This is a fascinating subject to me and highlights almost everything that is wrong with the industry. We have seen a well known bookmaker just last week complain about customers who take stale prices. Always taking best prices. By stale prices we simply mean prices that are slightly out of date and not been updated by the bookmaker. What ends up happening is that these stale prices will be the best prices in the market and a person taking these prices can sometimes be confused with an arber.
Let’s imagine a horse race where Oddschecker has one horse at 6/1 across the board with all bookies. We see a sea of blue as the price of the horse is cut into 5/1 by all but one bookie. They have been sleeping and a customer is able to still take the 6/1 on that horse. Now that said customer is probably punished for taking the best price of 6/1 with subsequent account restrictions. They are punished for having the temerity of taking the best available price that is being offered by the set of bookmakers. Lets be clear. The customer has done nothing wrong here. They are simply taking a price offered by the bookmaker. The bookmaker may not want to be offering the 6/1 about something now widely regarded as a 5/1 shot.
Well that’s on them and their incompetence. It is simply sheer incompetence by the bookmaker. They have all the tools in the world at their fingertips to identify a price that is stale or slightly out of line. They are already hugely reliant on third parties such as Betradar, Bet Genius or someone like Don Best. They do most of the work for them. They could just behave in the way a normal bookmaker should behave. Take the bet and adjust the price. Even note an account is sharp and takes stale prices. Use it to your advantage. As an alert system. Reduce your limits if so concerned. There are lots of ways that bookmakers could use the tools they have to ensure it’s just not a big deal. Or they could stop offering such a ridiculous number of markets that they can’t manage and monitor properly.
How do the bookmakers react? They make it out that the price taker is a pariah and doing something unethical and wrong. They very quickly restrict the customer placing bets, indicating that this is not the type of business that they want. So they effectively ban and restrict customers because of their own sheer incompetence and their inability to manage the markets that they offer properly. It’s a crazy world. Cover up our incompetency’s. Make it seem a normal practice.
If I am pricing up a golf tournament in running on Betfair I am always incredibly conscious of knowing exactly what is going on. I need the information of exactly what is happening, as it will affect the prices I am offering. If I miss something I will get picked off. That’s just the nature of the beast. I have to get better at what I am doing. I don’t turn round to Betfair and say please can you ban the customer who keeps picking off my mistakes. Or the person who gets the information before me. Maybe I adjust the pricing. Stan James when they used to offer in running betting on the telephone nearly always had a player making a birdie priced into their offering, so they wouldn’t be caught out. They adapted to the cards they were dealt. Maybe I only bet at certain points of a tournament. Maybe I price up less players. Reduce stakes. Bigger margins. Maybe I don’t play in the market at all. It is the most basic rule of betting though. I don’t offer prices unless I am willing to take action on those prices.
Bookmakers have somehow convinced people that this isnt how they should operate. The regulation in this industry is absolutely woeful. The bookmakers should be made to take ownership for errors they make in the same way I would on Betfair. Not punish customers. If that was the case then maybe they would spend the money to actually do the job properly rather than this utterly pathetic half arsed effort we currently see and have seen for many years. It’s honestly just embarrassing. Yet they are allowed to get away with it because the regulator and media wont say boo to a goose. Its not a new problem. It has existed forever in this game. It is just very wrong.
ProPunting 