Betting Exchange Trading

Save Time and Make Money - Make Use of the Settings

When demonstrating the site to avid Betfair clients, it amazes me how many have never checked out all the settings and preferences that can be enabled to help your punting.

I will run through most of them explaining exactly what they do and how they can help you on a daily basis.

Toolbar

- the Betfair Toolbar allows you to access every market you currently have outstanding bets in, from a drop-down box.

Market View Settings

- Profit & Loss Display

- Settled bets - this works for longer-term markets, with elimination stages. Selecting this option enables you to include those profits or losses in your current position. Imagine a Grand Slam tennis tournament where you have laid 15 players including the two finalists. Without ticking this box, your P&L would show two losers on the day of the final whereas you are actually well ahead for the event because the players you laid the most lost early.

- Net of commission - do you need to know exactly what your return will be? If you are arbitraging or like to count every penny, then this might be of use to you.

- Separate future position - this is the most important one on the whole site. By ticking this box, you will see a second column of P&L whenever you are about to place a bet. These extra figures will show you what your position will become if the bets you are about to place get matched. This is VITAL if you like to trade in and out of positions, it does all the calculations for you!

Lay All/Back All - like to put prices up for more than just one selection? This might be of use to you.

Laying

The payout & liability options set how your risk is displayed, but did you know that by clicking on them, you can have all the calculations done for you too?

- Payout - clicking on this option will automatically set your stakes according to how much you wish to payout. Eg say you want to price up the whole market in a soccer game, you choose your prices, then click payout and type in 100. All the stakes are now set for a max payout of 100 in your selected currency.

- Liability - alternatively, you might wish to set your stakes by liability.

- Show Help - it's designed to help the new punter, but after a while, you'll be well past needing that.

- Verify Bets - once you know what you are doing, it's time to get rid of this step, it just slows your betting down. When you first start on the site, it's an important checking stage.

- Market % - (down the bottom left corner) make sure you aren't offering punters a 95% market by using this option! It's so much easier than adding it all up in your head.

My Bets

- Bet Info – Gives you the transaction number, date and time of the bet. Something to hide, you can always check that via My Account later.

- Average price - If backing or laying at a range of prices, this will show you exactly what the end position is off your trades, simplified to one bet.

- Consolidated - Sometimes your bet offer is matched by several different people ($2, $23.44, $24.56 etc), clicking this consolidates it down to one.

- Order by matched date - Got a stack of bet offers up? Use this option to see what you've done in time order. Or you might wish to use this if trading over a period of time, either in-running or as entry stages pass in a long-term Cups market.

- Back/Lay v Selection - a different way of showing all the matched and unmatched bets, by selection rather than split into backs and lays. Back/Lay is the default, Selection is shown below.

Some of these will be of use to you, others won’t be, but knowing exactly what can be done and the shortcuts they offer should save you time and money.

Scott Ferguson