also find it harder to match other customers at poor prices.

Q: How will this change affect the performance and stability of the site?
A: We would expect performance and stability to improve. The functionality itself uses a part of Betfair’s system that has spare capacity and so there’ll be no negative impact. However we do have a number of customers who run automated programs on Betfair that continuously look for riskless arbitrage opportunities. Following this change there will be little incentive for customers to continue to develop such applications, so we would expect this to reduce load on the site over time.

Q: I access Betfair via the API. What changes will I need to make to my strategy?
A: You won’t have to make any changes. The available unmatched bets in each market will be represented via the API in exactly the same way they are now. We’re only changing the way bets are displayed on the Betfair website.


If you have any other questions please contact the helpdesk: bets@betfair.com

The Betfair Team