40% premium charges and arb

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anonimo95
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:43 pm

Hello, i hit 40% premium charges and it is killing me mentally.
Have any of you tried to arb with other exchanges? losing in betfair and winning in orbit, betdaq or smarkets for example?
I think that arb in other sportsbook won't work because they will restrict the betting ammount for like 2£ and the oods are not that great :cry:
Thanks
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megarain
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This is something a few have lost sleepover.

After banging my head against a wall, am currently of the opinion your best approach is :

1. Use automation to churn commission, on slightly -EV strategies.

2. Play bigger - if the markets allow.

3. Do not attempt to arb anything.

4. Congratulate yourself that u are winning - so long as u have no off-site losses, it's still a net positive.
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Derek27
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Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

I used to successfully arb with bookies and lose money on Betfair. The problem is, there's a limit to what you can get on with a bookie, you'll soon have all your accounts restricted and with so many people having their Betfair account suspended until they can confirm where their deposits have come from I wouldn't fancy doing it again and having to make deposits into Betfair.
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xtrader16
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Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2017 1:00 pm

anonimo95 wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:47 pm
Hello, i hit 40% premium charges and it is killing me mentally.
Have any of you tried to arb with other exchanges? losing in betfair and winning in orbit, betdaq or smarkets for example?
I was under the impression you should really be doing this long before the >PC charges are incurred. Shouldn't of you have been preventing this before you triggered the PC limit. Sound too late now. (not trying to be funny).

The whole PC thing is a rip off. Beftfair should operate similar to HMRC with an allowance every year of say £25k before PC charges are brought in. I cant see any reason why they wouldnt do this, except greed.
anonimo95
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:43 pm

megarain wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 4:01 pm
This is something a few have lost sleepover.

After banging my head against a wall, am currently of the opinion your best approach is :

1. Use automation to churn commission, on slightly -EV strategies.

2. Play bigger - if the markets allow.

3. Do not attempt to arb anything.

4. Congratulate yourself that u are winning - so long as u have no off-site losses, it's still a net positive.

I've tried bots but they were all losing bots, so it didnt really help
Why do you say to not arb anything? have you tried? I tought arbing with smarkets or betdaq. Is there anyway to link accounts in different exchanges?
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Euler
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Try cross market arbing on Betfair as all you would lose is the commission and therefore you effectively don't lose the commission as you have already paid it.
anonimo95
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:43 pm

Euler wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 6:01 pm
Try cross market arbing on Betfair as all you would lose is the commission and therefore you effectively don't lose the commission as you have already paid it.
for exemple under limit with correct score, both markets on betfair? The problem is that Correct score has low liquidity. it's easy to match 5k in under limit, but very hard to do it in correct score. What other kind of markets do you recommend? thanks
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Derek27
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Location: UK

xtrader16 wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 4:13 pm
The whole PC thing is a rip off. Beftfair should operate similar to HMRC with an allowance every year of say £25k before PC charges are brought in. I cant see any reason why they wouldnt do this, except greed.
Have you calculated how much revenue that would bring in and how much it costs to run the exchange? ;)
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jamesedwards
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Joined: Wed Nov 21, 2018 6:16 pm

Betfair's ideal customers are those who churn through lots of commission without any significant net profit or loss. They dislike net winners because they take money from other players and therefore out of the Exchange, thereby ceteris paribus reducing future commission.

I've spent 2 years and many thousands of £ trying to find profitable automations that can churn commission at a cost of less than 2% and I have failed. Arbing is very risky as you will either get restricted significantly by the bookie, get hammered by a variant of rules, or go on a long BF winning run that will kill you.

I've come to accept the Premium Charge as a fact of life.
anonimo95
Posts: 5
Joined: Mon Mar 08, 2021 3:43 pm

jamesedwards wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:36 pm
Betfair's ideal customers are those who churn through lots of commission without any significant net profit or loss. They dislike net winners because they take money from other players and therefore out of the Exchange, thereby ceteris paribus reducing future commission.

I've spent 2 years and many thousands of £ trying to find profitable automations that can churn commission at a cost of less than 2% and I have failed. Arbing is very risky as you will either get restricted significantly by the bookie, get hammered by a variant of rules, or go on a long BF winning run that will kill you.

I've come to accept the Premium Charge as a fact of life.
Thanks for the answer, appreciate it.
Arbing in a bookie (bet365 etc) is not an idea because i can get restricted in stakes, but haven't you ever considered arbing in betdaq, smarkets or orbitexchange?
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jamesedwards
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anonimo95 wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:58 pm
jamesedwards wrote:
Mon Mar 08, 2021 9:36 pm
Betfair's ideal customers are those who churn through lots of commission without any significant net profit or loss. They dislike net winners because they take money from other players and therefore out of the Exchange, thereby ceteris paribus reducing future commission.

I've spent 2 years and many thousands of £ trying to find profitable automations that can churn commission at a cost of less than 2% and I have failed. Arbing is very risky as you will either get restricted significantly by the bookie, get hammered by a variant of rules, or go on a long BF winning run that will kill you.

I've come to accept the Premium Charge as a fact of life.
Thanks for the answer, appreciate it.
Arbing in a bookie (bet365 etc) is not an idea because i can get restricted in stakes, but haven't you ever considered arbing in betdaq, smarkets or orbitexchange?
Clearly there must be profitable commission-churning automations out there but I've not been clever enough to find them. Arbing vs other exchanges is no good as how can you guarantee you will always lose at BF? If you win at BF you will pay even more PC. If you can be that sure of losing at Betfair why bother with the Betfair side of the trade at all?

Also beware of varying rules across exchanges that could under certain circumstance result in a double loss.
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Derek27
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Location: UK

I had a brief look at Betdaq when I was arbing and found liquidity was so poor I couldn't find any opportunities (not saying there aren't any). Paying commission on two exchanges must be a bit of a bummer!
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alexmr2
Posts: 766
Joined: Wed Sep 26, 2018 12:32 am

Does betting some (or all) of your profits at the end of the week generate more commission but give you the same long term expectancy?

E.g you make £1k in a week and bet it all at evens near SP before PC is taken, statistically every second week you have £0 profit and £0 PC, every other week you have £2k profit and double PC but have generated more commission?

If it did work I suppose the inconvenience of variance would probably outweigh the difference it actually makes
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Derek27
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Location: UK

alexmr2 wrote:
Tue Mar 09, 2021 8:04 am
Does betting some (or all) of your profits at the end of the week generate more commission but give you the same long term expectancy?

E.g you make £1k in a week and bet it all at evens near SP before PC is taken, statistically every second week you have £0 profit and £0 PC, every other week you have £2k profit and double PC but have generated more commission?

If it did work I suppose the inconvenience of variance would probably outweigh the difference it actually makes
If you're confident you've found a 50% chance even money bet, it might we worth using it to churn commission but it doesn't have to be either, as much as or limited to your weekly profit. You would pay a lot more commission but wouldn't be paying double PC every other week because your profit would be offset by your losses (your lifetime profits goes over 20% when you lose).

But it would be disheartening to lose 3-4 weeks profit on the trot, when it happens. It's similar to the conundrum of whether you should be better off with Betfair outages. I firmly believe that if you're a profitable trader the odds are slightly in your favour, but many traders claim they're on the receiving end of outages. But even if I'm right, it's a big risk to take and a lot of money to lose if you come out worse.
MAGTRADEUK
Posts: 144
Joined: Sun May 10, 2020 12:55 pm

Dont think I will ever be in that league and dont know if I would want to just about scrape into it.

You become a 40% tax payer, you take all the risk, you dont get any benefits like holiday pay/ sick pay/ pension benefits etc. I know that for some that does not really matter as they are way way up there, but for those that just scrape over its a pretty hefty tax rate?

I know for some its a trade off for lifestyle etc, but you really have to be in the top tier to make it worth the while.

Braced for some feedback............. but I think its something that needs to be considered.
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