What’s Going On At Betfair?

Most of you will probably be very familiar with Betfair by now. They’re the largest betting exchange in the world and they provide you with the freedom to set your own odds, lay like a bookmaker, trade yourself into risk-free positions and do a whole bunch of other cool stuff that wasn’t possible just a few years ago. But, there’s something new going on that you probably didn’t know about….

Just recently Craig and I attended one of their regional training courses (something you should try and attend when you can) and when it came to the Q&A session at the end of the day most of the people in the room were looking somewhat perplexed, but we got right into it and started hitting the guys with question after question about what plans they had for their website.

One of the things we found particularly interesting was that they plan to get more and more involved in the multiples market, much in the same way as a traditional bookmaker. You can already place doubles, trebles and accumulators on soccer matches, but it hadn’t really occurred to me before that they would even consider this for the horse racing markets. However, that’s the direction they’re moving in apparently.

I always thought that the problem with this would be that you’re betting against other people, not with Betfair directly, so the layer would have to price up your Saturday Yankee themselves, but if you click on the “multiples” link on their site menu you’ll see that this isn’t the case. Betfair have apparently set up a separate company who will handle the multiple bets, so this is pretty much the same as if you were betting with a traditional bookmaker.

(You’ll also notice that the odds that are available on the multiple markets for soccer are lower than those available on the main exchange site for singles, but that’s another story….)

As far as I’m aware, the full multiples system for horse racing is still some way off, but if you visit their “Labs” section (click on “Extras”, then “Betfair Labs”) you can now access something they call the “Race Card Accumulator” and what this does is allow you to select runners from any race on today’s card and place them into accumulator bets.

Here is what the application looks like:

Now, I’m not normally one for fancy bets like this, but what I think it might prove useful for is place only accumulator bets. We’ve been operating one system for a while now that regularly racks up sequences into double figures on the place market - the longest to date has actually been 27 consecutive wins - so the benefits in that kind of situation are obvious.

Here is the link if you want to check it out for yourself….

Betfair’s Race Card Accumulator

I’m not for one second going to suggest that you should abandon your current backing, laying or trading activities in preference for multiple betting, but this is an interesting move by Betfair and it might well open up further opportunities for us in the near future. I’ll keep you informed if I learn anything new, or if I hit the jackpot with one of those place only accumulators….