Betfair Down / Betfair site crash

Post Reply
User avatar
ANGELS15
Posts: 844
Joined: Wed Mar 22, 2017 9:57 am

I use the betfair mobile app when I'm away from my pc. I do back to lay trades, place back bet then manually play lay set set to keep in play. Yesterday the app wouldn't let me set a bet to keep in play. kept getting error message 'there has been an error placing your bet'. This was prior to the crash.Since the start of UK racing today I'm still having the same problem on their app.
User avatar
Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

Naffman wrote:
Sat May 18, 2019 5:30 pm
You'll all be back on Betfair tomorrow ;)

Aussie traders have no choice tbf :lol:
You were right Naffman, it's too wet to trim the lawn anyway. Let bygones be bygones. :)
User avatar
Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

LinusP wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 9:24 am
Crap day yesterday, I have just scraped the 'down' threads (there are two of them), here is a quick graph of posts per day:

Screenshot 2019-05-19 at 09.19.26.png

I will do some further analysis later but 2019 is looking bad with 40 distinct days of posts (average has been 59 per year)

And what we all suspected, distinct days where there are posts:

Screenshot 2019-05-19 at 09.22.54.png
Now that really was clever LP, it would have taken ages to do that manually. :)
User avatar
Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

spreadbetting wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 1:49 pm
Good to see it panned out OK for you, some people do like to forget it's very much a case of swings and roundabouts when the exchange crashes and not every result is going to go against you. I've lost count of the times it's gone against me but they've been plenty when it's gone in my favour too.
I keep an account of my outage P/L. This year so far I've been unaffected but last year I was up. In all probabilities if you're a successful trader you're more likely to be up long-term, it's just a massive overstake.
User avatar
Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

Kai wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 2:12 pm
I hear people talk about boycotting Betfair somehow after yesterday...
I'd like to see one of them lead by example. :lol:
User avatar
Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

Grinderman wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 2:24 pm
What I'd like to see is some kind of insurance scheme offered by Betfair. Where you'd pay in an annual premium (a word I hate!) and they would guarantee to settle your position at the odds available at the time of the crash, to a maximum liability depending on your annual payment. They'd make a profit on it if the bloody thing didn't keep crashing. We would reduce our risk.
That wouldn't put Betfair in a good light, it would almost be like a protection racket!
User avatar
Ethanol
Posts: 148
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:09 am

Just had my profits from the 15:00 Newbury taken back from my account.

I placed bets against some other parties who also agreed to bet against me. Betfair facilitated those bets. Just because the Betfair site crashed after those bets were made, should make no difference to those agreements which were correct at the time of placement and acceptance.

Whether I was trading or outright backing is completely irrelevant - the loss is the same regardless.

Check your statements, guys.
User avatar
Ethanol
Posts: 148
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:09 am

Wow, no sooner than I post my previous message, Betfair have now made further corrections honouring the bets again. I'm not exactly sure what has been changed until I re-analyse it.

Note to Betfair: it might be a better idea to not take money away from customers for 75 minutes, and instead make all of the necessary corrections instantaneously. :roll:
User avatar
Archangel
Posts: 1987
Joined: Thu Jun 27, 2013 3:03 pm
Location: Polo Lounge, Beverly Hills Hotel

I see Betfair are actually advertising the Exchange now on TV. Seems to be targeted at the average punter !
User avatar
Ethanol
Posts: 148
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:09 am

My profits are now back to what they originally were, but the race no longer shows up on the "Betting Profit & Loss" page. This has been a bug for years, as this page cannot handle corrections to markets. The overall total is correct, though.

I'm going to guess they voided the entire market, then re-built it honouring bets only between certain time ranges. I pity anyone who gets caught out by this. Be sure to complain.
User avatar
Euler
Posts: 24702
Joined: Wed Nov 10, 2010 1:39 pm
Location: Bet Angel HQ

LinusP wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 9:24 am
Crap day yesterday, I have just scraped the 'down' threads (there are two of them), here is a quick graph of posts per day:

Screenshot 2019-05-19 at 09.19.26.png

I will do some further analysis later but 2019 is looking bad with 40 distinct days of posts (average has been 59 per year)

And what we all suspected, distinct days where there are posts:

Screenshot 2019-05-19 at 09.22.54.png
Good stuff, the first thing that stood out for me was that Paddy Power "merged" with Betfair in 2015, pretty much the low point of outages. It's got worse since then.
User avatar
Ethanol
Posts: 148
Joined: Thu Jun 09, 2011 9:09 am

LinusP wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 9:24 am
And what we all suspected, distinct days where there are posts:

Screenshot 2019-05-19 at 09.22.54.png
Two thoughts:

1. Would it be that far-fetched to suggest someone knows what to do in order to crash the exchange, and uses it as a strategy?

2. It might not actually be a server load issue. It might just be that there's a specific software trigger (that creates some sort of race condition), and the more trades that are being placed through the exchange, the more likely the condition is to trigger.
spreadbetting
Posts: 3140
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm

It'd be interesting to see how often these outages occur after scheduled maintenance. It's usually when they've tinkered with the exchange and not done any proper stress testing that the problems arise rather than anyone crashing the exchange.
User avatar
Derek27
Posts: 23477
Joined: Wed Aug 30, 2017 11:44 am
Location: UK

Ethanol wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 6:24 pm
LinusP wrote:
Sun May 19, 2019 9:24 am
And what we all suspected, distinct days where there are posts:

Screenshot 2019-05-19 at 09.22.54.png
Two thoughts:

1. Would it be that far-fetched to suggest someone knows what to do in order to crash the exchange, and uses it as a strategy?

2. It might not actually be a server load issue. It might just be that there's a specific software trigger (that creates some sort of race condition), and the more trades that are being placed through the exchange, the more likely the condition is to trigger.
I think it would be far-fetched in all honesty. It's hard to see how a hacker could find a way through without inside information and I'd guess it would be quite difficult for a programmer working in a large team to get his own code into the software without anyone else seeing it. I suspect if anyone did know how to crash the exchange it would be down all the time.
User avatar
ShaunWhite
Posts: 9731
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2016 3:42 am

I don't understand why any trader working a market that has take sp wants to trade bare positions. Every trade I make is automatically paired and then maintainance bets go in anytime my estimate of bsp changes. So far in the outages I've lost no more than the cost of a poor trade, because in the time between the comms outage to start time the price has moved a lot. Obviously inplay is still risky but that's why I never do it on a Saturday. I could have maybe lost a day's wages in the outage a few days ago but talk of whole banks or a week's wages, wow.

You can ride the fluctuations if you're a big-time trader but I personally couldn't be doing with a run of bad outcomes. Part-timers are especially vulnerable as they don't see enough outages for them to be a wash, and they take no precautions over THE largest and pretty much the only risk we face. Everyone knows BF goes down, to not try and mitigate that risk to at least some extent with locked-in accepted closing bets just seems Ike complacency or blind faith in somehow never having a comms problem.
Post Reply

Return to “Betfair Exchange API”