Super Slots

While I am not a big fan of the Betfair Forum, aka Community, I do occasionally wander over there during a quiet moment to see if I can find anything worth reading, but more often than not I leave having been unable to do so. Take away the pointless threads about 1.01s being turned over, (as if that doesn't happen approximately 1 in every 70 or so markets, and is hardly news), futile challenges, threads about the Premium Charge, lies about having found Holy Grails, occasional rampers and of course after-timing threads, and there isn't much left. As Greg Wood wrote in the Guardian in October 2008:

Like any community, of course, it has its share of members with personality disorders: the bullies, the fantasists and barefaced liars, and the ones with such deep-seated anger-management issues that they should probably be under lock and key.

Some people are so prolific on there that one wonders how they find the time to place all these bets they reportedly make. So if Betfair decided to discontinue the Forum, I wouldn't miss it - the problem with the idea of a 'Community' is that betting is an individual activity, and no one sharp enough to develop a long-term edge is going to be simultaneously stupid enough to reveal, and thus remove, their advantage. Dr J's inspirational post was a rare exception to the rule that there is nothing worth reading there - of course there occasionally there is, but not often. Anyway, the 'Community' tab disappeared a couple of days ago, replaced with, as you can see from the image below, one for "Super Slots".

Of course, I rushed over there to join in the fun... Well, not exactly. In Betfair's own words

This change is a trial which we have implemented ahead of the upcoming Cheltenham Festival as it allows us to use the tab to promote other key content on Betfair.com.

Key content? Since when has the key content for the exchange been 'Super Slots'? The sharp minds they were encouraging to join a few years ago are now playing slots? And quite what the upcoming Cheltenham Festival has to do with Super Slots I'm not quite sure.

Anyway, of ten tabs, we have four which are, quite reasonably, Sports, In-Play, Football and Horse Racing. The other six, rather sadly, are dedicated to Casino, Live Casino, Poker, Exchange Games, Arcade and Super Slots. I'm not sure this is what Betfair's founding fathers envisioned when they came up with their revolutionary idea.

How about replacing these with Tennis, Golf, Cricket and Basketball, with the other two available for special events or seasonal sports - tabs that lead a user to markets where his sharp mind might actually help him to win money rather than throw it away? Just a thought. It can't be that Betfair want to attract blunter minds these days, can it?