Tuesday, 28 April 2009

Winning System - Patience Required


One of the more curious incidents of my Betfair life occurred within a month of my opening the account, which is why I failed to take maximum advantage of the opportunity. I was exploring the site one Saturday, looking at different markets in a number of countries, and was checking a web site to see what football results they covered.

Incredibly, I stumbled across one game in a foreign land that appeared to have just finished, yet the market on Betfair still not been suspended with the kick-off time a few minutes away. Always aware that when something seems too good to be true, it probably is, and knowing that scoreboards can be unreliable, I tentatively placed a whopping £20 on the draw. I was pondering a deeper plunge, when the market suspended.

It wasn’t an in-play game, but two hours later I got paid out. I think there was a probably a late change in the kick-off time that neither Betfair, nor anyone else for that matter, had noticed, and my only regret is that I didn’t capitalize more on what really was free money. Back then I only had a low three figure bank anyway, so £20 really was quite a large percentage of my bank, and of course, had I really cleaned up, someone might have been a little upset and all bets would have been declared void had the problem been discovered.

I haven’t seen this occurrence again, and do feel slightly guilty about it. It’s one thing taking advantage of someone’s mistake, but it’s quite another when someone loses money as a result of Betfair erring. Oh well, I figure the statute of limitations has expired on this by now.
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous28 April 2009 at 22:19

    There are numerous occasions where Betfair pay out incorrectly on a market, which in my mind shares exactly the same premise as what happened to you.

    Now, I wouldn't want to accuse you of double standards Cassini but I'm fairly sure you had a somewhat lengthy debate - and even had a blog entry - with ryang over the morality of such actions. Or maybe I've just got totally the wrong end of the stick.

    Curly

    (For what it is worth there are also plenty of occasions every day where in a lower liquidity market the suspension comes very late and anyone who knows the result can and do clean up)

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  2. Cassini29 April 2009 at 00:48

    I would have had no problem if the market had been voided at all. The bet I placed WAS a winning bet, even if the method of winning it was unfair, whereas Ryan G's was a losing bet that was paid out as a winner by mistake. It has never actually happened to me that I have had a bet wrongly settled, but if and when it does, I would hope that I would be ok with the bet being settled correctly, whether it goes for or against me. I lost a lot of money a couple of weeks ago when the market didn't suspend in a timely manner, and I forgot I had a bet up there, so I guess these things even themselves up in the long run.

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  3. PhilipH29 April 2009 at 13:33

    I seem to recall Alistair (Bet Your Life Blogspot) posted something similar about "guilt" when a fortuitous bet comes about.

    All's fair in love and war, and the Exchanges are the bloodiest of battlefields, so everything is ok.

    No guilt. All is fair.

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  4. Anonymous29 April 2009 at 22:05

    If you need to cheat someone to win maybe betting isn't the game for you

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