Betfair Rule 4 / RF / Douvan Fiasco

The sport of kings.
DegenerateTrader
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Derek27 wrote:
Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:27 pm
Why would the average punter want to lay him if they know he's not running ?

They know they won't win anything as the bet will be voided and it would needlessly lock up their funds until he's withdrawn.

It's impossible to tell if someone's laying the field! Unless your software is psychic it will only know how much has been laid on each horse. There's know way of knowing whether lay offers are from the same layer or different individuals.

Matt Chapman slammed the bookies for shortening his price before withdrawal so they could deduct a higher percentage of the winners payout when rule 4 is applied.
I'm sure the was a few mugs who logged on to lay him when they heard, pointless as it may be. Perhaps I'm wrong.

You could tell by the simultaneous flashing of the odds on one side of the book. You could see there were others beside myself doing this on the back side. It would be impossible to tell if the market activity was hectic but it quietened down overnight.
DegenerateTrader
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Joined: Thu Mar 15, 2018 5:16 pm

Also, overround occasionally came back over 100%, but was typical under.
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Derek27
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Very few people, even people new to betting/trading wouldn't know that bets are refunded on non-runners. If they didn't they would very quickly find out that's the case the first time they lay a non runner so I doubt that would have had much effect on his price. It's quite normal for overrounds to fluctuate so if it's generally 98% it's bound to hit 100% at some point.
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Derek27
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Derek27 wrote:
Sat Mar 17, 2018 4:51 pm
I think it's technically possible in a very volatile market with a few non-runners to get odds under 1.00 !
Just to correct myself, the Betfair rules that DegenerateTrader posted confirms that although it's possible for the reduction factor calculation to reduce a horses odds to below 1.00, the absolute minimum odds you get is 1.01.

Not much comfort if you get caught up in a bazaar market but at least you can't back a winner and still lose!
spreadbetting
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DegenerateTrader wrote:
Sat Mar 17, 2018 9:56 pm
spreadbetting wrote:
Sat Mar 17, 2018 9:33 pm
You posted up a link from Boyle sports with the odds at 4/1 so 20% was a reasonable reduction factor to open the market with.

Did your withdrawal manage to hit your bank account.
It's irrelevant what his opening price was, what's important is the final factor they applied at 10am on the day. I seriously doubt he kept his 20% chance given he raced less than 24 hrs before.

Yeah, it went through before the race started.
The reduction factors aren't like a rule 4 that continually track the price. It's basically a forecast odds and if it changes drastically Betfair alter their odds, the same as the bookies forecast 4/1 as an opening price so did Betfair. A swing of 6% would not be considered enough of a swing for Betfair to change the reduction factor especially as those type of movements can occur all the time once betting really starts. If your basis for arguing against paying is the fact their reduction factor was not in line with the price you've no chance.

I think your only chance of avoiding the debt, or losing your account, is to play on the fact they let you build up a liability larger than your deposit. Allowing you to do that must be against some gambling regulations somewhere and the regulators/gamcare etc wouldn't look favourably on Betfair if they try to recover a debt over your account deposit.

At the end of the day you must have realised the horse was likely to be withdrawn, did you simply think no one else had spotted it and were giving out free money. Surely you must have known some deduction would take place and you only have to click on the graph to see what reduction is going to take place. I remember it happened years ago on a cricket market and they let the guys off the debt and were supposed to change the system to stop it re-occurring. I doubt you're the only one that got caught out so may be worth posting on the betfair forum itself see if there are others in the same situation as a precedent had been set plus they dont like bad publicity. If you play your cards right I'd guess you'll get away with it but arguing their reduction factor was wrong isn't the way to go about it.
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