Posts Tagged christmas hurdle
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.”
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
