how much money is real money?

[steven1976]

Just curious, how much money traded do people think is real genuine punters wanting to gamble on a race?

If say for example, a race had 500,000 pound traded, how many pounds would you say is people going into the market just wanting to have a gamble like they do if they were to walk into a high street bookie?

The reason, I ask is because i just traded about 3,000 in the last race and thinking if i traded that much then how much is real? Surely, some of you guys trade more than that per race?

[Zenyatta]

I'd guess at least 20% of the money is bettors money (at least for an ordinary race; the proportion would be much higher for a big feature race). I base this on the fact that most bettors really need to get their bets on before the T-5 minute mark, because at this point all publically available form information has been factored into the price. And at T-5 minutes about 20% of the liquidity is on. And we know it was mostly bettors to that point, because most traders are concentrating on the T-5 minute to off zone.

before T-5 minutes - mostly bettors money
T-5 to off - mostly traders money

[gutuami]

I think that every race has its own rate of real money depending on what horses run, prize money, day of the week ect. Theoretically it’s very tricky to distinguish punters from traders. All of them are traders that look for gainning a certain amount of ticks from the available 350. Even a punter who we can call a trader that rarely close his trades can close his position on a photo finish. It is all about liquidity and interest. The market treats all stakes the same. The term of real money here might be suitable for non active users, or new users that log on only to place a bet for fun, or on their favorite.

[steven1976]

Gutami, yes I was referring to users that just log in for a bet as though they would walk into ladbrokes and have a fiver punt on their lunch break.

Zenyatta, I was thinking closer to 5%, considering if i had 3gs matched, someone else had the same which is already 1% of the market and I just do this for a little bit if fun with small bets. I presume their are guys that turn over bigger amounts?

[Euler]

I have an old presentation from Betfair from a few years ago and is was about 50/50 trader and punter money.

When we have looked at the markets there often appears to be very little big stakes in the market, trader or punter wise. You would be amazed at how low the average stake is.

[steven1976]

When you say, "average stake", I know this might sound a bit stupid, but I guess that includes all the 10,15, 20gs traders money that pass through which is matched prerace? Therefore this would exagerate even more of the real money?

On a 500K race, what is the average stake?

[Euler]

I'll have a look for you next week if you. Fancy a guess?

[hgodden]

I suppose we just notice the bigger stakes. I'd wildly guess if by average matched it would be about a tenner

[Euler]

I did post this on the blog a little while ago: -

http://www.betangel.com/blog_wp/2012/03/07/the-49-bets/

[steven1976]

Im guessing between 5-10 quid as an average

[Euler]

On the best quality data I have, which includes in-running right up the to the 1.01 backers / layers, the average amount was £70.

Pre-off when I have put in large orders which have been slowly taken around 10% of all orders are £2, the minimum bet. Around 50% of takers were below £5. This data isn't as clean though as we can only see this when people take the other side of the book from us and now and again they may just take all of our order. So I imagine its slightly higher.

But from both you can see the average amount matched is actually quite small.

[steven1976]

The 10%, 2 quid bets and the 50%, 5 quid must be mine then. Explains why the market always feels like it moves against me then if your on the opposite side to me peter! haha, just joking.