Knowing who you're betting against is one of the coolest features. I do have a question though, maybe you know - say I bet 200 on team A, you bet 100 on team B. Hypothetically, what if nobody else bets on either team? Does my bet reduce to 100 or would they still have a bookie to cover the difference? It's unlikely depending on how many users are betting, but I guess it would be likely there's an odd number of wagers or at least one side gets more scr put on it
That is a very good question, at launch it will be very basic and so it will probably be offer and acceptance only. Betfair is able to cross match bets across lots of users but they have a very complex platform to do this. So in your example if you enter the bet first with 200 SCR then someone will have to match that 200 on the other side. If the 100 SCR was placed first then you would only be able to take 100 SCR the other side and would need to place and additional 100 SCR bet which would sit there waiting to be matched. The other down side is that probably you will need to match total liability and the system will not be able to calculate and allow for the bets and lays you have made, unlike how Betfair will know if you made a bet on both sides and your liability is not the addition of the total liabilities. I expect these types of enhancements to come in later versions. That is my idea of how it will work as I am expecting it to be very basic at the start.
I gotcha, that totally makes sense. Yea I'm sure it will start basic, which is totally fine because I'm sure it's quite the feat to get it all set up and running properly. From the looks of how they do things though, they will definitely be adding more features and I look forward to what all they come up with.