I have been working on my trading both swing and scalping through the practice mode. Having gained a good level of confidence I am looking to switch to live trading. I then realised I have stumbled on an issue I cannot find a clear answer for far as my deposit size is concerned.
If I take a back position say at 6 for £10 my liability is £10. Having successfully picked the selection to be coming in in price I then put in a lay position for £10 at 5 which has a liability of £50. In practice mode this may throw a warning as I have set Betangel to notify me should my liabilty be £50 or more. I can choose to ignore this and continue.
However my issues is what happens in live as far as Betfair is concerned? If I have a deposit of £50 then will it refuse to take the lay order as my potential exposure is then £60? I am unclear as to how Betfair deposits and net trading positions relate. Can you get stuck in a trade because your account balance is not large enough to have all orders covered even if some of those orders are exit orders?
I suppose the short question is does Betfair calculate the net exposure as it relates to your deposit and therefore allow me to undertake a trade as I described above.
Trading and deposit size
The warning message in Bet Angel tests the liability of any individual bet and as you've seen it's just a warning and can be overridden.....it's really just there as a safety net in case of incorrect staking.
From betfair's point of view, they only care that at any given moment you've got enough funds to cover your biggest possible loss.
So if you have the back bet matched before placing the lay bet, betfair will be happy as you're only laying off potential profit. If the back bet is unmatched at the time of placing the lay bet then they would reject it if the liability of the lay bet exceeds your balance...... as there's a chance the back bet may never fill and the full liability may occur at market settlement.
From betfair's point of view, they only care that at any given moment you've got enough funds to cover your biggest possible loss.
So if you have the back bet matched before placing the lay bet, betfair will be happy as you're only laying off potential profit. If the back bet is unmatched at the time of placing the lay bet then they would reject it if the liability of the lay bet exceeds your balance...... as there's a chance the back bet may never fill and the full liability may occur at market settlement.