40% premium charges and arb

[BudapestGambit]

As a 20% PC payer I'm giving this sort of stuff a lot more thought recently. I must say I dont think arbing across other platforms is the most effecient way to do this for everyone. Bankroll allocation is a big part of how viable a strategy this is and that money could probably be better allocated elsewhere. i.e. if you are using 50% of your BR to maintain a 20% PC level. There is a cost benefit to that money being used for other things be that other betting strategies or in savings accounts, ISA, stocks etc. This leaves aside the time needed to do this and with time being a valuable resource obviously this needs to be factored in. Its also difficult to see how easy automation would be for this strategy again something to factor into a time consideration.

Secondly assuming your arbs have no edge either way you are as likely to damage yourself as you are to help in the long term even in a vig free environment as you are equally likely to increase your betfair profits as you are to decrease. It may also mean you encounter higher commission levels at smarkets for example if you go on too good a run on your arbs on that side in spite of not using your low commission time to make money (the exact thing we are trying to preserve at BF we lose at another outlet).

The ideal scenario for your arbs if you would still want to do them would be to identify value bets in zero vig markets where you can get the value side down at an alternative platform smarkets, betdq etc. and get the long term -EV but still vig free side down with betfair leading to a long term fall in your PC and increase in your commission rate while maintaining break even/generating pot profit.

If you are already doing something like pre-match value betting as part of your trading this has added benefits towards your time allocation too. You aren't having to spend extra time finding bets but just using ones you already have.

[jamesedwards]

Assuming you expect to continue to be long-term profitable then (once the criteria for entry rate PC is triggered), any win is a positive contribution towards future charges and every loss is a contribution away from future charges.

You only get charged based on a combined week's profit but if you lose you build a 'bank' against future winnings. eg if you were to lose £5k in one week then you would be able to profit £1k per week for the next 5 weeks without paying any further PC.

Ah that makes sense thank you buddy, so I doubt actually 'losing' the money you have already won trading (to another exchange) would help make much difference because it's not going to show as an actual deficit on your account, just that you haven't added anything to the profit side of things.

It would be great to be able to trade out your winnings from BF to another exchange or bookie but I don't think there is a fool proof way of doing so without it being prohibitively risky and/or time consuming.