Archive for category Betfair
Betfair API problems
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on February 3rd, 2012
Only fair to balance posts out with a note that Betfair experianced API problems this morning!
This was particulary a pain as there are a number of events on this morning that were disrupted.
Betfair exits South Africa
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on January 19th, 2012
With regulatory tangles ongoing in many territories Betfair has hit another bump in South Africa. This is a real shame as South Africa is on the same time zone as the UK. Betfair has already sent out emails to affected customers. Here is an extract of the key elements of the email: -
“We’re writing to inform you that following the recent ruling by the South African Supreme Court of Appeal, Betfair has decided that as of 00:01 GMT on February 14th 2012, its website and all associated products will no longer be accessible in South Africa, or to South African residents.
As of the above time, all existing accounts will be suspended, therefore we ask that you ensure that all funds are withdrawn from your account before then. If your account is currently suspended the issues relating to that suspension must be resolved before any withdrawals can be made”
It’s another to add to the long list of complex, messy, regulatory, most likely protectionist, issues. Currently the number of territories where it’s OK to use Betfair is in the minority and the list is getting smaller. While the US is looking more positive recently, it’s likely that will only be a beachhead in a much longer battle. Till then other territories, even in Europe, are proving a prickly problem. It seems the anti-exchange proponents are currently winning their argument.
Ultimately I believe that the will of people will decided the very long term outcome of these sorts of things and it’s difficult to go against the value proposition that exchanges offer over traditional gambling. So if you want to benefit from that, move to the UK!
Friday 13th unlucky for Betfair
Posted by Peter Webb in Betdaq, Betfair on January 13th, 2012
Just days after their latest ‘upgrade’, the Betfair site crashed again. How incredibly frustrating! I’ve lost count of how many times the site has been down over the last year and each time the site is upgraded it seem almost certain now that a major crash follows.
If you want to trade today, why not give Betdaq at go. BetDaqAngel is the same Bet Angel platform you are familiar with but it’s compatible with Betdaq. Best of all its 100% free. It includes a link to Excel so you can automate your activity. We gave it a major overhaul last year to bring it up to date, so if you haven’t used it recently, download it and give it a try.
Betfair market anomalies
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, Horse Racing on January 12th, 2012
An interesting couple of days so far this week in the markets. Interesting for an anomaly that we have seen. It’s only a couple of days old, so I can’t draw any conclusions just yet, but it is unusual so I thought I’d post about it.
We monitor the markets cloesly and ‘felt’ that matched bet volume on occasion was much higher than we would expect. We noticed this because, in the latter stages of a racing market just before the off, we were suddendly seeing very high per second volume. So this morning I had a nose at the data from this year so far.
In the last two days there have been three races each where volume was over one million. But since the start of the year, ten days, we have seen 20 in total. So that doesn’t seem stand out on it’s own, 20 vs. perhaps an expectation of 30.
But the the overall average volume has been much higher than normal, 123% of average on the 9th and 143% yesterday. I have deliberately rebased the volume to take account of different pricing that may distort the overall volume.
It’s difficult to know if this is a trend or some else is happening, but something changed over these two days. It could be temporary of there could be some other explanation, but we will be keeping an eye on it.
Betfair to compensate Leopardstown losers
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, Horse Racing on January 11th, 2012
Hot off the press, just received this email from Betfair: -
“Dear Peter,
Since the 2.00pm race at Leopardstown on 28 December 2011, we’ve looked in detail at all the circumstances surrounding the technology failure and the anomaly it created. In addition, we provided our Gibraltar regulator, the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner (GGC), with a detailed technical and operational report on the incident and the GGC made a number of recommendations. We have also consulted with customers and taken their feedback on board.
Accordingly, we have reviewed our decision to void all in-running bets matched on the race and, in the interests of fairness, certain categories of voided bets will be compensated by way of ex gratia payments from Betfair. This compensation complies with, and goes beyond, the GGC’s recommendations.
The categories of bets that will be compensated are:
- In-play winning positions in both the ‘win’ and the ‘to be placed’ markets which were achieved before the technology failure; and
- In-play winning positions in the ‘to be placed’ market achieved at any time through to the completion of the race.
Bets matched in the ‘win’ market after the technology failure will remain void.
As your bets were placed in one of the two categories described above, a payment reflecting your winnings had the relevant bets not been voided, will be made to your Betfair account today.
Once again we would like to apologise for the inconvenience caused, and the time taken to reach this outcome. We do thank you for your continued support and remain committed to providing you with the best betting proposition possible.
Regards,
The Betfair Racing team”
£1k account caused £600m Betfair error
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 30th, 2011
Betfair have issued a statement this afternoon outlining the error that caused the exchange to misfire. The full statement is here: -
But here are some bullet points:-
“This bet was placed by one of our UK customers trading the race via our API or Application Programming Interface (bdp.betfair.com/) using an automated program (a “bot”). Their bot had developed a fault causing it to try and place a very large number of bets on the Exchange. These bets were large in size and mispriced…… However, due to a technical glitch within the core exchange database, one of the bets evaded the prevention system and was shown on the site. This was an issue that was triggered because of a unique sequence of events that had never happened before.” – “In this case, the customer had less than £1,000 in their account so none of these bets should have been accepted.”
“The Betfair technical teams continued to investigate the details of the fault and, having identified the issue, worked on putting a fix in place which was applied at 10.15pm on December 28th.”
“Following extensive testing, we can confirm that there have been no subsequent occurrences of this fault and we’ve taken steps to prevent its reoccurrence in the future.”
“Again, I would like to clarify that the account in question has no commercial relationship with Betfair other than being a customer. Our reputation has been built on integrity and we have been pioneers in the industry in ensuring that betting is carried out in a fair and transparent manner. By making the voiding decision, I can assure you that this decision was not taken lightly and that we have implemented what we believe to be the fairest solution in these truly exceptional circumstances.”
How to lay £600m worth of bets on Betfair?
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 29th, 2011
That has to be the #1 question after yesterdays debacle in one of the feature races at Leopardstown.
To summarise, a mysterious lay bet appeared and stayed on the winning favourite at 29′s right up to the finish of the race. The ‘layer’ offered up £21m at 29′s creating a £600m liability. Betfair voided the in-running market.
Betfair have come out officially and ruled out that it was them or any account controlled by them or that they had a commercial interest in it. So it would appear it was just a common lay that created the error. But the question now shifts to who was this layer and how did they create the error? Nobody on the planet has £600m to gamble on a single runner in a race, so that points to some system quirk. There are checks in place that stop you exceeding your account balance or exposure limit, so what could jump over both those hurdles?
The amount of the Lay was curiously near the value of a 32bit binary number, slightly over if you add in additional stakes. The range of values of a 32bit binary is -2147483648 to +2147483647 which fits with the stake amount displayed on Betfair. You can create an error by forcing overflow or underflow with a calculation involving an integer, so it’s not impossible that this could be the source of the error. There is a good explanation on this link, curiously to do with customer balances: -
http://weblogs.asp.net/dvravikanth/archive/2008/03/10/integer-overflow-amp-underflow-revisited.aspx
I can’t comment authoritatively on the way that Betfair have coded their back-end, but lets just say that it’s not impossible that something like this could be the cause of the error. It could be that the exposure calculation is done using an integer and this layer just fluked it somehow. If it is something like this, then I am pretty sure an arms race is already underway to exploit it. The ability to force a voided market is potentially quite valuable, so Betfair should announce what the error is and what they are going to do to solve it, immediately. The person who placed the bets knows what created it, so that layer is hot property at the moment!
By quoting terms and conditions to void the market, people were quick to spot contradictory terms that stated that in the event of a bet exceeding agreed exposure all bets will stand, whoops! You can find the clause under section 9. Has Betfair has possibly opened themselves up to a legal issue?
I get the feeling this story is going to rumble on for a fair bit. But I sense we are nearer an explanation.
Leonhard Euler proved in 1772 that 2,147,483,647 was a prime number
Biggest ever loss on Betfair?
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 28th, 2011
One of those remarkable events happened today on Betfair when, in the Christmas hurdle at Leopardstown, Voler La Vedette was offered up in-running for massive money at massive prices despite the fact it won.
Seemingly, over £21m was offered and held in-running to get filled at HUGE prices. £1,642,094 was matched at 29′s meaning the loser would have to pay out £44.8m on their bet at 29′s. In order to be able to just place the bet the user would have needed near on £600m in their account. Which is of course impossible, as all the users added up at Betfair don’t have those funds available.
Massive speculation abounds on what could have possibly caused, what looks like a catastrophic error. Was this a system error at Betfair, a bot error, or something unknown. Have Betfair just taking a massive bath due to an errant bit of code or did somebody else? How could such amounts be offered at such prices? It looks like a bug / system error to me, but early reported discussions with Betfair helpdesk indicate that it is not an error. I guess we will have to wait and see. Some people have reportedly made significant profits from the glitch, however it occurred. The market is still suspended and we await an outcome.
Read all about it in the forum
Satisfying chaos
Posted by Peter Webb in Betdaq, Betfair, Horse Racing on December 27th, 2011
OK, yesterday didn’t seem that chaotic in the end, just a bit frustrating. I had to wait ages to find races that really set themselves up nicely, but eventually I did and they were OK. But it was a little dull overall.
Kauto Star lit up the day when I took a few races off to watch the King George VI produce a bit of history. What a great horse we have been treated to and it looks like we could be seeing an interesting Cheltenham gold cup now as well. Lets hope we get a big field and a competitive race.
Not my best result of the day, but a decent result came out of this market on Betdaq. I’ve been doing more work on Betdaq recently and will publish more information on the blog. Market conditions are improving all the time and I recommend using both exchanges where possible and for your own benefit and needs but also to increase competitiveness in the exchange market. If we have people fighting over our business maybe we can get a fairer deal. But obviously for me every £100 on Betdaq is worth the equivalent of £250 on Betfair, so it’s really worth me pushing hard for a result and sacrificing time on Betfair. As my activity is net accretive to the exchange I am also creating opportunities for others. As I get better at managing my risk I am probably creating some value for others. Today I had to exit a position that I made a mess off, I was still in profit but wanted to dump it and start again. I offered it many ticks higher on Betdaq than the best available price on Betfair. Any body active on both would have seen this and could get value from it or arbed it. The opportunity is there if you look, quite a few hundred quid as well!
This week looks pretty reasonble with the holiday cards increasing the scope and capacity of the racing. I reckon it should be a good week.
120% Premium charge!
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 21st, 2011
As premium charge payers know it’s PC day today. What a surprise then to see Betfair have double debited my account. So this week I paid 120% premium charge, ouch!
Obviously a mistake, but I suggest all premium charge payers check their account immediately and flag it to Betfair. It looks like everyboyd is affected. Nice timing Betfair!
[EDIT : About two hours later the duplicate charge was refunded. I imagine this is applicable to everybody, but please check, just in case]
What are the odds?
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on December 21st, 2011
A bit of a laugh ahead of the Christmas break. Vote now!
Back when I joined Betfair, nearly 12 years ago now. They sent me a nice diary for my patronage. I didn’t generate much commission for them back then and didn’t write articles, design software for use on Betfair or anything like that. The following year I also received a small gift, and so it continued. Calendars, playing cards and the odd email with seasonal greetings.
About four or five years ago (I can’t remember exactly when) this stopped abruptly and since then, not even an email to wish me a Merry Christmas.
So this year, as I have done in all prior years, I rolled up my sleeve and sent all my key contacts a personal greeting card. I extended this gesture to the board of Betfair as well.
So the poll this week will be a seasonal… “How many Xmas cards will Peter get from Betfair?” – Vote now!
I’m putting this post up to give Betfair a fair chance to send me a card. I know you can afford it this year for sure and while I am grateful for the opportunity that Betfair presents to us all, I’m sure it’s not beyond your capacity to show some seasonal goodwill. I’ll update everybody on the result in the new year.
In meantime I’ll just read through this bulging sack of greetings from other companies and people.
P.S. A funny footnote to this post. I was searching for “mail man sack” and up popped a load of images of Blackburn manager Steve Kean. 
Back to open
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel, Betfair, Horse Racing on December 20th, 2011
It looks like we are going to have some fun and games in the market today. I’d recommend adopting a ‘back to open’ trading policy!
For more information read up on this thread: -
http://www.betangel.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4934&start=240
Winding down..
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on December 19th, 2011
We are well on the run in now for the Xmas break now and this are going to get a little quiter as the week rolls on. Quieter apart from at home because the kids are off school now! Racing comes to a close on Thursday and there is no racing on the Friday or Saturday.
Plenty of decent racing on the Saturday just gone and it proved a good days trading. Best result of a good bunch came from the last race at Ascot. I did well on both exchanges on Saturday but couldn’t beat this total on Betdaq, but obviously could after commission!
Bits and bobs around this week but my enthusiasm for it isn’t high, so I’ll be working on new things and cherry picking some opportunities. I can’t see the markets being that favourable this week, but you never know.
If you are not active this week or busy Christmas shopping, why not use some of the new automation functions to trade automatically. Only a lack of imagination can separate you now from doing or learning something new about the markets, with this recent addition to Bet Angel. Set it up at the start of the day, in practice mode if necessary, come back and read your automatically exported P&L report at the end of the day. Tweak strategy, then repeat. Great fun.
Betfair profits up on flat growth
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on December 14th, 2011
See the full press announcement here: -
At first glance revenue (comissions) have declined, but so has the cost of sales, producing an increase in the bottom line. Admin expenses have also fallen adding to the bottom line.
I’ll have a proper read of the full statement when I get into the office. Betfair shares are up a bit in early trading this morning.
If you want an update of content of the conference call, I’ll be tweeting updates: -
http://www.twitter.com/betangel/
Betfair results due out tomorrow
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, News on December 13th, 2011
If you can get up early tomorrow morning you will be able to see Betfair’s H1-12 results. The first since the introduction of the most recent premium charge announcement and various other factors. It will be interesting to see what impact all the news coming out of Hammersmith this year has had on the underlying business. It feels to me like growth has slowed, but that they will be able to boost the bottom line thanks to their very aggressive implementation of price increases.
But let’s not pre-judge things, I’ll be up early to see the news. I’m on the RNS service so I will get the results the instant they are announced and I’ll post them up for everybody. If you are interesting in tuning into the formal announcement webcast you can register on their investor relations web site: -
http://corporate.betfair.com/investor-relations.aspx
Betfair maintenance this morning
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair on November 30th, 2011
Please be aware Betfair has site maintenance going on this morning around 7am UK time: -
An ‘interesting’ Saturday
Posted by Peter Webb in Betdaq, Betfair on November 28th, 2011
Well that was an interesting Saturday. I sort of got the feeling that the day may not go as planned right from the off.
Went shopping with the kids to stock up the office and got back a little late which left me no time to put the stuff away. I just had to dump it on the stairs. Sat down to the early start and immediately realised there was a problem… The Internet was at a virtual standstill. I tried all the various thing you do, router reboot, PC reboot but nothing was really having the desired effect. I had backup plans in place, so I continued to use those while I rooted out the problem. It looked like general Internet issue.
So after the third race I dashed back home to trade from there, but that connection was also having issues. It seemed to a ‘local area’ issue. So back up plan three kicked in and I started trading in earnest. That was going OK until Betfair started to creak and buckle at 3pm.
Anybody who has been on the markets for anytime knows that when the feature race of the day in the winter coincides with the start of the football it creates conditions that have delivered a few Betfair crashes in the past. Saturday was no exception. I think we were lucky on Saturday as we sort of got fair warning. The site sort of fell to bits in pieces.
When I realised we had a problem on our hands I instantly switched to Betdaq, which was working well anyhow, and just focused the remainder of my time on there. As a result I had another good session on both exchanges. On quite a large number of occasions now I am ending up net net ahead on Betdaq vs Betfair, that probably wont be the case for you unless you are paying 60% I guess. I know some of the other sports are weaker in liquidity terms on Betdaq but it was the same when Betfair was growing up and eventually activity spilled out to these other sports. I guess time will tell, but conditions are improving and it’s likely, as more people arrive on Betdaq, additional strategies and sports will come into play. I’m ready and waiting!
Back on Betfair we eased back in with a non API connection mode. From the number of emails we got in support we should point out publicly that you must be on the very latest version of Bet Angel for the non API mode to work correctly. We often have to recode this and that means old versions of the software may not be able to log in via non API mode. You have two choices, use mode 0, full API mode, or download and use the very latest version. Check with support first though, so we can give you direction.
Anyhow, I managed to get through the session and headed off to the ATP world tour finals in London courtesy of Betdaq, thank you! Even that didn’t go to plan as there was a power cut on the Jubilee line and I had to find my way to North Greenwich in an indirect and roundabout way. I did manage than however, just in time to see the doubles match start. From there my day started to become a bit easier and relaxed, and I was able to reflect on a stressful, but successful day.
The fifth, five years on
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, Horse Racing on November 26th, 2011
It’s the fighting fifth at Newcastle today. It’s often a small field and can be a bit tricky, but it usually contains some opportunities. Only five runners and Binocular is almost evens, that’s a tricky set up.
It’s also the Hennessy Gold Cup. I have fond memories of this race as five years ago today I traded it live at the IX Investor show for Betfair. Seeing a betting company at an investor show was a shock for many people and we had trouble getting people to come near the stand; so I just rolled up my sleeves and traded live for everybody. A slightly unorthodox set up, but it worked. As the profits flowed in it inevitably brought people to the stand to try and understand what market I could possibly be trading on Saturday and making money. If I remember correctly I bagged £250 on the Gold Cup in about ten minutes.
Last year I did even better, which was miraculous if you remember the difficulties we had with the weather. Last year the weather had just started to really go downhill and on the Saturday and we had a very limited card on display. Newcastle wasn’t on at all and the fighting fifth ended up at Newbury. From that point onwards the weather got colder, and colder, and colder and colder. The coldest winter for 30 years! This year is balmy by comparison, lets hope the opportunities are too!
Trying to explain that this isn't a stock chart
Record day
Posted by Peter Webb in Betfair, Golf, Horse Racing on April 12th, 2011
Phew, what a weekend that was!
We are now entering peak season for all things sports related and this weekend was a good warm up for the months ahead. It also set a new bench mark for me as the Saturday just gone turned out to be my best ever day on Betfair! Whether I can ever beat such a storming weekend is another question. When you have been going for as long as me, you need a little luck now and again to deliver an exceptional result.
Saturday wasn’t without it’s problems though. Betfair gave us a sharp reminder why it pays to be vigilant. I hinted in the recent newsletter, again, that you should have a back up plan ready for Saturday and so it proved. The site was under a lot of pressure on Saturday and it coped pretty well, but eventually an API server went AWOL before being taken off-line 1/2 hour later. In that time prices via the API were all over the place. However, no sooner had we picked up that an API server was throwing out false prices than I switched to a different connection mode and continued. Not the first time this year I have had to do that! At moments like that, the connection modes on Bet Angel are utterly invaluable. Despite this occurring about 45 mins before the Grand National, I was able to continue with confidence and well beat last years total. That was a big step forward on the way to a good day.
The National wasn’t a record day for Betfair however. Matched bet turnover was £7m by post time this year vs. £7m last year and £7.5m in 2009. I doubled my turnover on the race year on year, so if you strip out that activity and that of others it’s quite an interesting story behind the numbers.
Racing went well and would have been great on it’s own, but it was the US Masters that delivered a nice bonus. I managed to get the eventual winner at 120′s and a host of others at good prices. Of course I didn’t hold these positions, I traded them out as they shortened. But when you back at three figures and lay off at short odds, that’s big green up territory. The Masters was exceptional trading fodder this year. In the morning I was on BBC radio Berskhire and tipped a lay on McIlroy. As I stated at the time, I didn’t want to do this as it would have been great to see McIlroy win, but my research had told me it was a good laying opportunity. I didn’t expect him to blow up so badly, so I hope it doesn’t become an issue for him. He is still young and has a big career in front of him, so I am sure it is just a matter of time before he is competing for honours again.
No doubt like Mr McIlroy, I’m taking a rest at the start of the week. I was exhausted after this weekend, so I need some time to recharge my batteries.