Dispute resolution with tabloid muscle

Does anyone know of a betting columnist that likes to fight the good fight for punters? The man of my dreams is combative, writes for a rag with a high circulation, and is easy to contact. Advice appreciated.

Guess that's a "no" then. Never mind. It's been referred to IBAS.

dunno where you are based but a fella who has a column in the scottish daily record - mr fixit - always makes a points of fighting the punters corner with the bookies.

Hello, thanks for replying. I'm in Glasgow so I do know about Mr Fixit. He was good enough to reply and offer assistance, even though I don't think he actually agrees with me. Without wishing to slate the man, even after I explained the dispute at length he still doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of what actually happened. I reckon he's still filling out his coupons in smoke filled betting offices. Perhaps he'll discover the delights of betting exchanges at a later date.

Mr Fixit isn't a bad tipster compared to some other hacks. He shows some degree of consistency and a lot of the time I can understand why he makes a particular selection even if it does turn out to be wrong in the end.

How about trying Joe Punter in the Sunday Mail?

It's probably the same guy.

To be honest, I don't even know if a newspaper column would have room to do justice to the complete farce of this dispute. Given Mr Fixit's failure to interpret the information properly, I'm worried that IBAS might also misunderstand the situation.

can you disclose the situation any further for us?

I suppose I could. I'm not the only Betfair user that was invoved in this particular stuff up, but I get the impression that I'm the only one that has complained so vociferously. I don't want to stuff up the IBAS arbitration.

It's quite complicated though and I'm just back from Celtic Park so I'll do it as soon as I get a minute. Suffice to say it involves Betfair, a Catalan football club, a complete u-turn by the former, and a couple of grand I thought was money in the bank.

Okay, I'll try and keep this brief. BF ran a Next Barca Manager market. The rules went like this: Who will be the next permanent manager of Barca? Caretaker managers will not be included.

Not particularly clear, I think you'll agree, so I phoned up the Help Desk when Barca announced they had appointed Radomir Antic until the end of the season. I told the operator about the official Barca statement and asked if BF would be treating him as permanent in light of this information. The operator went to the Market Ops department to get a ruling. After a bit she came back and said they would not be settling the market on Antic because of the short duration of his contract. The market would stay open until June.

On this basis, I snapped up the opportunity to lay Antic as the next permanent manager at short odds on. I laid to win about two and a half grand at 1/5 on. On Friday night, there were lots of punters on the BF forum discussing the BF decision to treat Antic as a temp. They'd made a call to clarify the rules and been given the same info. Very happy, I go to bed.

The next morning, some fourteen hours later, BF do what they said they wouldn't and suspend the market. A few days later, they settle on Antic as the winner.

I email BF. The recording of my query on Friday confirms my account of what happened. I get my stake back, but I'm not happy and I put my thinking cap on.

Missing out a lot of the detail, a strange set of circumstances allows me to deduce that Market Ops made a decision on Friday night to treat Antic as a temp. The info I received was not the result of a misunderstanding between the telephone operator and Market Ops. When pressed, BF admit I'm right. Someone came to work on Saturday morning and decided the original decision was wrong.

BF's rules allow them to correct "obvious errors". I contend that the original decision to treat Antic as a caretaker/temp is not an obvious error. Given the published rules available for the market, I can't say Friday nights decision was wrong. It seems reasonable to assume that a man on a contract from February 'til the end of May is not permanent. I've got a pile of articles from the BBC, Soccernet, the Daily Rangers etc that describe Antic as a "caretaker", "temporary" and "stop-gap". If independent observers can refer to him in this way, it wasn't an obvious error. ( If anyone knows of any more articles like this, especially in the papers, I'd love to know about them. There was a lot about the Barca post on the 6th February because of the Eriksson link) Anyway, the very fact we can argue about whether he's permanent or not suggests it's not an obvious error.

I reckon BF have operated outside their own rules. I agreed to the rules of the market when I struck my bets and so did they. The Antic ruling was part of those rules. Only BF changed them while the market was still in play. I reckon they should be liable for what I stood to win.

Even if Antic's contract is extended in June, that's irrelevant because the original decision meant the market would have remained open. This would have let me lay other runners and most likely back Antic at higher odds than I laid him at.

So there you go! That's it in a nutshell. Sorry about the abridged version and the horribly abrupt writing style, but the long version, complete with duplicity and gruesome detail runs to about two thousand words.

By the way, if BF do escape without liability, I hope you can all see the potential for abuse of the system by both BF the company and their staff.

hmmm ..... so you tried to lay a bet you had already been told would not win to 'simple punting folk'?

but you're the one feeling hard done by?

would you have laid the same bet face to face in a bookmakers and taken the flak when the 'simple punting folk' read the small print you had access to?

under the circumstances, i would say BF acted more respectably than yourself.

Hello. I expected someone would take that view. Let me defend myself, please.

Firstly, it is every punter's responsibility to be aware of the market rules when placing a bet. This notion is actually laid out in BF's rules.

I took the time to clarify those rules. I did not benefit from inside information, but information that any BF user could have obtained.

Secondly, I did actually lay Antic. I wasn't told that Antic wouldn't win, only that he wouldn't win until June at the earliest. When I placed my bets there were thousands of pounds worth of orders to back Antic at short odds on. I accepted those orders. The punters asking to back Antic at such short prices had done so based on the rumours in the press that he was going to get the job until the end of the season. Clearly they hadn't bothered to check the rules.

Also, it clearly states in BF's rules that users should not leave orders on the system unless they know that the market won't move against them. That's what happened here. BF made a ruling and that ruling changed the nature of the market.

yes i understand that you were trying to get an edge, but if willhill were found to be laying a bet that had small print making it practically impossible for it to be a winner, then punters like yourself, would surely be calling for heads to roll.

i can understand you being mildly dissatisfied with the outcome given the phonecall you had, but surely only the most tight-arsed punter could get so uptight that they have to call in IBAS to resolve a situation in which they, themselves, were trying to take fellow punters for a ride?

you, rightly, got you money back and nobody got hurt so surely you can put this on down to experience?

Once again, I wasn't trying to "get an edge", I was merely making sure that I knew what the rules were before I put my money on the line.

I resent the implication that "I was trying to take fellow punters for a ride". That implies that I was doing something illegal or unfair. I played the market according to the rules of the market and met the demand of users wanting to back Antic. That demand may have been a little misplaced once BF made the ruling on Friday, but the former was not my responsibilty and the latter was not my decision.

i could understand your frustration if you were actually out of pocket, but you were trying to lay a risk-free bet. you knew that the punters taking your lay had no hope of winning.

betting exchanges offer the opportunity for gamblers to compete against fellow gamblers. you were clearly not prepared to enter the market until there was no gamble on your part whatsoever. when bookies offer odds there must be a chance, no matter how small, of a payout (hence the returned stake on first goalscorer bets if your man comes on after the first goal etc etc).

you got your money back, count yourself lucky they didn't close your account.

i repeat, i can understand mild dissatisfaction on your part, but to take things this far smacks of greedy desperation. under the circumstances i would suggest betting is not a good idea for you. maybe switching price stickers in supermarkets would yield a less risky return? ;-)

I don't know how many times I have to say it, but I'll try again. It wasn't a risk free bet. If Antic's contract was extended at any point, I would have lost my stake.

but you would obviously have re-backed him before that ever became an issue, right?

If it was possible, then I would have hedged, yes. But I'm bound to say that practice wouldn't have affected the outcome of the bets that I laid nor the punters who placed those bets. I'd have also laid other runners in the market.

so do you think that BF should take the £500 from the punters who had backed antic and give it to you?

would you be happy if you had backed antic and ended up a loser?

stakes returned all round seems fair enough to me. if you can't convince a fellow punter then you haven't a snowballs chance in hell of convincing IBAS.

Well, to be honest, I hope IBAS have a greater regard for the rules than you, Harry.

BF didn't return stakes to all punters, they paid out on Antic as the winner. I got my stake back because I bet on the information I received from BF staff. Anyone who bet on the market after reading about the decision to treat Antic as temporary on the forum will have lost their money. I believe BF should take responsibilty for the actions of senior staff from their own profits. Do you think BF should be allowed to make a ruling and change it a day later?

i would agree, that in an ideal world the events you describe wouln't have happened. these manager markets have been throwing up all sorts of problems and i would be suprised if it's worth all the hassle from BF's point of view (the actual net profits made after trading must be relatively small)

i can only assume that they reversed the initial decision because it was going to piss fewer people off that way. you must realise that BF are treading in unchartered territory with these markets and the right decision for one punter is always gonna be the wrong one for others.

i still maintain you should be satisfied with a returned stake and accept that BF were forced to make a difficult decision under difficult circumstances.