Thursday 1 October 2009

Premium Charge - No Change


I mentioned earlier that it's been a little over year since the introduction of the Premium Charge, and right on cue, in my mailbox today is a message from Betfair advising me that the rules have changed. Previously, if your previous 60 weeks were not in profit, or you had played in less than 250 markets, then you didn't pay the charge. Now they have wiped out this 60 week safety net, and extended it to the lifetime of your account. This will help those in the short-term who lost money in their early days but who have now turned it around, but it doesn't help me one bit. To be fair, it probably doesn't hurt me any more either. I am well over the 250 markets level, and although I was a loser on here in the beginning, I was never down more than a few quid (£77.10 to be precise) while I was finding my feet.

For most of my trading, I shall continue to use Betfair, at least until such time as other exchanges become more liquid, but for my outright punts, I do that all on either BETDAQ oe WBX these days. There is no point in backing, and effectively taking a 20% worse price.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Again, i must say i really enjoy your blog. I would love you to post more trading tips, but i understand that 'value' cannot be tipped and why would you give free trading lessons anyway?

Anyhow, the matter of this comment is about a 'curious' situation that happened on the tennis market that reminded some of your old posts. Thing is it was raining in tokyo, and the matches were moved indoors. Market inplay and suddenly results of the games (finished!!) started to appear on the OFFICIAL WEBSITE. Odds dropped but for a very long time you had odds up to 1.06 (and even higher I think) still to be taken. I dont know why, I suppose people thought someone cracked the website (at least that was the rumour on the forum). I just remembered what you wrote once: IF SOMETHING IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT PROBABLY IS. Or something similar. Anyhow, this was really like free money ... someone cracking the official website??? Japanese being wrong with the results??? Certainly not. Ive been to japan on holidays actually this summer, and sure japanese people check things 100 times before publishing it.

Well, just a little story to tell.
Thanks for the blog, and keep updating, always great to read it in the morning with my first cup of coffee.

Labro