What is this? Bookmakers? Traders? Bots?

[fr33m4n]

Hello there again,
Greetings from Brazil!

I've been trading in Betfair soccer markets for more than a year and 99% of traders here in this forum must know the answer for the main question. I'm posting two screenshots from West Ham v Man Utd playing today. The first is from Match Odds Market and the second is from Over 1.5 Goals.

My question is why they put so much money in Back colum? The same happens in Lay Colum too depending on the market.

Is this one trader, let's say with a 500k bank (They put the money e close their positions in better prices?) Or this are traders who join together to avoid the price to drift?

Or maybe this are traders from Bookies like 365/William Hill that do this to avoid people from arbing prices? The only conclusion is that maybe is a Bot right?

They have some advantage in doing this? I came from Financial Markets, but I can't get the idea behind this comparing both markets. This happens in pre-live horse markets, but everyone knows that right?

I know that this is a extremely noobie question, but knowledge is power like they say.

West Ham v Man Utd (Match Odds)
https://gyazo.com/6797d262f975a09c5996324c1e7bb8d6

West Ham v Man Utd (Over 1.5)
https://gyazo.com/70687c2afa76c1517d922d9ecaa50c33

[Euler]

Usually somebody who has a speed or timing advantage lining up closing positions ahead of a price movement.

[FatLadJam]

I have noticed major money being placed on the lay side of the draw in big games. Usualy £2k or £5k per tick. The liability on one match was around 800K so this is serious trading. Looking closer I also noticed that each order is cancelled just before the current price hits it! I can only assume some kind of market manipulation where they take out the engineered edge somewhere else. Not found it yet though! I will keep looking lol.

[cybernet69]

I have noticed major money being placed on the lay side of the draw in big games. Usualy £2k or £5k per tick. The liability on one match was around 800K so this is serious trading. Looking closer I also noticed that each order is cancelled just before the current price hits it! I can only assume some kind of market manipulation where they take out the engineered edge somewhere else. Not found it yet though! I will keep looking lol.

It's usually people at matches betting via smartphones. They normally have a 1-3 seconds advantage over people watching at home etc.

I was watching a match at home yesterday on SKY and the match odds went suspended 2 seconds before a goal went in.

[xitian]

I'll see if I can add a little bit more colour.

These bets are placed specifically to work around the bet placement delay and get a pseudo time advantage. It's pretty much always an advantage to be at the front of the queue. The key point here is that although there may be a several second delay to place a bet, there is no delay to cancel a bet. So if your bet is placed minutes or hours in advance, you've already "primed" your bet past the bet delay. You can then leave it there until such time that it is no longer good value and cancel it immediately (with no delay) should that become the case. (If it does become bad value then you still have seconds to cancel it because anyone else would need seconds to take your bet since they need to overcome the bet delay).

As you've noted, these bets are generally placed in the football markets on the side where by the prices shorten due to the time decay of no goal going in (Draw, 0-0, U1.5, etc..), but are cancelled maybe 99% of the time before they get matched (because they've become bad value by that point). It's those 1% where they get matched at good value that counts to the person/people placing them.

It could be that these bets are managed by people running arbs across other bookmakers, and these sit there waiting as closing trades for when they've successfully matched an opening trade somewhere else.

Of course the big drawback, as you also already noticed, is that it requires locking up a large amount of capital. However capital generally isn't a limiting issue for successful traders. You also might be a bit worried if your server/connection goes down and you can't cancel your bets anymore. I presume this is why Betfair added the Heartbeat API features to cancel all your unmatched bets if you stop responding.

[fr33m4n]

Ohhhhh many many thanks guys!

That's definitely some important information here! Now i can give a different approach in these markets!

Just one another important question about the main topic. How much stream delay did you guys have in UK?

It's definitely a advantage with BPL matches playing on TV or even listen in Radio. Here in Brazil and Portugal, we watch 95% of the soccer matches in Bet365. We use a service called Low Delay Streams to watch some BPL, La Liga and other matches. Off course, they're paid and really necessary, but it can give us outside the UK at least some "advantage?" !

And we can't forget the William Hill In-Play stats too, that's the main tool for us to work in soccer markets!

Yes, working in soccer markets and living outside the UK sucks!

Really happy for the answers!