1. Introduction

1.1. A second generation betting exchange

Launched in August 2003 BetOnBet is registered and based in the UK and is owned by a company which was formed by 150 Scandinavian bettors. It is from Scandinavia that most of their members come, although they do have customers from more than 70 different countries and they also plan to expand their business to Asia by opening a regional office in Thailand.

They boldly refer to themselves as a second generation betting exchange, and having taken the time to get familiar with all that the site has to offer I can confirm that BetOnBet with their dynamic betting account and multi bet features have taken exchange betting to a new level. The downside is that BetOnBet still have some work to do to present the site and explain the features in such a way that it will be understood by a good number of their users.

1.2. General site information

Whilst the most active markets naturally reflect the strong Scandinavian bias of the membership, there are many markets from elsewhere, with soccer across the whole of Europe being well served. Whilst the liquidity on for example Premiership matches does not reflect that of the more established UK exchanges, the markets are certainly active and viable, and at times offer great value. Commission starts at 5% but reduces quite quickly for active users. The usual range of payment options are offered except for Switch which is not currently available. You can bet in a wide range of currencies including Sterling, US dollars, Euros, Norwegian Krona, Swedish Krona and Danish Krona. Exchange rates are updated daily from the European Central Bank. The site uses the classic Betfair table format for backing and laying, therefore anyone familiar with Betfair will have no problem with placing an ordinary bet.

2. Dynamic betting account

BetOnBet has many original and useful features, but it is the dynamic betting account which is truly revolutionary. With every other betting exchange that I am aware of if you offer a bet, the system freezes the amount you stand to lose regardless of whether it has been matched. With BetOnBet's dynamic betting account, your funds only get frozen when a bet is actually matched. The implications of this for members are really significant, as it means that you can offer dozens or even hundreds of bets regardless of the size of your account. For the site it means that the members can generate a far greater level of liquidity than a site with equivalent members could ever manage.

One strategy for profitable exchange betting is to litter the site with countless bets that offer you great value. If one of them is accepted, fantastic, you have a great value bet, if not no problem, all it has cost you is having your money tied up for the time that the bet was offered. With BetOnBet, it does not even cost you that, your money is only tied up if one of your bets gets matched.

When a bet does get matched, the system deactivates any other bets that you no longer have the funds to support. If more funds go into your account, either because you have been paid for a winning bet, or because you have you deposited fresh funds you can then go into individual markets and reactivate your bets should you choose to.

3. Multi bets

BetOnBet's other major step forward is in enabling members to offer and accept accumulators. Other exchanges have experimented with accumulators but there has been nothing as effective and flexible as this offered in the past. Accumulators are a great source of profits for bookies, and have been one of the things that it was felt that betting exchanges would not be able to offer because no individual would be prepared to tie up such substantial funds to support a big payout. The dynamic betting account already makes this a viable proposition on short priced markets. It is surely now just a question of time before either BetOnBet or a competitor site offers the same thing on horse racing. The bookmaker may argue that no member of an exchange would risk a massive payout of £50,000 to win £2 on an 6 way horse accumulator, and for that reason the bookmaker will always retain their edge. If I was a bookmaker I would not be so sure. As layers get more confident about managing the risks and rewards of accumulators, I believe that another challenge to the bookmaker's status quo will become increasingly inevitable.

BetOnBet's multi bets can be separated into two broad categories which I refer to as stand alone multi bets and multi bet combinations.(NB these are my descriptions, they are not mentioned on the site)

3.1. Stand alone multi bets

This is the same as placing an accumulator with a bookie, where you specify two or more outcomes which all have to be correct for you to win your bet. Using this option you can either back or lay the multi bet. The bet is only made available to opponents in the exact format that you specify. To place a multi bet go into the market in which you are interested and click the multi bet option. For example:

Football>England>Premiership>Multibets

You will then be presented with a coupon in which you tick (or in some markets, select from a drop down menu) all the outcomes that you want to bet for or against. Proceed by clicking on the "Open multi bet" prompt at the bottom of the screen and all the selections which you have ticked will then be listed. The familiar market board will then appear which may already contain bets that other members have previously offered either using this method or the method which is explained in section 3.2 below. You may accept an existing bet or set your own.

When you place a multi bet in this way, you need to decide what odds you want to offer for the overall outcome. The easiest way is to take what you consider to be the decimal odds for each individual outcome and multiply these together to get the overall price for the outcome. If you had three outcomes where you wanted to back (or lay) based on the individual prices of 5.40, 2.10 and 1.9 the odds you would be seeking for a treble would be 21.5.

To set up a multi bet with outcomes from different coupons you need to set up your own customised coupon by saving selections in which you are interested to your favourites. Do this by clicking on the shopping trolley icon next to that selection. When you have selected two or more events go to your favourites and set up your multi bet accordingly.

When your multi bet has been submitted it is displayed in the Multi Market as well as to anyone who puts together the same accumulator as you.

3.2. Multi bet combinations

3.2.1. Explanation

This is where the dynamic betting account feature really comes into its own as it enables layers to offer their selections in all combinations of singles and accumulators without having to submit them separately and without having to fund each bet separately. (NB. This option is not available to backers. If you want to back a series of multi bets you have to set them up separately, although of course the dynamic bet feature still means that you do not have to fund them separately.)

If you were to take for example four football matches, and consider all the possible combinations of bets you could have involving these four outcomes, there would be four single bets, six doubles, four trebles and one four way accumulator. The dynamic account feature enables you to offer all of these bets to your opponents at once, automatically calculating the maximum stake you will accept on each of these combinations to stay within your maximum stake, which is determined by adding up your stakes from the single bets.

For simplicity sake lets assume you are betting against four teams all of which are trading at around 2.0. You want to risk a total of £100 ie £25 on each. By setting them up as multi bets, in addition to the four single bets, you would automatically also be offering all possible combinations of the bets. This would give you the following bets in total:

4 x singles £25 @ 2.0 maximum liability £100

6 x doubles £33.33 @ 4.0 maximum liability £100

4 x trebles £14.29 @ 8.0 maximum liability £100

1 x 4 way £6.66 @ 16.0 maximum liability £100

This means that you are offering a total of 15 different bets, all of which will be available concurrently on the site, until one of them is fully or partially matched at which point the other bets on offer will be scaled down or cancelled accordingly. At no point will your potential liability be allowed to exceed the £100.

3.2.2. Method

Follow the same path to get to the multi bet coupon

Football>England>Premiership>Multibets

Rather than filling in the coupon, click on the fixture and you will be taken to a conventional betting exchange market board. Click on 'lay' as if you were placing an ordinary single bet. The betting slip then appears and you state the odds you are offering for that single bet and the profit you are seeking, and your stake is automatically calculated. To the left of the odds box you will see the Single/Multi boxes. If just the single box is ticked, this will be a normal single bet and it will not be combined with any other bets you place.

To combine the bet in a multi bet with others also tick the multi box. Press the OK button twice and you will see your bet on the back side of the market as a single bet available for opponents to accept. You can then click on the multi bets link again which will take you back to the coupon, where you can repeat this process. By offering two or more bets in this way from the same multi coupon and ticking the multi box you make your bets available to your opponents to accept in all variations of multi bets as well as singles. (Should you uncheck the single box, then your bet will only be offered as all available multi bets, not as single bets)

Do not try to find the various multi bets combinations of your bets anywhere on the site. The permutations of all the different multi bet would be so vast that to list them all would be wholly impractical. Your combination of bets will only be visible to someone who specifies one of the multi bets that you have offered.

For this reason there is little point in setting up a combination bet from different betting categories as there is little chance of someone selecting the same multi bet combination as you, unless they are all from the same coupon. If you want to combine bets from different markets it is normally best set this up as a stand alone multi bet which will be displayed in the multi market for all to see.

3.2.3. Advantages, disadvantages and opportunities

By making use of the single bet/multi bet combination your bets are offered in a wide combination of bets which has advantages and disadvantages. The obvious advantage is that by offering your selections in alternative combinations you stand a better chance of getting one of them matched. The disadvantage is that you lose control over the level of risk and your potential return, it depends on which of your bets is accepted. Lets take the above example. If your bets are accepted as singles, your maximum risk as a layer is £100 if all four selections are correct and your maximum profit is £100 if all four selections are wrong. However, if the bet is accepted as a four way accumulator, your potential liability is still £100 but your potential profit is only £6.66. With the second case scenario it is obviously the case that you are much less likely to lose your bet but staking £100 to win only £6.67 will not suit everyone.

I have been informed by BetOnBet that very few members make use of this feature. This does not surprise me for two reasons. Firstly many members will not like the uncertainty discussed above, and the possibility that they may end up laying a long shot, which they may consider too risky for the reward. Secondly this feature is not explained at all well on the site and I cannot believe that many current members understand the multi bet combination. The fact that one of BetOnBet's most impressive features is so inaccessible to their average member, is a missed opportunity for them, and I believe they are working on the help and communication aspects of their site. However, the relative inaccessibility of this feature means there is less competition creating great opportunities for those of us who are prepared to get to know and use it to its full.

Apparently those members who are comfortable using this method of laying multi bets do very well. BetOnBet tell me have calculated that layers using this system have made a very impressive average margin of 11.7% after commission. This does not surprise me at all, the lack of competition amongst layers means that the odds are not as competitive as they might otherwise be. Whilst it took me a while to realise that this way of placing multi bets existed, and longer still to understand how it worked, now I do understand it is really straightforward. Hopefully anyone who follows the steps in this article and makes use of the on line help will have no problem and it could be well worth the effort.

This type of betting requires a different approach to those normally discussed in this newsletter. This should not be seen as a trading opportunity. You cannot expect to reverse out of a multi bet once matched with a view to creating a win-win situation, and even if you do the two bets are not off set against each other for commission purposes, therefore the impact of commission could be prohibitive. Having set your multi bets you need to be confident enough to let then run, safe in the knowledge that your odds give you the value that you need to ensure that your profits will come through in the long run.

4. Other features

4.1. Help

When I was learning about the site I used the help section but found it to be of limited assistance. It has clearly been written by someone who understands the systems inside out, but I doubt if it has ever been tested out by a newcomer to the site. BetOnBet seem to recognise that this is something they need to improve on and whilst I was researching this review they launched an excellent new live support chat feature, which is a massive step forward in this respect. They aim to make this service available 10am-2am. Right in the middle of the home page you will see a box with a revolving question mark. This tells you whether there is an operator on line. If there is, click on the box and within seconds you will be able to ask your questions on a one to one basis. As the operator can look at the screen you are looking the advice will be specific and applied.

4.2. Search feature

You can search to find all markets in which your chosen team are involved. Some people might prefer this to the normal site navigation.

4.3. Set expiration time

Not something that everyone will use, and if you ignore it, your bet will expire as specified in the marketinfo. However, for some members in certain circumstances this feature could be really useful. Take the example where you were seeking to get a bet matched on the Premiership winners market, but there was a crucial match starting at 7.45pm the following evening. You could set the expiration time at 7.44pm to ensure that it is cancelled before the start of the match, so that you do not inadvertently leave the bet there for your opponent to snap up when the team you wish to bet on concedes a goal.

4.4. Deactivate/Reactivate

As explained above, this feature can be used to reactivate bets which have been frozen due to lack of funds. Its other use is if for example you were betting in running, and you felt a goal may be close to being scored, then you could deactivate your bets, then reactivate them when the danger has passed. This saves you from the trouble of having to re-enter your bets.

4.5. Ticker tape

A very flexible and useful screen feature which, assuming you choose to enable it, scrolls continuously along the bottom of your screen displaying bets from the markets that you choose to display. One of the options is to only display your own bets, so you can continually monitor them. As they change colour when they are matched, it is very easy to see how they are progressing. Something I found useful was to open another window over the top of my BetOnBet window, and then to pull up the bottom of that window so that the ticker tape was visible below. This enabled me to continue surfing elsewhere, whilst keeping an eye on my bets without having to go in and out of BetOnBet.

4.6. Messages

On BetOnBet, assuming your opponent has not chosen to remain anonymous, you know who you have bet against and if you want to you can send them a message. I like this feature and had a good chat with a member from Sweden.

The user name option creates some interesting possibilities. In the early days of flutter and play121 there were a number of well known users who you would see all the time. One or two of them always offered reasonable odds and built up good reputations. There was one in particular who build up such a good name for fairness that people used to accept his bets without even checking how good his odds were. Perhaps someone will try and built up a similar reputation on this site.

5. Conclusion

BetOnBet have successfully created a remarkable site with some unique features however, they have been less successful in explaining them. This is not a particularly easy site to use and you will have to invest a little time getting to know it. To get to understand the more advanced features took me a couple of days, but when I finally got there I realised they were no where near as complicated as they seemed. Hopefully with the benefit of this article and the live support chat you will it much easier to use than I did..

Compared with some of the other exchanges BetOnBet are a tiny organisation, which makes their achievement in delivering such an advanced site so impressive. The downside is that the site lacks the polish of some of the competition. Grammatical and spelling mistakes may give the casual visitor the false impression that this a poorly run, amateurish site that is unlikely to be there next time they look, which I really do not feel to be the case. Breaking into the betting exchange market which is so dominated by Betfair, is an enormous challenge for any business, and to stand any chance a new competitor has to find a way of really setting themselves aside from the competition. I believe that BetOnBet may well have achieved this with their ground breaking dynamic betting account and multi bet features and I will be following their progress with great interest.