On saturday (27/01/12) my automated trading bet went crazy and emptied my betfair account.
I had set it up from the video on Betangel TV and had tested it on the friday morning and then run it live on friday afternoon using small stakes.
(it stopped working twice during racing on friday and I had to manually start it up again)
On the saturday I had increased my stakes and although I was out, I kept checking the progress on my mobile phone.
It was going really well for the first few races and I was showing a small profit, but when I checked again later it had stopped working.
I checked my account to see if I had finished with a profit or a loss and discovered that my betfair account was almost empty.
when I returned home and checked the log, my automated program had started placing back bets without placing the equivalent lay bets and had basically kept sticking money on a horse until my bank was gone.
unfortunately the horse lost so I was wiped out.
I contacted betfair and they checked and said there seemed to have been a problem with the API and they were looking at refunding my money.
In the end they refunded most of my bank but told me that if it happened again, I might not get refunded.
I was using the automated betting program shown on Betangel TV but it obviously needs some built in safeguards to ensure that it doesn't empty accounts like that.
I have already modified my automated program but haven't yet tried it in a live situation.
It will only be used with small stakes from now on with extra safeguards added in, until I'm sure that it's 100% OK.
The proof of the pudding and all that.
Anyway just thought I would post a warning about this.
WARNING - automation emptied my bank
Hi
You have to be very careful when trading in auto mode...( i remember sitting in Dublin airport watching my VPS in my early days of automation, and I fired in about 600 bets!..I WAS the mad bomber that afternoon!..I think I pushed the price down and was quickly able to green up for a nice profit - Phew! To say I learned from that is an understatement..
If you are doing it in excel then you can put a command in to check your P&L and then stop betting if say the P&L <-50..
Also a good idea is to transfer the vast majority of your money to your aus wallet and leave a small sum in you main account..
Regards
Peter
Edit: Betangel - just a thought; Not sure how you would do it..but Why not create a rule that stops placing bets if the P&L is less than x, or some similar function?
You have to be very careful when trading in auto mode...( i remember sitting in Dublin airport watching my VPS in my early days of automation, and I fired in about 600 bets!..I WAS the mad bomber that afternoon!..I think I pushed the price down and was quickly able to green up for a nice profit - Phew! To say I learned from that is an understatement..
If you are doing it in excel then you can put a command in to check your P&L and then stop betting if say the P&L <-50..
Also a good idea is to transfer the vast majority of your money to your aus wallet and leave a small sum in you main account..
Regards
Peter
Edit: Betangel - just a thought; Not sure how you would do it..but Why not create a rule that stops placing bets if the P&L is less than x, or some similar function?
There isn't a great deal we can do to build in automatic safeguards against problems that Betfair have with their site or API. If their site crashes or has a problem then its already too late to do anything.
On Saturday an API server went loopy and that put out false prices. You could have been connected in mode one (non API) and the problem wouldn't have occurred. That's a nice safeguard. You also have practice mode.
But in general the best thing to do is actually build safeguards into your automation to try and limit odd things happening. When we put a new rules file into the market we park any spare money in the aussie wallet and run it in practice mode for a while to see what sort of characteristics it exhibits. When we are confident we have covered everything from our side we let it loose with real money. But from that point you always have the possible of external errors, such as a Betfair crash / issue.
You can never spend enough time testing an automated strategy.
BTW, It's virtually unheard of for Betfair to refund money. Was it much?
BTW, It's virtually unheard of for Betfair to refund money. Was it much?
On Saturday an API server went loopy and that put out false prices. You could have been connected in mode one (non API) and the problem wouldn't have occurred. That's a nice safeguard. You also have practice mode.
But in general the best thing to do is actually build safeguards into your automation to try and limit odd things happening. When we put a new rules file into the market we park any spare money in the aussie wallet and run it in practice mode for a while to see what sort of characteristics it exhibits. When we are confident we have covered everything from our side we let it loose with real money. But from that point you always have the possible of external errors, such as a Betfair crash / issue.
You can never spend enough time testing an automated strategy.
BTW, It's virtually unheard of for Betfair to refund money. Was it much?
BTW, It's virtually unheard of for Betfair to refund money. Was it much?
You can stake as a percentage of bank to limit liabilites.LeTiss 4pm wrote:by incorporating balance conditions into the command, but automation doesn't have that.
When the API started playing up on started I just whizzed into mine and switched them off. I tweet quickly if I see there is a problem so others can see and take action.
It was only about £800 since I had recently lost £2k of my bank on a football double that couldn't possibly lose.
Expensive lesson learnt.
This was the event that prompted me into looking at automated trading on horses.
I suppose if I still had that £2k then that would have disappeared into the black hole on saturday as well (with probably less chance of betfair refunding the £2.8k)
The thing is that everything can probably work fine in practise mode for months, but in live mode there is always the chance of a glitch.
Expensive lesson learnt.
This was the event that prompted me into looking at automated trading on horses.
I suppose if I still had that £2k then that would have disappeared into the black hole on saturday as well (with probably less chance of betfair refunding the £2.8k)
The thing is that everything can probably work fine in practise mode for months, but in live mode there is always the chance of a glitch.
I must admit that I just assumed that I would get my bank back since Betfair were making more than me from my trading.
It was only when I was informed that I was unlikely to get it back next time that I started thinking that maybe automated trading is not the way forward for me.
It was only when I was informed that I was unlikely to get it back next time that I started thinking that maybe automated trading is not the way forward for me.
Since the last change in premium charge I've spent a lot of time working on automating aspects of what I do so I don't have to behind my PC permanantly on poor quality days. You get the odd unexpected issue, but I think you were just unlucky on Saturday.
As far as I understand the file didn't have a stop loss on it, so you shouldn't have been dramatically impacted by the API issues as it would have greened up the net total at the off. Did you apply a stop somewhere?
As far as I understand the file didn't have a stop loss on it, so you shouldn't have been dramatically impacted by the API issues as it would have greened up the net total at the off. Did you apply a stop somewhere?
I had simply copied the automated set up in the Betangel video.
There was supposed to be greening up applied, but the only stop was when the market went in-play.
Sticking hundreds of pounds on one horse without placing any lay bets could negate the greening up and even if the horse had won and I had won thousands of pounds, the chances are that most of my bank would then have disappeared on the next loser.
There was supposed to be greening up applied, but the only stop was when the market went in-play.
Sticking hundreds of pounds on one horse without placing any lay bets could negate the greening up and even if the horse had won and I had won thousands of pounds, the chances are that most of my bank would then have disappeared on the next loser.
Sorry to hear that, this is why when this came out it didnt interest me at all, i will always rather trade mannualy, if am not home or at the base office where i have a set up i cant trade thats how i see itgambler99 wrote:On saturday (27/01/12) my automated trading bet went crazy and emptied my betfair account.
I had set it up from the video on Betangel TV and had tested it on the friday morning and then run it live on friday afternoon using small stakes.
(it stopped working twice during racing on friday and I had to manually start it up again)
On the saturday I had increased my stakes and although I was out, I kept checking the progress on my mobile phone.
It was going really well for the first few races and I was showing a small profit, but when I checked again later it had stopped working.
I checked my account to see if I had finished with a profit or a loss and discovered that my betfair account was almost empty.
when I returned home and checked the log, my automated program had started placing back bets without placing the equivalent lay bets and had basically kept sticking money on a horse until my bank was gone.
unfortunately the horse lost so I was wiped out.
I contacted betfair and they checked and said there seemed to have been a problem with the API and they were looking at refunding my money.
In the end they refunded most of my bank but told me that if it happened again, I might not get refunded.
I was using the automated betting program shown on Betangel TV but it obviously needs some built in safeguards to ensure that it doesn't empty accounts like that.
I have already modified my automated program but haven't yet tried it in a live situation.
It will only be used with small stakes from now on with extra safeguards added in, until I'm sure that it's 100% OK.
The proof of the pudding and all that.
Anyway just thought I would post a warning about this.