Anyone ever made any money on betfair?

[Salgar]

I've been thinking today about ways of making a few extra pounds, and thinking about what skills I have.

I can program, basically, but I know nothing of trading. I've been reading a bit about arbitrage and market making and how these can be applied to betfair, but I also know that the market is flooded with professionals using arrays of computers to do this very thing.

I was thinking about writing a quick and dirty bot just to try it out, see if I could make a few % profit at low risk.

Has anyone ever done anything like this before and actually had any success?

[Matt..]

Total Deposits:£160.00
Total Withdrawals:£115.34
Net Deposits:£44.66


Cant say it's working out for me. Though i just do a few £ every month for a bit of fun. It's not in any way serious, and i cant say my knowledge of sports is very high. From my very limited experience, i would say that i find US sports far easier to predict than football, and as they are only win/lose (no draw), the risk is somewhat lower. Most of mine gets wasted on highly optimistic multiples though.

[raptor600]

Salgar said:

Has anyone ever done anything like this before and actually had any success?

You are a few years too late I am afraid.

In the early days it was a relatively imperfect market place - but now days that is no longer the case.

[moles]

As above used to be a lot easier to make money but now is almost impossible unless you know a lot about the sport you are betting in, from a market point of view i'd say its almost impossible to make good money now. BF use their own bots which hoover up any market discrepancies.

[Pothole]

moles said:

BF use their own bots which hoover up any market discrepancies.

That's not strictly true.

I made over £44,000 in one morning from Betfair.

[moles]

Was that because of your betting skills though or a market anomaly?.

[Pothole]

I sold the shares I had bought in the company sharesave scheme at the IPO. Bought at £2.17, sold at £13.00.

I know a few people who still make money on Betfair, but there are fewer than there used to be. Lots of charges these days, too.

[raptor600]

Pothole said:

I sold the shares I had bought in the company sharesave scheme at the IPO. Bought at £2.17, sold at £13.00.

I know a few people who still make money on Betfair, but there are fewer than there used to be. Lots of charges these days, too.

I am not quite sure what you are talking about. What has selling shares in BF got to do with anything?

[Bertrum]

raptor600 said:

Pothole said:

I sold the shares I had bought in the company sharesave scheme at the IPO. Bought at £2.17, sold at £13.00.

I know a few people who still make money on Betfair, but there are fewer than there used to be. Lots of charges these days, too.

I am not quite sure what you are talking about. What has selling shares in BF got to do with anything?

Question on the thread 'anyone ever made any money on Betfair'

He did selling the shares. Why are you confused?? He answered the question.

[raptor600]

Bertrum said:

raptor600 said:

Pothole said:

I sold the shares I had bought in the company sharesave scheme at the IPO. Bought at £2.17, sold at £13.00.

I know a few people who still make money on Betfair, but there are fewer than there used to be. Lots of charges these days, too.

I am not quite sure what you are talking about. What has selling shares in BF got to do with anything?

Question on the thread 'anyone ever made any money on Betfair'

He did selling the shares. Why are you confused?? He answered the question.

He didn't answer the question at all.

He did not make money ON BetFair. He made money selling shares in the company.

If you read the OP you would clearly see he is talking about arbitrage through the BetFair market.

[NightRunner]

raptor600 said:

He didn't answer the question at all.

He did not make money ON BetFair. He made money selling shares in the company.

If you read the OP you would clearly see he is talking about arbitrage through the BetFair market.

I think he was trying to be a funny boy, failed, but had a go .

[Pothole]

I was taking the piss, for goodness' sake!

If I had a pound for every time I've seen a thread like this I'd probably have made just as much.

[simoid]

Apparently, there are ways of using bookie's free bets to make risk free profit...

[Jazzer77]

simoid said:

Apparently, there are ways of using bookie's free bets to make risk free profit...

I tried this and to be fair it was a real ballache. Tracking half a dozen bookies and laying them off against betfair for a 20 quid stake didn't seem worth it. Think I ended up £100 up after about 12 hours work and you can only get the signup bonus's once so its not like you can make a living off these.


Much prefer going for value bets where to me the market looks out of touch.
Latest:
Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Politics / 2012 Presidential Election : Next President 06-Nov-12 11:00 07-Nov-12 09:08 £484.50 (profit)

Pollsters saying it was 90-95% Democrat victory, betfair punters giving a 60-70% chance.

[shakotan]

Jazzer77 said:

simoid said:

Apparently, there are ways of using bookie's free bets to make risk free profit...

I tried this and to be fair it was a real ballache. Tracking half a dozen bookies and laying them off against betfair for a 20 quid stake didn't seem worth it. Think I ended up £100 up after about 12 hours work and you can only get the signup bonus's once so its not like you can make a living off these.

Much prefer going for value bets where to me the market looks out of touch.
Latest:
Market Start time Settled date Profit/loss (£)
Politics / 2012 Presidential Election : Next President 06-Nov-12 11:00 07-Nov-12 09:08 484.50

I did the bookie's free bets thing over 3 months, Dec to Feb last year, came away with about £2500 profit, once I'd been through all the signup deals and reload bonuses.

[Jazzer77]

£2,500 nice work. How many signup bonus's did you do?

[BJG1]

I did the same with the arbitrage stuff - more effort than it's worth if you have a well-paying job IME.

I do make money on Betfair though, first goalscorer bets and draw bets. You have to be better at working out the odds than the average person staking their money on the market. Simple as that.

[shakotan]

Jazzer77 said:

£2,500 nice work. How many signup bonus's did you do?

About 20-30, plus a number of reload/offers on the existing bookies

[Sargeant Orange]

simoid said:

Apparently, there are ways of using bookie's free bets to make risk free profit...

We used to have a thread going in the business section.

Yes you need to put some time in up front but you can make a nice bit to top up your salary. I started in 2005 when the offers were a lot more generous (especially casino requirements) but there's still money to be made - I made just over £10k in 2012, the majority being reload bonuses or casino risk frees, the top 5 being:

William Hill - £4k
Coral - £1k
Betfair £1k
Paddy - £750
Ladbrokes - £750

[TimJM]

Sargeant Orange said:

We used to have a thread going in the business section.

Yes you need to put some time in up front but you can make a nice bit to top up your salary. I started in 2005 when the offers were a lot more generous (especially casino requirements) but there's still money to be made - I made just over £10k in 2012, the majority being reload bonuses or casino risk frees, the top 5 being:

William Hill - £4k
Coral - £1k
Betfair £1k
Paddy - £750
Ladbrokes - £750

How do you avoid being banned? In my experience your bookie account only lasts a few hours or at best a few days before you receive a phone call telling you "your account has been closed, please do not place a bet with them again and their decision if final". If you are lucky you mostly get your deposit back.