Cancelled Conditional Bet

[Candles]

Hello,

I’ve been successfully using Conditional bets for Horses over the past week. Yesterday I had two horses that were not matched and there are two entries for both horses in my Betfair History with a Bet Status of Cancelled. The conditions were:

Check Lay Price if > 1.01
Bet Type: Lay
Bet Price: Last Price Matched
Trigger after: 1 minute before race starts

What causes a Cancelled bet?

Furthermore it’s not just these two horses with a Bet Status of Cancelled … all horses that I’ve placed a conditional bet on (including those that are matched) have two entries in Betfair History with a Bet Status of Cancelled. Why is this?

cheers

[GaryRussell]

Are your bets below the minimum stake allowed by Betfair. If they are then there is nothing strange going on here, it's perfectly normal. To place bets below minimum stake the program has to 'cheat', for example to lay £1 at 2.00 the following occurs.

1) Lay bet placed for £2 at 1.01
2) Bet is amended to £3 which creates an additional lay bet for £1
3) The £2 lay bet is cancelled.
4) The odds of the lay bet for £1 are changed to 2.00

The cancelled bets you can see in your history are from steps 3 and 4.

[Candles]

Thanks. That makes senses. All my bets have been for 5 Australian Dollars (AUD). For your information Betfair recently changed the minimum stake from AUD 6 to AUD 5. The software must be configured for a minimum stake of AUD 6. Which is why one of the two cancelled bets for each horse is AUD 6 – i.e. step 3.

As for the two horses that had two cancelled bets each (steps 3 and 4) and yet they do not show in my Account Statement …. on further investigation they are listed in my Betting History as having lapsed as they were unmatched. Interestingly these two lapsed bets have Odds Required of 8.4 and 10.5 respectively. Yet the same two horses have Odds Required as 1.01 when viewing the two cancelled bets for both horses. This does seem to be an issue with the software as one of my Conditions was Check Lay Price if > 1.01 for both horses.

I will change my stake to AUD 6 … which will remove all these issues.

Cheers

[GaryRussell]

The latest release has the correct minimum stake of 5 AUD.

Download it from http://www.gruss-software.co.uk/Betting ... t_Beta.msi

It is normal for lay bets below minimum stake to show 1.01 in your history, this is not an issue with the software. If you look at my explanation you will see that a lay bet at 1.01 has to be placed.

[Candles]

Thanks for the quick response.

I’ll download and install the latest version.

Okay … I confused the 1.01 from the step 1 you describe with the “Check Lay Price if > 1.01” condition that I placed. Sorry for questioning the software.

One of my conditions was “Bet Price: Last Price Matched”. I can now see that the two bets were simply not matched at the Last Price Matched and lapsed. I should be choosing “Bet Price: Lay Price” to ensure my Lay bet is matched irrespective of what the Lay odds … is this correct?

[GaryRussell]

I would be wary of using best lay price to lay because if the market has low liquidity (eg. the market is being reformed for whatever reason) you could be in for a nasty shock if there is a big spread between the prices. I would use the back price and enter say +5 ticks in the tick offset box, this way you will lay at the best lay price and worse case scenario the best back price plus 5 ticks if poor liquidity. If it's really poor liquidity you just won't get matched.

[Candles]

Thanks for the advice.

cheers