There are two aspects to looking at Rules & Regulations. The first part is truly understanding the bookmakers rules and regulations. The second part is understanding all the various nuances within a sport.
As part of my time at Betfair we were in charge of writing various rules and regs for different markets. Given that Politics and Special Bets fell under that umbrella it was testing in the extreme but it also gives you an unbelievably good idea as to what is happening in this area.
I have lost count of the hours spent trying to work out what would happen in the next Big Brother series, what the latest big twist would be etc. It was a thankless and almost impossible task. The problem was if there were any contentious issues you would get hammered.
We had plenty of dealings with IBAS. What people have to realise is that not many cases actually end up going to IBAS. They are usually resolved beforehand unless the amounts involved were truly significant or you truly believed in your case. People would try it on all the time.
To give a really simple example. It might be a Match Odds market in Soccer in a cup competition . You have to be aware that these markets don’t include any Extra Time and are only for 90 mins. Read the info tab.
This is a very simplistic example but you can extrapolate that across to other markets particularly specials. It is crucial you truly understand what you are actually betting on. Many a time I have thought that price looks wrong and you realise you have not read the rules correctly.
There have been some particularly painful ones over the years especially in cricket and whether matches are Abandoned or No Result. The governing bodies were blasé regarding it but it had a huge impact on how we had to settle markets. Don’t mention Reserve days!
I should point out at this stage what an absolute farce it was, to see how the Premier League dealt with the pandemic, from a rules perspective. I just cannot believe how woefully under prepared they were for what transpired. None of what happened was stuff that couldn’t have been predicted and was stuff we had often discussed in terms of what we would do in certain scenarios and how we would deal with them.
The other aspect is that you truly understand what the rules are in the actual sport you are betting on and that you understand the various nuances within it. It might be something like the rule they brought into MLB where a runner starts on 2nd base in extra innings.
For a sport like golf it might be understanding how the playoff works (can vary between sudden death and up to 3 extra holes in majors. It was 18 at one stage in the US Open). It can have a huge impact on prices.
Truly understanding the rules of the sports you are betting on from both a betting and sport perspective is massive and can provide you with some nice situations.
ProPunting 