Please Read - Practice Mode

[BAP-Admin]

We have been made aware by Betfair that heavy use of the new Practice Mode may place your Betfair account at risk of suspension.

Normal use should not cause any problems but continued and ongoing use of practice mode will cause your account to fit into what Betfair call a 'commercial use profile'. I.e. lots of data being pulled from them without any betting activity.

This is from Betfair:

It’s important to make it clear to customers that it is not acceptable to read Betfair data on an ongoing basis.

The reason for this is that an account that behaves in this way represents a commercial usage profile and we would the look to close an account under our terms and conditions.

Any customer who wishes to read Betfair data for analysis and testing purposes should use the Historical Data services offered. Short term strategy/software testing with a view to betting/constructing a betting strategy is acceptable but to avoid account closure through our commercial profiling customers should look to access historical data for any longer term analysis.

We are waiting for Betfair to provide further clarification regarding a measurable definition of 'ongoing basis'.

[BAP-Admin]

Update regarding defining what constitutes 'ongoing basis':

We do not provide specific guidelines directly because this simply provides an additional insight to those looking to exploit Betfair data for commercial reasons.

Although we understand that some users may have genuine reasons for continuously reading Betfair data, this unfortunately presents us with a commercial data profile.

The alternative for these users is to use historical data for any long term testing or data analysis.

If your account is suspended then Betfair will contact you directly regarding the steps you need to take to have your account reinstated.

So far, this has only affected a couple of users who have intensively used Practice mode over a period of several days.

We advise using Practice mode to familiarise yourself with the main features of the software only.

Intensive testing of strategies would require real-world behaviour and only in a live market will you learn with any confidence whether or not a strategy will work. Especially if using a spreadsheet based model.

[Ferru123]

I've been using practice mode recently, so in light of this thread I emailed Betfair to find out if I was at risk of having my account shut down without notice if I persisted.

This was their response:

We would advise you to use ‘Practice Mode’ for short term testing and familiarisation with the Bet Angel software, as Bet Angel have advised in their announcement.

If we believe that an account is being used for commercial reasons, without a license, we will close the account without notice. We can’t make exceptions even if there are genuine reasons for a particular pattern of usage.

These guys don't mess about!

Jeff

[Ferru123]

I followed up by asking whether practice mode was deemed commercial usage, and how short 'short term' was.

This was their response:

'Using your the practice mode to improve your trading skills would not be classed as commercial usage on the face of it.

However, because the practice mode uses live Betfair data, any use of the practice mode will present us with a commercial usage profile i.e. a large number of read requests across a number of markets.

Due the nature of the practice mode there would also be no betting activity associated with these data requests.

I would recommend that you take a look at the historical data services if you are looking to use the practice mode for longer than a week.'

I might place a couple of token bets or v. low risk trades, so hopefully I won't be automatically flagged up as a commercial user...

Jeff

[jaquesert]

Apologies if this is a daft question but would it be correct to assume that Betfair has the same concerns if using ‘Live Mode’ to also study the flow of the markets but not placing any trades?

Also, would you happen to know if Betdaq has similar concerns with this kind of usage?

Thanks

[LeTiss 4pm]

I've often been highly critical of Betfair, but I'll defend them here

If you were in their shoes, you wouldn't want people drawing lots of data, but not placing any bets. They make money from commission, not customers buggering around in a practice mode

[Ferru123]

But people don't play around in practice mode for the good of their health - they do so because it's a cost-free way to learn about the markets.

That means it might actually benefit Betfair, if people don't lose their banks with real money and think 'Bother this!'.

Jeff

They make money from commission, not customers buggering around in a practice mode

[Alpha322]

So
Really this mode was a waist of time creating because it wont take anyone a week to backtest a strategy

[PeterSeth]

Hi, my first ever post! I am presently operating pretty much exclusively in practise mode, and quite likely would be perfectly happy to work with the "Historical Data services" mentioned in the Betfair communication; I have just now had a quick look on the Batfair site but can find no mention of them. Can anybody tell me how to access them, and, very importantly, would I be able to access them through BA (in practise mode of course!)?

[Euler]

You can't unfortunately as the Betfair historical data is in a sort of flatform format. Betfair want you to pay for any other type of data. But you can access the data here: -

http://data.betfair.com