[tomcowley]

First, this in't a complaint about Pinny being a bad offender, as the number of complaints about live soccer on here are low- in fact it's for exactly the opposite reason. They (presumably) don't rely on scamming the danger zone to make money, they're smart enough to innovate, and they're capable of implementing it.

As the recent Bet-At-Home dispute shows, and any modicum of common sense can tell you, the entire mechanism of live soccer betting now is a complete scam. I understand that the rules have to be different for sports where the lines are offered during play than for sports where the lines are offered during stoppages in play, but the current implementation is just awful (for the player).

Books get to void bets based on future action. Books get to put bets on a delay, see what happens, and then selectively accept or deny bets based on what has happened. There are no explicit rules, so the player has no way to protect himself against a book that uses delays and danger zone voids unethically.

The solution to the danger zone seems really simple to me. You simply make bets conditional on the same score (and probably also no red cards) 2-3 minutes in the future. So in the 15' at 0-0, all live bets are action if and only if no goals are scored before the 18'. With one rare exception (addressed later), this serves the purpose of protecting the book from somebody beating them to danger zone/red card situations, and it also serves to protect the player from getting scammed. It's absolutely clear when a bet MUST be voided and when a bet can't be be voided. All it takes is an agreed-upon score/card time source, but any league that's getting live dealt has to keep an official site, I would think.

I don't see why an honest book wouldn't implement this. It doesn't hurt them in any way, it reduces disputes, it removes all the work of tracking/deciding danger zone, and it removes any possible appearance of impropriety. Come on pinny, step up here.

*exception. A pk is awarded and there's an injury or some other delay, and the pk doesn't get taken for 2-3 minutes. It's not clear to me that this is even exploitable, unless it's known with near-certainty, because anybody trying to freeroll the score loses EV when the pk is taken early and missed, but it's possible to add a rule that the score/number fo players must be the same, and the ball must be in play sometime between the bet and the action time. That should come up very rarely though.

[Monte]

I don't see how this would work, they would have to count the seconds...and odds change quick often.
Do they even have red cards live betting? Sounds like an amazingly dumb "market" to me.
The only solution is see to stop this nonsense is to make betting available only during small breaks, let's face it soccer live betting while the game is running is retarted.

[Justin7]

This is a very good idea.

[Maniac]

It is a good idea in terms of stopping the majority of complaints - the problem is that the everyday bettor is generally just looking for these markets as a quick fix, i.e. a bet they can make that will be settled very quickly, and as such isnt looking too far into the future of the game.

This, as far as the book is concerned, is better for them as the quick fix turnover will keep adding up, whereas with a 2-3minute "safe period" as you are describing, would leave them having a large number of wasted turnover as and when there is a goal and they subsequently have to give back every bet taken within the 2-3minutes prior to to goal being scored...

[Stefan]

How long should the betters wait to place their bets? These "safe periods" would be very short during a soccer game. 30 sec until the kick off is executed. That's impractical. An option would be to offer only bets during half-time. But the betters and the bookies want the possibility to place nearly everytime bets. So everybody should know the risks and decide whether he places the bet or not.

[Dark Horse]

Will just create more disputes about exactly when the 'safe period' was over. Players who want to bet soccer live should just band together and play at exchanges.

[tomcowley]

Will just create more disputes about exactly when the 'safe period' was over. Players who want to bet soccer live should just band together and play at exchanges.

Huh? Any moron can read the goal minute out of the box score. Nobody knows now exactly when the book is or isn't going to void. A slow feed on an exchange is death, even if it's just a couple of seconds. A slow feed at a bookie doing this is almost irrelevant unless it's realllllly slow.