Life before exchanges

[bassman99]

Does anyone have any experience of the days before exchanges came about?
I am interested if any of the "old hands" made a decent profit from bookies alone,dutching etc.
Does anybody know if the bookies living is easier with the exchanges around, as I for one had never bet at a bookies in my life before I started MBing so I presume there must be thousands of new "customers" money floating around.
Maybe an interview with an exchange boss would be of interest or even getting a bookie to reveal their thoughts on exchanges.

[Andy]

Yes, and also for a very very small amount of time paying tax on it all in the shops, you could chose to pay the tax on your stake or the winnings.

It was incredibly rudimentary (sp?) matched betting, not really comparable to now but I used it at Uni a bit and made some £s but nothing much and forgot about it after I had done a douzen or so. This was in the days before there were "lists" and certainly "spreadsheets" and what have you. I am not an old hand who made a "decent profit" from it, I just made some pocket money first time around.

Before Betfair I had a flutter account. Betfair bought flutter and they merged. Flutter were better, you used to be able to see who had matched your bet and have private duels with them it was great fun. Another long lost exchange is SportingOptions who went bust! Oh yes, even exchanges can go bust people, nobody lost out too heavily because betfair bailed them out by giving everybody commission free trading until the balances were credited (It was something like that).

RE The Interviews, yes good idea it would be interesting certainly.

[AmeliesDad]

I did like flutter, I thought it made things more interesting, but you can see why betfair is a better system for the millions that are being traded. I wonder if a flutter type system still has a place in the market though?

That whole tax thing was weird too. It was like gambling on whether you paid tax or not depending if it was a value bet at long odds or something you expected to happen at shorter odds.

[johnsmith]

most were too busy with crazy casino and poker money that was to be had back then to bother with the few online bookies that were around

[Carson]

Yes - I remember the days of 1x rollover then fedexed cheques to your door!