Mobile Betting – What’s It Like?

With more and more people having iPhones and Smartphones, the idea of betting seriously from your mobile is becoming more and more of a reality. Obviously being able to bet in exactly the same way as you can from your computer is unlikely to happen on a mobile phone for a long time but the features that are being offered are generally getting better.

The popularity of this form of betting is seen in Ladbrokes taking four times more bets through mobile phones than it did for the whole of Euro 2009 and William Hill having a punter winning £124,000 through a mobile phone bet recently.

The quantity of mobile betting users is increasing and it is becoming an important medium to utilise with every major bookmaker offering this facility. I use an iPhone, so am more knowledgeable of the applications available on that platform as opposed to Android phones. However I have been doing some research into what is available on other phones and it seems that the options are very similar.

Using Betfair for the majority of my bets I have tried almost every application for the iPhone and most of them are, at best, useless. The problems I have encountered are freezing, speed issues, odds changing, difficulty in finding selections and placing bets amongst some smaller other user friendliness issues.

A freezing application is, to my mind, just a badly programmed piece of software if it happens with any regularity. It also causes some serious concerns in a betting platform because you have to restart your phone to find out whether or not your bet was placed. Any application that does this I would suggest removing immediately from your mobile device.

Speed is going to be an issue on your phone, even if you are connected by wireless. This makes mobile betting only really suitable for bets that can be placed in plenty of time before the race. If your strategy requires anything more complicated than this then I would strongly suggest that you don’t use your mobile. Five minutes before an event is currently the latest I would leave my betting on a mobile device, with a preference of ten minutes or more.

Handling odds availability is unique to different applications. This is where it is important to read the terms and conditions of the application you are using. It seems that some applications have a clause in their terms and conditions which states that if the odds change, then you accept that your bet will be placed at the current available odds. Now that you know this it is obviously very advisable to spend the time reading the terms and conditions in the application you are thinking of using.

Difficulty in finding selections is down to user preference, a number of people have used applications I have not had a good time with and thoroughly enjoyed them and so the only way to decide whether you like the style of use is by trialling the application.

So what application do I use?

I have found that iBetMate for the iPhone to be my current favourite application but if you are thinking of using a mobile betting application then below is my suggested check list before you decide which to use:

• Read reviews of the application
• If there are regular freezing issues in the reviews then don’t use the application
• If there are regular extreme speed issues in the reviews then don’t use the application
• Read the terms and conditions of any application you are interested in
• If the terms and conditions include placing your bet at any odds (without asking) if the requested aren’t available then don’t use the application
• Test the application without placing any bets by seeing how easy it is to find the markets, choose selections, odds and getting to the bet placement page

If you are happy with all the above then I strongly advise you place a few very small bets first in order to test run the process, something may well go wrong when you first start using the application and you want to make sure it happens on a bet that doesn’t matter!