The instant a market closes

A cut-off is not a period. On the sample it is one instant at 15:00:00.000 UTC, and two bets placed sixty milliseconds either side of it are treated as though they were placed minutes apart. Nothing about the reader's device tells them which side of that line they are on.

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Account spec

Sample cut-off: 15:00:00.000 UTC
Accepted: 14:59:59.940
Rejected: 15:00:00.060
Decided by: operator clock, not device

the boundaryThe instant the account's day is measured from. On the samples it is 00:00 UTC, which is a different wall-clock moment for every reader.

the countdownWhat a window is measured from and whether day one counts. A window advertised as 30 days delivers 29 days 23 hours 59 minutes on the sample.

the calendarThe working-day clock money moves on, with its cut-off, its weekends and its holidays. One working day covered 87 hours 30 minutes on the sample.

Direct answerA cut-off is the operator's single instant, recorded on the operator's clock. A bet placed sixty milliseconds before it is accepted and one placed sixty milliseconds after it is refused, so the deciding factor is the server's clock and not the time shown on your device, which can be seconds out.

Sample D - sixty milliseconds either sidecut-off 2026-03-07 15:00:00.000 UTC bet A, server receipt 14:59:59.940 UTC -> accepted bet B, server receipt 15:00:00.060 UTC -> refused gap between the two bets 120 ms the two devices, and what their readers saw device 1, clock 3.2 s slow shows 14:59:56.7 when the server reads 15:00:00.0 device 2, clock 1.4 s fast shows 15:00:01.5 when the server reads 15:00:00.1 so a reader whose device is 3.2 s slow sees 14:59:56.7 and is refused at what looks to them like three seconds before the close a reader whose device is 1.4 s fast sees 15:00:01.5 and has already been refused for more than a second

What a cut-off is a property of

There is no such thing as the site's cut-off. There is one per market, and they differ in how they are defined, which changes what happens at the line.

Kind 01

An event start

The market closes when the scheduled event starts, which means the operator must decide what to do about a late start, a false start and an event that starts while the market is still open.

line: the scheduled start
varies by: the event, not the clock

Kind 02

A fixed wall time

The market closes at a published time in the operator's zone, independent of the event. This is the kind that produces the sixty-millisecond story, because the line is exact and the reader's clock is not.

line: a stated instant
varies by: the operator's clock

Kind 03

A state, not a time

The market closes when the operator decides it is no longer safe to price, which may be before or after any published time. The protection is real and the predictability is not.

line: the operator's judgement
varies by: the event and the book

Kind 04

A round boundary

In a live table the cut-off is the end of the betting window in one round, measured in seconds and announced by the table itself. Twelve seconds on the sample, then the pause.

line: 12 s after the round opens
page: the round clock

Why the price paid is a separate question

A cut-off decides whether a bet is accepted. What price it is accepted at is a different mechanism entirely, and on the sample the two are easy to confuse. Whether a bet is accepted at the clicked price, re-priced after a delay or voided is the subject of the in-play desk (cycle 20 of the series), and the way a streamed picture lags the table is the live-dealer desk (cycle 23). This page is only the line and the clock it is drawn on.

Find which of the four kinds of cut-off applies. An event start, a fixed wall time, a judgement and a round boundary behave differently at the line.
If it is a fixed wall time, note the zone. A bare "closes at 15:00" is a different product in three of the sample's zones.
Treat your own device clock as a display, not an authority. It is not synchronised with the operator, and on the sample the difference that decided the bet was 3.2 seconds.
Place the bet early enough that sixty milliseconds is not the margin. The line is exact; your connection is not.
If a bet is refused at the line, the refusal is a clock outcome rather than a judgement about you. It happens to the fastest connection on the exchange.

Read the refusal, not the clock. The record of a refused bet carries the operator's timestamp, so the stored time is the evidence about which side of the line the bet fell on, whatever the device showed at the time.

The clock a live round runs onwindows measured in seconds The time written on a betthree clocks and which one counts The window a promotion is open foropens at, closes when Every figure in one placewith the arithmetic behind it