[ichiro4thehall]

Hi Guys

I don't bet a lot in-play at smarkets but did tonight and i felt like my bet was voided incorrectly and it feels like i have been cheated. It is for a tiny amount, but I went on chat to try and resolve and came away with more questions than answers.

What happened
Placed a bet of 222 on Real Madrid tonight in-play, 100 of it appears partially matched and(important to me) in the net figures which appear below the Real Madreid Draw Las Palmas names it shows 10 -100 -100. I know the amopunts are small. Anyway, 2 minutes later market is halted when Madrid score. The market reopens and my net figures 0f 10 -100 and -100 are gone. I check my account and it says 100 was partially matched at 20:55:12 and the remaining 122 was voided at 20:57:xx. This doesn't explain why my net figures are now not showing and theerfore looks like I have no bets on the market, so i go on chat.


What they say
They say that altho my bet appeared as partially matched it was still pending and would pend for 8 seconds. During this 8 seconds there was a corner after 6 seconds so the pending bet was suspended.

I have a few issues with this. First, Betfair don't suspend pending bets for corners. Second, why show my net figures of 10 -100 and -100 if bet not passed the pending period. In Betfair, your net market figures are only updated after Betfair's 7 second pending timer elapses. Thirdly, altho they say the pending period was stopped because of a corner, the market was not halted during this time. It is at best badly designed if their Instamatch system can suspend pending bets without the market being halted in the same way Betfair does, and at worst it would seem extremely exploitable to me.

Altho I don't bet in-play a lot at smarkets i still imagine i have placed well over a thousand in-play bets on soccer matches there. I find it hard to believe if they susupend all pending bets for every corner or free-kick i would not have come across this weird differentiation from betfair before.

As i explained to chat, a healthy amount of their in-play action will come from bots exploiting in-play arbs between Betfair and smarkets, if smarkets rules have a dramatic difference wrt suspending pending bets these arbs would be impossible.

I assume I am probably wrong and they correct, but can someone explain how more clearly? I hate feeling cheated and as is will be withdrawing my sizeable blanace even tho the amount i lost barely buys 2 coffees.

Cheers to anyone who read this.

[Alfa1234]

Just a small comment regarding the exploiting arbs part in-match:

They want those arbs to be impossible as their market makers would take a huge hit if they allow the site to be "used" in that way. Their market makers are their lifeblood, so they will protect them. This is also the reason they implemented a "we can void bets if the odds are off-market by over 15%" clause to their T&C a year or so ago.

[ichiro4thehall]

Yeah, I didn't explain what I meant there well. I meant actually market makers(who perhaps unintentionally arb if they do the same thing for Betfair, too) when using the term arbers(my mistaken language, sorry).

One of the chat supports defences in saying I wasn't cheated was that they had nothing to gain from cheating as they earn the same amount whoever wins. I said i did not know for certain as I hadn't checked fully, but I assumed they used market makers who either were paid by smarkets or more likely received zero or close to zero commission rates, and since liquidity is so important to exchanges those market makers are more important to smarkets and they therefore have an interest to settle disputes in their favour. I can't recall if he actually denied this or changes the subject once i raised it.

It does appear they just have a slightly different way of recording in-play bets. Smarkets matches it, then waits 8 seconds before confirming it - annoyingly in this 8 seconds if you look at your account you see the words matched, whereas with Betfair a bet is only accounted for as matched after the time delay. So it is an accounting terminology argument.

However, smarkets does have the ability to extend the pending time for as long as necessary in its terms. At first, one might say this isn't too weird as say when a penalty is awarded Betfair suspends the market until the penalty is taken. But with smarkets, they do not necessairly halt markets when extending pending bet times beyond 8 seconds. In my case, the pending bet time was extended to over 2 minutes before the market was halted.

This is obviously exploitable. It's a miracle in my in-play bets to date nothing like this has happened before. Basically, I must have placed over 1000 bets, and after each one there was a gap of at least 8 seconds before a free-kick, or corner kick was taken. Those are long odds.

[dealer wins]

This is also the reason they implemented a "we can void bets if the odds are off-market by over 15%" clause to their T&C a year or so ago.

That one little rule is why I would never use them, ever!!

[jjgold]

Never ever use this bubble gum shop

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