Betfair financials (20 minutes). FTSE/Dow

Hello,

I have some questions about Betfair financials (20 minutes). FTSE/Dow:

1.I get confused with the differences between Fixed Odds/Binary Betting/Decimal Odds/... What is exactly the name of the type of bets that Betfair offers for financials?. Fixed Odds?. But fixed odds are offered also in other bookmakers, so what is the real name of Betfair financial betting?.

2.Since you bet against other people and not against the bookmaker, is Betfair the only bookmaker that is absolutely transparent and that is fair to place your bets or are there any others?. With transparent I mean that you will not get requotes, you will not get your platform frozen, and you will not get robbed at the end. Are there any other bookmakers that offer exactly the same as Befair for financials (you bet against other people and not against the bookmaker)?. What is your opinion about Betfair financial 20 minutes?.

3.I have seen that in 20 minutes bets, you can place orders even for the following intervales. Is it right?. If for example at this moment we are at the 10.00->10.20 intervale and you take a look ahead for other 20 minutes intervales you can see the odds for future 20 minutes intervales and you can see that the odds are at 1.97 (back) and at 1.97 (lay) for the rest of the day intervales. Is betfair offering these initial odds?. So if you take them you are betting against Betfair and not against others. Is it right?. How many minutes ahead of the start of the 20 minutes intervale you can place a bet before it starts?.

Thank you,

Regards.

In response to question two, Betfair is fair. It would be nice if there were another exchange like Betfair which has 20 minute ftse and wallst contracts, but I haven't found any other place like that. If anyone knows of one, please let me know.

In response to question three, I don't think Betfair is offering the initial odds. It is pretty easy for someone to make a program to offer these odds. Betfair is just like the any normal stock exchange. It matches buyers and sellers. No one trader's orders get priority over anothers. You can also place orders on any 20 minute contracts as soon as the contract is listed, but there usually aren't any bids or offers on the book until the start of the day.

So all of the other bookmakers with financial betting are counterparty?. So most of them probably are there to manipulate the market and at the end take your money as most CFD´S brokers also do?. I don´t know why other people here are trading with other bookmakers different to betfair since at the end they will probably have problems with them. Even I have read people having problems (market manipulation) with Tradefair which is a partner of Betfair for trading financials. So the only fair one to financial bets is Betfair.

What do you mean by this: "It is pretty easy for someone to make a program to offer these odds"?

From what I´ve seen you can find in the morning all the 20 minutes intervales odd listing for all the day. They have odds and liquidity. Who is offering that liquidity?. I don´t think there is anybody that will make a bet for the 20 minutes intervale with 4 hours in advance.

From what I´ve read betfair update their financial odds in their webpage every 15 seconds. So is there any software (free if possible) that gives you update for financial odds faster than in their webpage?. I mean anyone with a software that sees the odds updated faster than in betfair webpage can realize sooner how are the odds evolving. I know you can´t place new bets (with new odds) in betfair webpage until the new odds (every 15 seconds) are showed but if you have a software to see the evolution on the odds you can get some idea and plan your strategy. Is there any software for this?.

Thank you,

Regards.

"It is pretty easy for someone to make a program to offer these odds"?
Betfair has a api(application program interface) which allows users to write programs to automatically submit orders. I think someone is using a computer program to offer those odds i believe.
"Is there any software for this" Yes, there is a lot of software. Look the betfair website.

http://community.betfair.com/api_products/go/forum/view/93990/165638/API_Products

just google betfair trading software.

Regards

Ok. Thank you. I will take a look at it.

Regards.