Betfair - Becoming a bookie

dvdfan

Hello,

Been listening to alot of talk recently on the betfair situation i.e Their trying to put taxes on them and now i think betfair have aquired a license in Malta and can take bets offshore tax free if that are threatened with tax. Anyway im not really sure what the exact situation was but one of the commentators said that alot of bookies were operating online on betfair laying horses without having to pay for the license.

Now we all know theres little or no poor bookies, so i was thinking about giving it a shot and being the bookmaker on betfair. But from my understanding the bookie needs to have an overround when hes laying and betfair has little or know overround. For example if a street bookmaker was to offer odds on a flip of coin, heads or tails he would offer odds of 4/5 so if he took a total of 100 on heads and 100 on tails, so the bookie would win the 100 stake from one side of the bet and only lose 80 from the other side of the bet (100 * 4/5 = 80) so he would be +20 regardless of the outcome. In theory that works fine but a bookie might take alot more on one side of the bet in reality but over a longer period because of the overround he should make a profit.

Now this is great i understand this but how could a bookmaker then operate on betfair and still make a profit on the overround. On betfair if a heads or tails bet was on offer you would probably have odd's pretty close to evens for both. If a bookies took 100 stakes for both heads and tails then he would only break even over time.

So my question for you is how can a bookie avoid paying for his expensive licence a go online to betfair and make money laying bets as a bookie if there is little or no overround. Or better yet, how can i go online and make money being a bookmaker, has anyone any valuable info, tools, research etc on the matter as it would be very much appreciated

Thanks
Paul

Morgans

I dont have any advise for you on becoming a betfair bookie. I dont have an account there but

Now we all know theres little or no poor bookies,

its a fallacy. I know three lads who set up and shut down within a year, John McCririck being a high profile failed bookie, and if you ask me, its one thing to set up a betfair account, it is quite another to always offer the best odds to get punters money in. Remember, you wont find a more competitive environment than Betfair.

Healio

Well as you demonstrate in your post, they calculate a suitable overround with the odds available. Also another point is that they dont lay every horse in a race, they just pick one maybe two horses who are there "losers".

Also unless you have an enormus knowledge of racing form, or have a very big bank roll, i would advise you to stay a social punter with betfair, because there is always someone who knows something, any betfair user will tell you. For instance when a horse falls, before its back legs have hit the ground it is 1000/1, or when you want to back something in running then change your mind you always get match when your selection turns out to be a loser, but never when it wins. By all means though you could be very sucessful with soccer or golf, but as horse racing goes with regard to betfair, the only winners are the ones who are fixing the races.