Posts Tagged speed
The right connections
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on August 26th, 2011
First a history lesson.
A long time ago Betfair offered unfettered access to their servers. You could smash into their servers by requesting price information at will. Back then there was no API and you could only screen scrape information from Betfair. Because of this an arms race developed and Betfair considered banning the bots, but thankfully that never happened. What actually happened was an API was born and Betfair started slowly but surely changing the way their site works. From that simple start the process of connecting to Betfair now involves many hoops through which you need to jump to stay under the strict limits Betfair impose. Everybody has to conform to these limits so that no new arms race develops and Betfair can better control the IT on their side of the fence. Basically this means that Betfair limit the number of calls that API software makes so that nobody gets an unfair advantage, everything operates at the same speed. However there are things you can do to specifically tailor your exchange connection to your trading style to maximise your experiance.
To ensure you get the best connection using Bet Angel we provide you with a raw feed and allow you to tweak connection settings that are most important to you. You can save these settings and quick switch between them for maximum flexibility. For example, if you are trading pre-off you may want to increase the speed at which Bet Angel calls full market depth or reduce it when in-play and increase others, when that call it is less important. Even different locations can ‘feel’ different, so you can modify settings on that basis. Bet Angel buffers calls to avoid you running into horrendous charges, so if you accidentally, or purposefully, have the wrong set up it may feel a bit slow as the buffered calls back up. To avoid this make sure you are familiar with all the settings you can use so you can avoid this happening.
We monitor performance all the time as it is very important for everybody. But the key thing on this, is that I’d be trading toast if we didn’t have it humming. So make sure you take the time to familiarise yourself with this feature: -
http://www.betangel.tv/video/using-bet-angel/setting-up-bet-angel/147-bestconnection
Suspended in dis-belief
Posted by Peter Webb in Bet Angel on April 8th, 2009
Despite my nervousness, as expressed in a previous post, I actually did pretty well last Saturday, in fact it wasn’t the delays on Betfair that caught me out in the end however. It was the late suspension of the 15:05! I already had an open lay bet in the market and closed the position as expected before the off. In fact I had several positions that I closed together.
When the market failed to appear in play I took screen shots and data from the race, knowing what was likely to happen next. Betfair decided to resettle the market.
The big issue I have when Betfair do this, is that it seems to be completely arbitrary. I know they throw the terms at you and quote ‘offical off time’ but I am just not sure where the ‘official’ off time comes from or how it is calculated. I know for an absoluete fact that all my positions where equal at the time the race actually started as I closed all positions together. I saw the start, even if Betfair didn’t!! However, when the market was re-settled some of those positions were settled as though some were open and some closed. Impossible when you consider that they all closed at exactly the same time. I have plenty of evidence to prove this simple fact.
You could be forgiven for thinking this rant is because I lost some money, but on this occasion I actually gained as a result of the error on Betfair, but it still annoys me something rotten. What I want are clearly defined rules, not arbitary ones, especially when incorrect in my eyes. I know when I placed the bets and when the market should have gone in play and I was out by that point. According to official off I wasn’t. It could have been very nasty if it had gone the other way.
Fortunately on this occassion it didn’t and I got a small bonus. But it worries me that there doesn’t seem to be any way to ensure this is a fair settlement. That’s concerning for everybody, what ever you do on the exchanges and however you do it.