Don’t Let the Facts Ruin a Good Story
This past week has seen me post about a win on Betfair in which I backed the New Jersey Nets at odds of 100.00.
http://thebettingadvantage.com/100-to-1-shot/
I showed the bet with the reference number, along with that game on my profit and loss sheet.
No matter how much proof you show there will be sceptics. Of course, with this article one person was so sceptical that he decided to post his views on my article. In his rant he called my article a “tale” along with stating that “this bet clearly was never struck”.
When first starting my blog in November I came across Green All Over. I really enjoy reading the posts as I find they are well written and informative. However, in this post he did not let the facts ruin a good story.
Of course no one likes to be attacked or accused of something, especially for something that he/she did not do. This is the situation I found myself in. The first thing I did was seek more knowledgeable people on how I can prove this article is not a “tale”.
The main response was not to bother with it as no matter what I do people will always be skeptical and it is hard to prove. It is most definately harder to prove something is truth than it is to accuse something of being false. You would expect that people would not accuse something as being false until they are 100% sure and have examined all possible explanations.
The reason for the accusation was that I had matched a bet for roughly $40, but only $40 was showing as traded at the odds which I got. Each matched bet should be double because the bet has to be matched from another side. The total should be the back plus the lay. This means that $80 should have be shown as traded.
At the time I did not have an explanation. It also made me enquire as to why this was. It was Scott Ferguson who came up with the answer. Scott has done writing for Betfair doing most of the Betfair education. He is also a contributor for http://www.puntingace.com/ and manages his own blog that is worth checking out.
http://sportismadeforbetting.blogspot.com/
In early 2008 Betfair introduced cross-matching. The idea is that if a bet is put out, the offer looks at both sides of the market to get matched. It is an attempt by Betfair to get more bets matched. This is why only $40 was shown as traded, as the other side of the bet came from someone/several others who backed the opposite side. This was not taken into consideration while I was being accused of creating a bet that was never struck.
As some of you would know I do write for the Betfair Canada blog. Today I received an email from the operator of that blog stating that he had gotten a report showing the biggest winners from Canada for last week and this bet was the second biggest win. This was taken from the spreadsheet.
I understand this isn’t clear but if you click on the picture it will show it in a full screen.
I have also recorded my p and l for the past 7 days, below is the youtube link to that:
Also, if you have a Betfair account, all bets can be seen at http://data.betfair.com/. It is a couple weeks behind so next week this bet, which has caused much controversy, will be there.
I can ensure all of you reading that anything I post is legit. Trading on Betfair is what I do for a living.
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There’s a lovely piece of software called camtasia. If you decide to make any more videos of your profit, or your trading or whatever, I would highly recommend it. Although it will bog your computer down if its not reasonably high-spec.