Exchange Betting

Why use exchanges?
Hi, Shaker here. Hope you follow this guide OK. Anybody interested in any form of betting, not just golf, simply cannot afford to ignore the betting exchanges any longer. Some of the prices you can back players at have to be seen to be believed and the reason is that it is individuals, and not the bookmakers with their profit margins, who are offering these prices most of the time. And, in case you didn't know, there is the ability to LAY a selection on the exchanges who you either fancy will not win or you need to 'trade' back some of your initial bet in order to secure a profit or at least retrieve your initial stake. And the fact that the outright golf markets, plus some others, are fully available 'in-running' throughout each tournament is fantastic.

Please note that there is no credit offered by the exchanges and you have to have available, in your account with the exchange, your full potential loss on the bet.

Which exchange?
If you are computer literate enough to find this site then you can have no excuse for not having an account with at least one of them, with Betfair being the clear leader in terms of popularity and liquidity. Others, such as Betdaq and Sporting Options, run markets on some, if not all, the golf events we'd be interested in and are working hard to make themselves competitive but all they are good for at the moment is in us securing the odd standout price, and that is not often enough for us to be able to recommend an account with them as being a necessity although you can never have too many accounts or 'outlets'. Due to the liquidity of the markets and, for some of what I propose to do, the predictability of the price movements I have to say that your most important next move has to be to open an account at Betfair.

Click here to open an account with Betfair.

Are they easy to use?
Practice will definitely be required if you've not used them before, but the time spent will be worth it. Using Betfair as an example, each market will show prices in blue and prices in pink. The blue column contains the best prices currently available for you to back your selection and the pink contains the best prices for you to lay the selection. Each box in each column will also contain the stake which is currently available at the price. Each column is backed up by two more columns showing the next best offers waiting to be taken and these will shift into the coloured spotlight should the original best offer be taken or 'matched'. You can put up a bet to sit either in front of or in behind the current best offers and you will clearly see in the 'my bets' section whether that bet has been matched or not. If you want a bet matched immediately you simply need to match the price in the coloured box, whichever way you're going. Don't rush to match prices which are not good for you, though, especially if there is a long time to the start of the event (at which time all unmatched bets will be cancelled, the market wiped clean, and a new one introduced for the 'in-running' fun and games!). The markets and offers available are changing every second, other people are constantly entering their bets to sit on the front end of the market, and sometimes your bet will be matched at a better price than you asked for but never at a lower one.

All prices displayed on the exchanges are in decimal format and not in fractions like many traditional bookmakers. It takes some getting used to but really isn't difficult. 5/1 is displayed as 6, 5/2 is displayed as 3.5, Evens is displayed as 2, and 4/5 is displayed as 1.8 and so on - possibly the easiest way to convert is to think of what the returns on the fractional price would be to a 1 unit stake e.g. 1 unit at 5/1 returns 6 and 1 unit at 4/5 returns 1.8 units. To help, there is a very useful odds converter here and also one on the Betfair home page.

Also, the odds you can trade in on Betfair are more precise than the traditional fractions. For instance, between Evens and 6/5 there is more than just 11/10; Evens will be 2 then you can choose 2.02, 2.04, 2.06, 2.08, the 2.10 of 11/10, 2.12, 2.14, 2.16 and 2.18 before we reach the 2.20 of 6/5. Again, practice is necessary in order to familiarise yourself with this but I'm sure you'll agree that having more choice can only be a positive thing.

How can we use the exchanges in recommending advice?
We've already seen how 'trading' can be done in our introduction to using the exchanges during the first few weeks of the season. This involved backing a player with the traditional bookmakers when we are as sure as can be that it will be possible to lay the same player on Betfair, an action that I'd call 'closing the bet'. Backing 6 pts at 20/1 and laying 5 pts at 19 (18/1) would result in an enhanced-odds bet of 1 pt staked at 30/1. When Mickelson won at the Bob Hope we had 20/1 on day two and almost immediately a lay at 5 points shorter. See how it worked in this trades archive page.

Also, we can simply lay a player, or group of players, if we don't fancy they'll win. We all know how difficult it is to back a winner, maybe laying a loser would be easier! Well, of course it would be ... but then the odds we'll be laying would mean a chunk out of our bank if we get it wrong. Probably we'd rather give advice on putting a lay up on a player at a short price in case he reaches that price during play. This would usually be on someone we have down as being suspect under pressure but is too big at the start of play on the final day to lay. A good example of this was Chris DiMarco in the final round of the FBR Open which can be seen at the bottom of this In-Running page.

One other great advantage of using the exchanges is the massive odds available on unconsidered players. Every single week you'll find very good players trading at unbelievable prices and we may offer some small speculative bets on these types, always knowing we can lay them back on Betfair during play if they do perform well. It is commonplace for players who are top-priced 100/1 with the bookmakers to be trading at 50% or more higher odds on Betfair and sometimes, if they are proven winners, they are just too big to be ignored. Players may still be attractive to us in these instances.

How do we record the prices we've bet on the exchanges?
This question is valid because the exchange prices are always, always fluctuating. I shall be recording what has been traded at, or better than, the advised price and so long as 'several' hundred pounds worth of bets have been struck when advising a lay, then I can safely say that the advised play was successfully matched. Obviously if you are a particularly big punter it will be very difficult to get all you want on at the advised prices because large amounts of money in the market can influence other people's actions or simply be too big for everyone else to absorb. Generally, though, I shall advise to either match a bet already waiting or put up a bet priced so that will almost certainly be taken. If all the advice was for prices which end up not being matched at all then no bet will be recorded.

One last thing...
All the bets do not take into account the commission that Betfair takes on any eventual profit. They keep up to 5% of whatever your net profit is on an event which is simply the price we have to pay for being able to play in this way. The other exchanges actually take less than this but we have to go where the liquidity is. I only ignore the commission in order to keep the figures simple and also because people pay different rates of commission.
Please contact us if you have any questions and the very best of luck to you!