Anyone here successful at betting?

Iamnobody

dafuzz;1116794" said:

Well I can't answer...

Actually - why is it verboten? There's threads about it on money saving expert and other fora I visit

Im not sure - if we have gambling threads it's a natural direction for the conversation to go?

stickyfiddle

I don't recall any issue with match betting. Either way, done properly it's not betting at all, as you're guaranteed to make money with each pair of bets.

Incidentally, bet fair have a marvellous business model allowing people to lay bets and essentially act as bookie, as under that system they're guaranteed to make risk-free money in fees regardless of the outcomes of the bets

duotone

Have used Bet365 for the last year and a half, but only gamble about once a week. Mainly on boxing, football and horse racing.

Over the last year I am £70 in the red.

dafuzz

stickyfiddle said:

Incidentally, bet fair have a marvellous business model allowing people to lay bets and essentially act as bookie, as under that system they're guaranteed to make risk-free money in fees regardless of the outcomes of the bets

I prefer Smarkets to Betfair because it's 2% commission instead of 5%. Matchbook is only 1.1% iirc but I stopped using them very quickly because they are shit. In any case yes - in this day and age anybody can be a bookie using these sites. Not only that, but odds are determined by market forces rather than the bookies doing whatever they want, so it's a lot fairer and the average punter would do a lot better (ie find better odds) at the exchange than at any bookie you care to mention.

Thankfully bookies aim to compete by offering tons of free bets, refunds and/or price boosts, which makes that-other-thing-I'm-not-sure-that-I-can-talk-about a hell of a lot more viable. If the bookies all closed down and I only had the opportunity to arbitrage at the exchange I'd probably give up the whole business and go back to being a gigolo and drug dealer.

Deijavoo

I had Betfair down to 3% at one point. But now I'm betting less, yeah the Smarkets 2% is looking more attractive.

RobDavies

I had a football betting 'system' that I came up with a couple of seasons ago. 

The first season resulted in me turning a tenner into £600 in the space of about five months. The second season saw me turn that £600 into £300!! 

It's still a decent-ish system but there were some properly strange results at one point around Jan/Feb which totally screwed everything up. I'll try again in a few months....