I freely admit I first adopted this bit of jargon following a highly informative interview at another forum with a professional punter whose identity may be familiar to a number of you. I shan't blow his cover but suffice to say that, if he steps forward to identify himself at PP, his incisive and often witty views are always well worth reading.
The
price setter is the guy who puts up the offer at a betting exchange - whether it's offering to lay an outcome or trying to back it at a specific price.
The
price hitter is the guy who matches the offer.
"The price setter is the guy who puts up the offer at a betting exchange - whether it's offering to lay an outcome or trying to back it at a specific price. The price hitter is the guy who matches the offer."
It's not a secret that BackAndLay is short of price setters and, as price setters put bets on the screen, encouraging those surfing the site to see there is life here, thus encouraging them to sign up, deposit funds, and maybe even post offers of their own, it's a subject that occupies my mind constantly.
What liquidity there is often seems to be in football, rather than racing.
And this leads me to the question I'll endeavour to tackle here - why are price setters more confident in some markets than others?
I have some theories.
IMO, the integrity of any sporting event is a function of the prize-money on offer for trying minus the potential financial gain from going bent and betting accordingly on the betting markets.
At the top end of the scale, we have football's World Cup Final, played out in front of an audience of hundreds of millions by up to £150,000-a-week footballers.
At the bottom end, we have a selling handicap hurdle worth around £2,000 to the winning owner (£200 each to the trainer and jockey) at a gaffe UK racecourse on a wet Monday.
Racing at the top end is straight enough but, drop a few grades, and it's a minefield.
No matter how good you are at compiling a layers' book and/or a backers book by use of the form-book and your nous, there is alway someone (in the yard or connected to it) out there who knows more about any specific horse's prospects that day than you do.
Hence there will always be horses which shorten to a price the form-book says is daft but experience teaches might actually be good value, causing other horses which you'd think were 'gimmes' at certain backers prices drifting to even bigges ones, and maybe rightly so.
Unless you are right on top of every market movement throughout the industry, as a price setter you are bound to get picked off and, come racetime, be left holding some bad positions (horses you've backed at under the odds or laid at over the odds).
Who has taken these bets and why?
Well, while the Data Protection Act rightly precludes discussion of the former, your guess as to the latter is as good as mine.
But it's got to be odds on that, while some are those who specifically fancy the horse in question and were shopping around the web for the best price, takers also include habitual arbers who see a price they can match and then hedge at a profit either at BackAndLay or elsewhere.
That's the problem for an infant exchange - very few of the early adopters simply want to 'have a bet.'
Most of those who bother to join a new exchange are betting for a living and simply looking for steady income.
An exchange, like a bookmaker, needs lots of purely recreational players both for these guys to feed off and to offset the inevitable losses the price setters will incur long-term betting with the arbers.
Liquidity cannot build without recreational players.
For pricesetting is surely hard work - much harder than pricehitting, hence any pricehitter needs an incentive to do it.
In short, if they're not winning - and certainly if they're routinely losing - price setters will stop doing it.
"Football match odds markets aren't static but, generally, speaking, there is nothing like the market volatility of your average horserace market."
The problem is less manifest in football.
Football match odds markets aren't static but, generally, speaking, there is nothing like the market volatility of your average horserace market.
This is because football is, by and large, straight and, if the game is straight price setters can oprate with more confidence.
There won't be any non-triers in this week's European Cup quarter finals, and, unless there's an outbreak of flu or something in one of the squads, you won't see much markets movement up until the day.
And it's on TV so, what little recreational money there might be on the exchanges, will be traded on games punters can then sit down and watch.
It's not surprising therefore, that - while I hope the impending introduction of a free API for users will boost all markets including racing over time - I believe that the liquidity breakthrough, if and when it ever happens at BackAndLay, will come in football match odds markets.
No wonder I love the 'beautiful game.'
BBC
