Welcome

Hi there,

I decided to start this site as a forum for discussing betting and trading strategies on Betfair. For those of you who don't know, Betfair is a betting exchange, a place where individuals can lay or back bets at whatever odds they desire, with the supply and demand for bets creating market prices in a similar manner to the way in which stock-markets create rational price discovery for shares.

I have been using Betfair for several years now, and can say without conceit that I know what I'm doing. There are many people who actually make a living out of Betfair, but I am not one of them. I actually work in finance as a quant, and I apply the same principles to betting markets. In fact, I am almost more interested in the intellectual pursuit of developing statistically-sound strategies that make money over the long-term than I am in receiving the proceeds from said strategies. Almost... ;-)

That being said, I do make a considerable amount of money on Betfair. I'm not going into how much, because that is not the purpose of this forum, but rest assure that it is probably more than you earn in your day job.

The point I want to stress more than anything else is that, when done right, Betfair is not gambling. It is more akin to trading in inefficient markets where one can reasonably expect to make money over extended period of time.

Most people who bet on Betfair lose money (the exchange is clearly a negative sum game because of the commissions that Betfair charge on winning bets). But remember - most people are morons. Unsophisticated punters are precisely how professionals make money on Betfair. Interestingly, the unsophisticated punters who are losing their shirts are still better off on Betfair than they are betting through a bookie, who typically take implied commissions on bets that should be criminal.

Remember, gambling can best be described as a tax on winning. The payoff for a particular event occurring is less than that implied by the probability of that event occurring. The beauty of a betting exchange is that is allows you to act as the bookie.

What I am trying to create is a forum where people who are interested in the intellectual pursuit of exchange betting can discuss math, industry issues, and strategies.

What this site won't do:

i) Discuss in detail my trading strategies (they are worth many tens of thousands of dollars to me a year and, quite frankly, I have no desire to give them away).

ii) Pretend to have any interest in any of the events themselves. I do 80-90% of my betting on sports markets, but I have only a passing interest in sports. I view all bets in a purely mathematical manner. Emotion is at the heart of the unsophisticated punter, and it is precisely this emotion that drives them to make bets (hopefully with me) that will ultimately lose them money.

Anyway, welcome. This is going to be fun.