Betfair - the world's leading betting exchange

Betfair first opened its site in June 2000 and quickly established itself as one of the largest betting sites in the world, with a turnover in excess of £50 million per week.

What made Betfair unique and different from other traditional bookies was that you could now back or lay the potential outcome of an event. This was originally quickly picked up in horse racing (Betfair's first main market), because you could now back a horse to win or you could in effect back it to lose (lay it).

One other thing that also stood out was that Betfair does not charge you commission if you lose - you only have to pay commission (around 5% based on usage) on yhour net profits. So, unlike traditional bookies they want you to win.

As Betfair became more popular and more money entered the markets, it wasn't long before people began to realise that the prices on events would move just like they do on the stock market for day traders, the only difference being that we are dealing with an outcome of an event, rather than the price of commodities.

In fact many people who use Betfair do not even see themselves as gamblers because they are not interested in the actual runners, players or teams. They just want to trade on the prices.

Another thing Betfair introduced was "In running" or "In Play" betting, which allows you to actually trade during a race or match. The high liquidity and extreme volatility of in-running price movements created lots of exciting new profitable betting opportunities.

As Betfair is really just a trading platform, it wasn't long before software developers started to produce applications that would speed up the betting process and use the information to help improve people's ability to trade. This was helped even further when Betfair opened its API to developers, allowing them to create more stable applications and so start the betting bot age.

Some people say that Betfair has bought trading to the masses because it allows people to start trading with as little as £2.00 and commission is only payable on net profits. There is also no tax on gambling income (yet).

Many traditional traders have moved to Betfair and other exchanges, and we suspect that many smart Betfair traders have gone on to trade on the commodity markets, after honing their skills on Betfair .

With over £200,000 bet on each horse racing market daily, there is plenty of liquidity to allow you to build up and trade substantial positions on this unique trading platform.