Issue 15 - 30th May 2002

1. Intrade improvements

If you have not visited Intrade for a while its worth having another look as the site has improved considerably. CEO Ron Bernstein comments:

"We have released a significant tech release which improves almost all areas of the site, especially navigation. Trading and search is more direct and key events are listed and accessed right from the home page."

If you are unfamiliar with the concept of sports trading it can take some getting used to. This was covered in depth in our review of Intrade in issue 8 (all back issues are available FOC on request) Intrade have introduced a new FLASH demo which is accessed from the second link from top left on the home page. This is a major improvement on the previous tutorial and goes some way to demystifying the sports trading concept. If you want to have a practise on the site without risking any money you can enter the World Cup competition that Intrade are running in conjunction with Yahoo. You get $5,000 to play in a fantasy league and there are prizes for the most successful traders.

2. Betfair upgrades

This month has seen considerable changes on the Betfair site in time for the World Cup. Clearly with the Far Eastern market in mind they have launched an Asian Betting service along with a Chinese language option. Improvements to the site include the much requested introduction of an update of the Flutter interface, which is as close to perfection as we have seen, offering all the features we could hope for including easy access to profit and loss, current bets matched and unmatched. There is also an option to customise your menu so only the sports in which you are interested feature. Of particular interest is the long awaited return of the message board, which has now been categorised into various sports. The fact that they have the confidence to reintroduce the message board suggests they are not expecting the negative feedback which they were experiencing when the board was removed, so hopefully we can look forward to some uninterrupted quality in running betting during the World Cup.

3. Betdaqracing/Bookie Free News draw

Congratulations to Andy Yelland from York who won the £500 credit in the recent Betdaqracing draw for Bookie Free Readers.