An excellent post.
 

Hilarious mini saga of British soccer fans losing money by pawning themselves on Betfair.

This takes a bit of reading but it is worth it just to see what happens when the penny drops.


Brag: Gonna get me loads of money dutching some footy bets on betfair

O Noes

Teaser post from the linked forum:

[ QUOTE ]
I stopped smoking a few weeks - think i need a few packets to calm me down and find out what the damage is after final whistle!!!!!

I thought fairbot was great - now its a f*cking b*stard of a program !!!!!

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: An excellent post.
 

please explain to me what happened, I'm to dumb to figure it out from the forum threads

[edit] beat OBV [/edit]

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that is pretty hilarious, esp as that forum is full of the biggest nits you will find anywhere. mmmmm i love it

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in fact it's one of the greatest things i have ever read

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[ ]Successfully beat the system
[X]Lost tons of money because they thought they could.

A+ absolutely hilarious.

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cliff's notes:

- soccer match
- people picked every single possible player on the docket to score the first goal because there was an overlay doing this
- some players sit
- ???
- -11.2K

Re: An excellent post.
 

this is hilarious, but what happened in the end!?! both threads got locked, did betfair go after them?

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and it took you 8 months to realize this?

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[ QUOTE ]
and it took you 8 months to realize this?

[/ QUOTE ]

sure, who reads those forums and who cares about soccer? most people would have never heard of this, and it's awesome. I just want to know if people had to go bankrupt or not.

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Ha Ha! Although this happened ages ago it suprises me how many times this kind of thing happens. Oh wow, an overround book by 40% free money, whoo hoo!

Brag: Lifetime +£45k on betfair.

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boooooooooooo..... they all got off, disappointing

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how do you know that crazyjoe? i didnt see that post. what happened did betfair just pay up themselves? also lolololol

Re: An excellent post.
 

[ QUOTE ]
how do you know that crazyjoe? i didnt see that post. what happened did betfair just pay up themselves? also lolololol

[/ QUOTE ]

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=387760

4th post:
"These people are not being 'let off' so to speak. Their accounts went into credit and Betfair does not offer the facility, so they are unable to enforce those involve to pay for the line of credit that was supposed extended to them."

So apparently since Betfair can't offer credit, they cant be responsible for the money they were "lent". They lost their balances though, which is something at least.

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I especially like how they instantly began bitching that befair was ripping them off when their whole intention was to rip betfair off

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[ QUOTE ]
I especially like how they instantly began bitching that befair was ripping them off when their whole intention was to rip betfair off

[/ QUOTE ]

no

Re: An excellent post.
 

I remember hearing about this when it happened. There's a few things I don't know though. It's a long thread, and I didn't get through the whole thing.

I believe that people lost money because they didn't "win" the wagers where the player didn't get off the bench, instead these wages were void. Is this correct and is it the entire reason they lost?

I thought that betfair would make sure that you can cover all of your exposure on the bets you lay (by having the $ in your betfair account). Is this not the case? If this is usually the case, what allowed these people to create exposure greater that what they had in their accounts? It would have to be a logic bug on betfair's end?

I also noticed that everybody in the thread seemed to want to instantly defraud betfair by canceling their cards etc., which is actually pretty lame.

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I think I may answer my own question by saying that not only did the people laying think that the profit was guaranteed, but the betfair system thought the same ... which is why it let them over-expose themselves?

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correct

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Dutching?

I know what going Dutch is, but what is Dutching?

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[ QUOTE ]
Dutching?

I know what going Dutch is, but what is Dutching?

[/ QUOTE ]

some explanation

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So it seems like this.

1) They are betting that a player WONT be the first to score.

2) They bet on each of the 20 players who will start, say risking $180 to win $10 (example numbers only)

3) They expect to win $190 for each of the 19 players who DONT score first, and lose $180 on the player who does, booking an automatic profit no matter who scores, pure arbitrage.

4) The website allows them to leverage themselves infinitely because it sees their bets at automatic profit. They can keep betting until no other bettor takes the other side (the betting seems to be matching against other bettors, not directly against the house). Some of them leverage themselves very highly, booking a supposed large profit.

5) A bunch of the players they bet on dont play, so those bets are just voided no win/no loss, but this means that the $190 guaranteed win on the non-scorers is down to like $120.

6) I think if one of the subs that no one had bet on had scored they all would have made a bunch of money because all their bets would have won, and none lost, but instead one of the original projected starters scored, meaning they all had to pay out $180 on him, while only making $120 on the other bets, multiplied by however many times they managed to leverage themselves. I guess some of them lost way more than they actually had in their accounts.

7) ???

8) THE OPPOSITE OF PROFIT

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The OP over there found a %140 overround on laying "who will score first". However it was actually about %100 because a number of the entries were not playing.

Then a bunch of people covered all the action by laying the bets. The "overlay" quickly moved to around %100 (or, it would seem the market corected itself).

However, wasnt' the table now strongly in favor of betting all the players to score first. In other words, these people created the exact situation they were hoping to exploit, but for the other side.

There was a little talk of this being a "windup" or a scam. I think more attention should have been paid to this; once the suckers started snapping up all the "can't lose" action, it created a lock for the opposite side.

Anyway, I understand this is all old, etc., but it was an interesting read.

Re: An excellent post.
 

[ ] A free lunch