Free Money

Hello,

today first round ties of the Davis Cup 2009 took place and I had a look at the match Crovoi v Safin:

Marat Safin was heavy favourite pre match, so I watched the set betting market closely.
Odds on Safin 3-0 were around 1.70-1.8x. Liquidity was not the best, so sometimes there was no lay odds available. Often in low liquidity markets I place bets higher or lower than the true odds. When back odds on Safin 3-0 was 1.76 I placed a back bet of 15€@18.0 on Safin 3-0 and… GOT MATCHED!

But I was not the only one who took advantage of this mistake by another trader/punter.

I think this could only happen, if you look for short position trades and if you trade with the common standard grid interface. I am pretty convinced the layer wanted to lay odds of 1.8 instead of 18. Another method to avoid such mistakes can be to have only two stake sizes in your Betfair account. If my trading bank has four figures I will only let two maximum stakes on my Betfair account (my current max stake is 77€) and put the rest of the money on a bank giro account.
Another reason for this was a post on the German Betfair Forum about account hacking. The Betfair account of the user was hacked by someone with an IP from Bulgaria and all the money from his account was backed and layed in several markets. Betfair does not take responsibility for something like that, so all his money was lost.

Betfair provides the possibility to restrict your login from certain geographic areas, so you can take advantage of this feature, if your internet service provider does not route your connection through servers in other countries.

The user also logged in with a user name he used in other forums too.

So what can you do to avoid account hacking:

• Use a special user name only for Betfair
• Use a secure password (try a password generator)
• Do not let your whole bank roll in the Betfair account
• Make use of the account restriction of Betfair

How to avoid punting on wrong odds:

• Use a trading software with a ladder interface
• Let only two stakes in your Betfair bank roll
• Look for long term trades, so you have enough time to double check the odds and the stake sizes

These listings do not provide completely security, but I think it might help to minimize risks when trading.

Stats so far:
Total profit since last update: +79.10
Total profit this month: +79.10

Cheers, Loocie