Question about BSP on football. Is it fair?

[trader4]

Betfair recentley started offering BSP on Premier league and big football games. I have been using it. I find it good for me because i think i am good at opening trades in good positions but am not good at closing them. I take profit to quickly or dont get out quickly enough and let losses get bigger. So having a consistent point to green or red out makes sense and saves me from a bit of an emotional rollercoaster watching the market go up and down because I cant change the BSP bet once placed.

Now for the downside i have been noticing BSP is often 99% for example today Chelsea v Nottingham forest BSP was.

Chelsea - 1.61
Draw- 4.3
forest -6.4

This gives an overound of 0.98%. should the market not be 100%?

So my question is am i disadvantaging myself by taking BSP and not closing the trade manually 1 minute before kick off where possibly I get 1 or 2 ticks better price?

Also my stake is often around £2000 at SP which is quite a big proportion of all the money matched at SP so again am I disadvantaging myself by pushing BSP in or out because I think BSP is calculated to some degree by the difference between the amount of money backed and layed at BSP on each outcome.

Also who gets that 0.98% of value is it betfair or other users?

Thank you for any help. I imagine exactly the same applies to BSP on horseracing aswell.

[jamesedwards]

I have never traded SPs on football, but perhaps without your stake the book would have been 100%? £2000 may be big enough within the market to push it an average of 1-2% in the direction of your trade so you will average consistently below 100% if backing, or consistently above if laying.

[ShaunWhite]

It's hard to get exactly 100% because of the price steps, eg there isn't a 1.605, it's also due to the spread between back and lay prices and you'll find the mid price is pretty close to that 100%.

The margin (the 0.98%) is what we're all fighting for. Betfair make their money purely on commission.