Betfair deadheat payments
 

The more I use Betfair, the more I realise that its odd little quirks all add up to it not being as profitable as one believes it may be.

I just had the pleasure of experiencing a deadheat on a place bet with Betfair.
My horse finished officially equal 3rd.
That means my bet for a place did not lose.
On every tote and sportsbook I either made a small profit or got my money back.
But not on Betfair.
For some amazing reason they have decided that in a deadheat you lose some of your money. Even though I did not lose my bet, the balance of my account was lower after the deadheat had been paid out.
I imagine some of you will explain how my bet is reduced and a "loss" for me because Betfair also have to take into account those who place lay bets.
I disagree.
Those who had a lay bet on my horse should have lost their bet as my horse came 3rd - it came equal 3rd.

Anyhow... I have had my gripe :-) but it is an interesting idea that one can lose on a winning bet.

Do you understand how the market is worked out. You get back half your stake (Essentially it only gets half the bet).

So had you bet a $10 place getter and you bet $100 on it it runs a dead heat you would get back $50 * $10 = $500 (Profitable).

But you bet on something under $2 (say $1.80) so the dead heat rules screws you. So it worked out to be $50 * $1.80 = $90 (Loss).

The full explanation and reasoning is below. Seems fair enough to me. Knowing the rules before you enter a market needs to be factored into what you do when working out if the odds are value or not.

https://en-betfair.custhelp.com/app...-a-dead-heat%3F

Your explanation is correct, BF's is ****. You do hand over your money as soon as you click OK to close the bet.

the **** stand for 'nonsense' in a different but in a normally exceptable way, what would the spaminator do if your name happened to be Bill Samuel and you wanted to shorten it to initials?.
No critisicm mods but one can take moderation just that little bit too far.

Hi, Every Topic. I presume you are talking about Ascot R4 no.4. I had $5 on it with Betfair SP to place and I lost $1.96. I wonder what would have been the result if I had backed it on Betfair exchange. SP had it at $1.22.

I don't get it. If it was at odds of 1.22 then shouldn't you get half the profit - in this case 11c on top of your stake or 1.11?

Yes, Betfair shows the divvie at $1.23 but they actually paid out $0.61

I agree, you should not receive less than your one unit bet as you have won the bet.
It is absurd to be paid less than your investment.
Yes Michael, that is the race I am referring to. I don't think having the SP would have made a difference. My bet was matched at $1.23.

If they can't operate normally then the least they should do is throw their hands up in the air, say it is all too complicated and refund the bets to each punter involved.
But to pay someone LESS than their bet even when they win is absurd.
It also means every database that uses BF data in their results is wrong because they will show a divvie of $1.23 when in fact the punter only got half of that.
This might sound petty, but as someone who is betting on a short priced fave place system every 0.01 of a unit is critical.

On a side note.... I want to see the photo :-) I was sure my horse came third and was not in a dead heat lol

Not every database. I take t into account in my database. Its not hard to calculate as you know the number of winning positions which betfair is paying out and if you find more winners then the expeced number then you modify the figures using their calc. It is the same with scratchings after prices are recorded. You need a "seen" price and a "final" price. It doesn't make too much of a difference but it can be enough to swing some marginal systems.

I'm away at the moment so am unfamiliar with the case in question.
However, from the info given the horse was roughly 1.25 the place so was about evens in the win market?
Betting $100 the place with a bookie would have been 25/100, dead heating for 3rd means 50% of the ticket value (as there were 2 horses sharing 1 dividend ie 3rd) which is $62.50 returned.
Can't see what the fuss is about.
If you were the bookie would you pay out 4 divs, instead of 2 full and 2 halves?

AH, Mark now you have experienced my angst at the blue di EW bet, whereby if I had "worded" it as 2 separate bets, i.e. one win bet and one place bet the outcome is far different to a bet worded EW (that's with a free bet) maybe it needs personal experience to fully "get it"

Mark,
that would be ok if BF was competing with bookies for my money, but it is not.
BF is competing against the TAB.
If I had spread my bet across all 3 totes I would have received a divvie of $1.11 and nobody would have been paying me less than my original investment.
That is an improvement of 0.5 units over the BF offering.

Horse runs 3rd you get 1.23.
Horse runs 4th you get 0.
Horse runs dh for 3rd you get half.

Bet with the TAB then. Guarantee long term you'll be worse off.