How betting exchanges work
In this video we go into a bit more detail about how betting exchanges work. There are some slightly complicated concepts in here, but they’ll help you understand how to profit on Smarkets.
There’s more information on greening up in the Smarkets help section.
The difference between a bookies and betting exchange
Ever wondered what the difference was between a high-street bookmaker and a betting exchange? This video explains what we see as the main advantages of market betting.
A lesson in Tennis trading
I stumbled across this post on the Bet Angel Blog. It’s a great illustration of how market trading works, and the risk of relying purely on data to predict an outcome.
In the quarter-finals of the recent Australian Open, Roger Federer lost 13 games on the trot to Nikolay Davydenko resulting in his odds to win at Betfair lengthening from 1.3 to around 3.7. He took a break and returned to court a changed man, beating Davydenko with relative ease.
[In a post match interview] Federer commented on how the sun was bothering him and how he couldn’t wait till it had cleared the court. He also, accidentally, revealed how he timed his ‘comfort break’ to allow him a chance to regain his thoughts and break the stride of his opponent.
If you had just been following the score, it’s unlikely you’d have taken such an outside bet on Federer, but if you could tell that the sun was bothering him, you would have made a tidy £27 profit on a £10 bet.
Placing your first bet with Smarkets
Placing on a bet on Smarkets couldn’t be easier, but we’ve put a little video together explaining the process. Get betting!
Get your mitts on a Free Tenner!
Simple one this, make a deposit over £10 and we’ll give you a free tenner.
No tricks, no codes or special links. You make the deposit and we give you the free money! What are you waiting for? Get betting!
The offer ends January 31st. T&Cs here.
New Smarkets Profile & Account
We’ve made a pretty huge update this week. As Smarkets is all about simple, social betting we’ve carried out a complete overhaul of the profile and account pages to make it easier to find people and track your account activity.
Easy to Understand Accounting
We’ve always been frustrated by how complicated the account history is, on other websites so we’ve relaunched ours with the features we wanted to see. You now have a clear dashboard in your account which shows how much money you have in-play, what your potential winnings are, your balance and your profit and loss for the last 30 days.
We’ve also separated out all your bets by ‘active bets’ (that’s bets currently in-play), ’settled bets’ (with handy colour coding so you can see at a glance if you won or lost), and ‘financial activity’. This last section shows you all the money that went in and our of your account.
For each match you bet on, we’ve grouped all the information together so you can see each position and the amount that was matched by other fans. You can also cancel unmatched bets directly from the account page. I’ll put together a video in the next few days explaining the new layout.
Check out the new account.
What’s your winning streak?
We’ve tidied up the profile page so you can now see which matches your friends comment on and see who’s following you. We’ve also added some personal stats such as your success rate, longest winning streak and your highest winning odds. Don’t worry though, these numbers are hidden from other members: they’re for your eyes only.
Check out your new profile.
We hope you enjoy these updates, but get in touch if you have any questions or problems.
New markets added to Smarkets
We’ve battled through the snow and made it to Smarkets Towers to release some brand new markets. You can now bet on League One, League Two, Champions League and the FA Cup. That’s about sixty new teams and hundreds of upcoming matches for you to have a flutter on.
It looks like many of this weekend’s fixtures could be cancelled due to frozen pitches, but once the snow melts, it’s game on!
Smarkets in 35 seconds
We’ve put together this quick video to show the basic features of Smarkets.
We’ll be recording a bunch of videos to illustrate how Smarkets works and to introduce novice punters to the basics of betting. If you have any specific questions, check out our FAQs section or get in touch with us.
Gaming payout methods and eGaming Review Live 2009
Smarkets attended a fascinating presentation by Paul Davis from Counting House at eGaming Review Live last week. Paul talked about how there is a trend towards paperless banking in general life but online gaming is actually an exception. Counting House’s figures showed that electronic payouts were nine times higher than cheques by volume (from January to July 2009), but those cheques were actually worth 8 times more than the electronic payouts.
If gambling is frowned upon (or even illegal) then many punters will request large cheque payouts rather than electronic transfers. Cheques are easier to turn into cash without the accounting trail associated with bank transfers and cheques are a physical piece of paper, this makes bragging in front of your mates much more effective.
Another interesting slide Paul presented was this table which shows the percentage split of payouts:
| Country | Bank Transfers | Payments to Cards | Cheques | eWallets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 44.49 | 8.33 | 10.22 | 36.95 |
| Australia | 20.66 | 18.49 | 39.64 | 21.21 |
| Belgium | 15.20 | 16.86 | 11.27 | 56.67 |
| Canada | 34.93 | 12.46 | 45.34 | 7.26 |
| Denmark | 1.02 | 49.93 | 6.14 | 42.92 |
| France | 16.38 | 49.3 | 0.00 | 34.25 |
| Germany | 37.84 | 7.82 | 8.46 | 45.88 |
| Hungary | 2.67 | 39.75 | 1.95 | 55.63 |
| Mexico | 7.92 | 18.76 | 25.64 | 47.68 |
| Netherlands | 49.79 | 3.40 | 0.02 | 46.79 |
| New Zealand | 2.73 | 45.90 | 9.74 | 41.63 |
| Poland | 6.98 | 5.67 | 0.16 | 87.19 |
| Portugal | 16.11 | 3.28 | 28.38 | 42.23 |
| Russia | 9.59 | 26.15 | 0.14 | 64.12 |
| Sweden | 13.63 | 43.61 | 1.86 | 40.90 |
| UK | 26.74 | 52.82 | 6.44 | 14.00 |
| USA | 48.47 | 0.00 | 51.53 | 0.00 |
Payment wallets (such as Moneybookers and Neteller) are gaining ground in popularity in many markets. This an area Smarkets has been investigating and (if we can get the costs to the right level) it’ll be something we’ll be adding in future releases.
Betting open on the World Cup 2010 group stages
We’ve been watching the World Cup draw with interest here in the Smarkets office. With a multinational team, the question of where the USA, England and Australia would be placed was close to our hearts.
England appear to have drawn a reasonable group (despite being in the same group as the USA) and Australia have a chance of going through too, so it looks to be shaping up to be an exciting World Cup next year.
In a fit of excitement we’ve opened the betting for every team’s first match, so place your bets on the World Cup group stages, there’s only 188 days to go!
