Open letter/question to Betfair about the outage.

I thought you were in Argentina ?

its a 1 hour flight?

On the run again Mansini ?

It's pretty cold too here mate

friend in santiago gave me her sweet apartment for a month while shes on vacation

Will you be courtsiding in a couple of week's time?

So what are they saying they did on their service announcement ?
Just a pack of fibs ?
--
What they say, does NOT match reality, and that's a simple FACT. Make of that what you will.

jimmmy..  i know nothing about tennis but i wouldnt mind trying,  theres a tournment here soon?     Also chile has awesome mobile internet, those little mp3 player type things you just plug in,  its faster than ones ive used even in europe

so courtsiding could work well here

What I make of that is that somebody must be telling porkies.
Can't both be in the right, that's for sure.

Yeah the Movistar Open starts on 31st Jan...get down there!

Movistar can probably provide you with the tools

movistar is my mobile internet company here !!  must be a sign

do you need to sit there looking a tool with a laptop open?   or can you use like a blackberry

Mansini
Do you need any help in understanding how the game of tennis works ?

i think i can handle it
but the only players i know are federer and hewitt

You will most certainly get ejected if you have a laptop...be a bit more subtle

1 Monaco, Juan ARG 26
2 Nalbandian, David ARG 27
3 Ferrero, Juan Carlos ESP 29
4 Bellucci, Thomaz BRA 31
5 Chela, Juan Ignacio ARG 38
6 Starace, Potito ITA 47
7 Robredo, Tommy ESP 50
8 Fognini, Fabio ITA 55
9 Gimeno-Traver, Daniel ESP 56
10 Cuevas, Pablo URU 63
11 Giraldo, Santiago COL 64
12 Berlocq, Carlos ARG 66
13 Kubot, Lukasz POL 70
14 Andujar, Pablo ESP 71
15 Riba, Pere ESP 72
16 Schwank, Eduardo ARG 74
17 Mello, Ricardo BRA 76
18 Ramirez Hidalgo, Ruben ESP 77
19 Andreev, Igor RUS 79
20 Volandri, Filippo ITA 91
21 Machado, Rui POR 93
22 Mayer, Leonardo ARG 94
23 Daniel, Marcos BRA 96
24 (SE)
25 (SE)
26 (Q)
27 (Q)
28 (Q)
29 (Q)
30 (WC)
31 (WC)
32 (WC)

Those are the players...get doing your homework now

Eddie,

When the site went down, Betfair Lite was stil working for a number of minutes, that's probably why.

No it's not.  I had bets matched during the whole outage.

Nope Investor, I've bets matched well over an hour in.

yes, people said at various points during the outage that betfair lite, betfair rapid, iphone were all working intermitantly.

Bets were definately taken, lots of strange looking price graphs and strange prices being taken to.

I had no bets matched between 1643 and 1949 if that helps

Ive got activity @ 18:18

Cant see much on Betting History though, is it working for anyone else?

It must be one of two things:

1)Betfair was still available in other countries (a possible contingency for big players?

2)The bets were matched by the multiples team.

2) doesn't actually seem very likel.y

Loads of Russians popped up in footy asking "what the feck is happening??!!" cant see it was country specific

reckon its

Some of the secondary sites api/mobile/rapid might be working for 1min here and there during the 2 hours of the outage as they tried to get it back, but the main site has the down for maintenance page blocking user access were these others dont.

Nothing matched between 17:04 and 19:59 for me.
I did have open bets, but I tend to bet in the direction of time decay, as I don't want to be cancelling bets all day, so that's why it wasn't very dangerous for me.

What does that exactly mean ?
" --- tend to bet in the direction of time decay ".
I mean how else can you bet ?

against the direction of time decay

No kidding brendanuk.
Example please for all us dumbos.

yes a little ambiguous I agree.

I mean that if the score is 0-0 and you want to back 2-2 at 18, when you think the correct odds are 15 and then the site goes down but your bet stays up, it will become a value bet for whoever wants to lay it as the chance of 2-2 becomes more and more remote as time continues without a goal.

If instead you try to lay that same 2-2 at 14, you won't get picked off as the odds won't move against you.

Under extreme circumstances the odds can move against you, but this is an exception to the rule.

i was lucky today because i had no bets when the outage started, i was on a coffee break but when i came back everything was totally screwed, but geeks toy was still alive and kicking and i made a small bet just to test, it was matched, so im not sure when the outage started but i'm sure of the time geeks stopped working because i posted on the other thread, its was...


By:
Lusitano71
When: 19 Jan 11 17:37
i can still do it through Geeks Toy


By:
Lusitano71
When: 19 Jan 11 17:44
now Geeks isnt working also Sad

i was lucky today because i had no bets when the outage started, i was on a coffee break but when i came back everything was totally screwed, but geeks toy was still alive and kicking and i made a small bet just to test, it was matched, so im not sure when the outage started but i'm sure of the time geeks stopped working because i posted on the other thread, its was...


By:
Lusitano71
When: 19 Jan 11 17:37
i can still do it through Geeks Toy


By:
Lusitano71
When: 19 Jan 11 17:44
now Geeks isnt working also Sad

The Investor     20 Jan 11 00:26 
yes a little ambiguous I agree.

I mean that if the score is 0-0 and you want to back 2-2 at 18, when you think the correct odds are 15 and then the site goes down but your bet stays up, it will become a value bet for whoever wants to lay it as the chance of 2-2 becomes more and more remote as time continues without a goal.

If instead you try to lay that same 2-2 at 14, you won't get picked off as the odds won't move against you.
__________________________

wouldn't that bet get taken fairly quickly though ? even if only a few folk are still online with i phones ?

I understand this outage mainly affected bot players ? no ? 
The worst that's ever happened with me as a manual player is not being able to trade bets at  crucial moments ,that has been costly .

were BF unable to suspend all markets  ?

I don't know which markets that was suspended( if any at all ), but the golf market was certainly not suspended as I found out I had many of my bets taken on several different times during the outage.
   I find it strange that Betfair don't suspend inplay markets during an outage and even stranger when they make an announcment after the outage saying these markets were suspended.
   I've asked for an explanation on this thread, but it doesn't look like they will give one and we all know they monitor and read this forum.

And I think the outage affected almost all customers.   From other posts on the forum it looks like a handful were able to access markets for short periods either through the api or an Iphone.

There was intermittent access to Betfair during the outage, sometimes the API was working, sometimes the website was working. Not all markets were suspended and I could see matched amounts increasing. Some people were still placing bets.

I had a few small bets at 18.18 as well, seems like it must have come back up briefly then

I can confirm the 6.00pm Lille-Nancy was not suspended.
when the site eventually went live at around 7.40pm, Lille were 3-0 up with just minutes to play...
and for those that logged in the quickest managed to cheerypick free money...

Eddie the eagle...

make sure you get to talk to one the customer service managers at Betfair about your golf problem....

I have had several conversations today with betfair, and without going into too much detail, my problem with matched bets on the Lille match has now been resolved.

I don't care about my matched bets this time. That can go either way.
   What I would like though is to know why this happened and even more if we have to assume the same thing can happen in the futere.
  Come on Betfair, there must be several from your staff who have read this, can please anyone of you investigate the matter and give us an answer ?

uptime costs money, things break and go tits up. These outages will still happen unless betfair spend money to prevent them

The point here isn't that the site was down for a few hours. That will happen in the future too.   One thing that imo is not acceptable is that Betfair do not suspend inplay markets and cancel all unmatched bets like they say in the rules that they will do.
   Clearly that wasn't done this time.

Betfair made an error in not suspending the Lille match.
I am assuming same applys to the golf markets.

Trying to resolve this issue on the open forum and expecting Betfair to respondis juvenile.
Why don't you contact them directly, get answers and then post the outcome on the forum.

By: brendanuk1 Date Joined: 12 Jan 02
Add contact | Send message When: 21 Jan 11 11:15 uptime costs money, things break and go tits up. These outages will still happen unless betfair spend money to prevent them


Not happened in ages sc

Oh look, another one.

Both the website and the API went down at 13:28:28 and yet a bet was matched at 13:29:41

Got a time out on the web page, An error message stating that there were 'technical difficulties' on betfairs servers and that I should refresh my browser ( like thats going to work ).

Yet someone  still manages to match bets whilst its down for everyone else.

Surely someone must have direct access to the betfair machine if the servers have crashed and they can still place bets whilst everyone else can't.

Could it be telephone betting, might be different internal webservers for that?

Today I was playing Lingield when there was the 'disruption'.

I live in London.

I had bets on the race but was still monitoring for in-play possibilities.  The horse Alternative Choice moved out to 5.8/5.9 so I placed a lay at 5.4.

Since no heavy trades were in action, I was simply using the betfair platform.  The screen froze showing an offer of 5.7, 3 pts above my lay.

The race finished with my screen frozen and I assumed my lay had not been matched. 

I took a break and saw that the race was on my screen unsettled and showing the lay was matched and successful.

I brought up the graphs and saw that on several horses, including the winner, the graphs showed a steady rate of progression and liquidity/match and no sign of interruption.

It seems that the problems affecting betfair are not affecting "all aspects" of their operation. 

In general, I'm finding the regular interface/platform is like treacle these days on firefox (using a 1 second refresh). 

Too many flash billboards and garbage loading at the beginning.

Too many flash billboards and garbage loading at the beginning.

Even worse in IE. The thing that says "Live betting" on the login page just spins around in circles for a couple of minutes, which would be fine except the whle window hangs when it's doing it. Then you click on "sports" to get to the gambling and there are three of them doinng the same thing.

They don't even work most times, and there's no apparent way to turn them off. Not the finest idea they ever had.

Too many flash billboards and garbage loading at the beginning.

------

true. BF pages take ages to load in FF, so covering the homepage in crap is a real annoyance. especially when that stuff's plugs for the arcade/casino which are just plain evil anyway.

I've seen comments from various people on blogs etc. saying they got a message saying it was down for planned maintenance. Is this just bull**** from these people? Obviously it wasn't the case anyway, but if there was a message saying so then surely all bets have to be cancelled.

As the risk of tarnishing my reputation as a paid shill for BF, I have to agree with the last few words of Viva's last post.
The arcade/casino stuff is just plain evil.
Amd more to the point is apparently ruining the performance of the all-important sports betting activities.
How stupid can they be not to see or understand this vital matter.
If left unattended to, it could well be the ruination of BF, not things like the PC.

Lori you use IE??

thats the slowest browser in the world, do yourself a favor and change that...just a suggestion [;)]

If you use firefox and hate pointless flash, I suggest the flashblocker addon. For slower computers especially, can be a real godsend, and it allows you with a simple click to see just the flash you actually want to.

I changed it at one point Lusitano but have had nothing but trouble with Firefox and I'm a bit of a technotard at times so I went back again.

Use FF as a backup though.

I don't understand this at all. I'm from Croatia and I couldn't login until ten minutes ago, and my friend two blocks away put his bets without any problem...

But advice for further, install betangel free trial version, there are not many functions but even basic is enough... for basic :)

Lori, give Chrome a go

lori - if you use chrome, be aware that the "what if" figures it shows are totally bogus half the time.

I've seen comments from various people on blogs etc. saying they got a message saying it was down for planned maintenance. Is this just bull**** from these people? Obviously it wasn't the case anyway, but if there was a message saying so then surely all bets have to be cancelled.

I can confirm that.  The "scheduled maintenance" msg was there first, for at least 15 mins. It was later replaced by  "apology for any inconvenience caused".

they have standard page to put up when shut. just took them a while to change the wording from last time it was used. Its abit ropey but thats the way they do it

Still to early to say if the bet matching during wednesdays outage will work out financially for me as it's two days left of the tournament.
  Still a handful of my lays that were taken are in contention and the worst of those for me are Overton(tied5th) and Woodland(shares lead). If any of those two go on to win, Betfair's error to not suspend the market during the outage will probably cost me close to 65 k.   
  That said, if none of my lays during the outage go on to win I will have made roughly 5 k from the same Betfair error.

yeah i saw the 'planned maintenance' message as well

concerning, flash, etc.

In the early '90's, a friend of mine started a "consulting" business for people developing for the net.  It was old skool, but in his loft he had 12 computers, macs and pcs, with different platforms (explorer and does anyone remember netscape?). 

He would look at the demographic of the clients then run the web sites.  he would then report problems and offer improvements based on this.

Over the years, what I learnt is that those who design always have the best computers and largest screens.  What he taught me is that as fantastic as sites can "look", it is how well they run for what they are to be used for.

I recently was working with a record label to improve their site.  It looked fantastic on 17 and 22 inch screens.  On a laptop, you could find nothing quickly.

I respect that betfair needs to advertise and promote what is going on within their site but (a) as mentioned, the "live betting" I have never clicked because it never loads (b) I don't play casinos and would love it if you had a version that was half way between lite and the platform on offer.

Also, a lite version of the forum would be great.  It eats my load, etc.

How long was the outage today? I've been logged in via Gruss and have noticed no problems at all.

ps. just checked the transaction log and have had bets going in every minute with no problems.

Oh yeah, thanks Mgt, I was looking at new posts and got the day wrong lol.

Over the years, what I learnt is that those who design always have the best computers and largest screens.

As obvious as this is, it had never occured to me. Explains so much.

Ok. So what is usual procedure for planned maintenance? Suspend everything and cancel unmatched bets?
Apologies if that is a stupid question but I honestly have no idea as it has never impacted on me.

Any users seeing that message can reasonably expect standard procedure to have been followed which, depending on what that procedure is, may mean they thought they had nothing to worry about.

IE is woeful

Eddie couldnt you have taken a small loss after the outage? We all know the risk of downtime (a million sob stories from people who were "going to trade") but this is worse, so I hope we get some kind of explanation.

Not possible to trade out of such a position after the outage, the inrunning liquidity on golf isn't good enough unless maybe on the last day.   I probably wouldn't have traded out either as my lays were part of making some kind of book.
   It turned out well for me in the end, but Betfair's failure to suspend markets and cancel unmatched bets almost cost me 65 k as one of the lays(Woodland) that were taken during the outage lost in a playoff after going as low as 1.08 during that playoff.

I posted in service as well.

It is not helping the usability by not being able to simply launch the forum pop-up with the basics.  (i.e. when you open the forum the first time in the day, you are opening a "new window".  You then have to scroll to the bottom and then launch the pop-up).

As for risk:  betfair needs to recognize that a good percentage of their players, whether their banks are £100 or 100,000 will put a large percentage into play when trading. Thus why their business has solid "liquidity" and are able to make a rake on all gains.

They need to then look at historically what a person has risked once an event takes place (in otherwords, I might bet £20 on a football match when simply a punter but will trade a large portion PRE-MATCH closing at the kick-off).

From there, when these outages take place, something has to be in place to compensate those left hanging. 

That said, one of my biggest wins came from an outage.  I had traded a lay way down then left up a huge chunk for a trade after the off (horse was notorious for being slow out of the stalls).  This was "pre-keep" as well.  I waited for in-play, the suspend came up, and sure enough the screen froze.  I basically sat holding my breath as the donkey had its best start in ages and for the first time lead from the front over 6F.  Being a strong finisher, I stopped listening to the radio and walked out to the garden.

I returned to find the commentators saying how it surprisingly faded in the last half furlong going from 3 lengths up to losing in a photo.

While others battered their screens from the outage, I quietly celebrated that evening at a 30% bank increase on one lay.

So as we all know, for every loss their are winners that cut into the pie.

I trust you will all be sending Betfair e mails to congratulate them on a well timed outage

"I walked out into the garden...." Quietly seething?!

Done the garden walk a few times.  Very calming....

My early days, I had £500 and change in my account.  The market had been going up and down between 5/1 and 6/1 on a horse in a 5f race. 

I laid my full bank expecting to trade on the triangle then suddenly the odds plummeted before the off.  I tried to close then it went in-play with the horse running like lightning. 

I havee learnt how to close since but at the time kept putting up 4/1, 3/1 2/1 complete with a spinning clock.

I remember screaming like a little girl "Somebody save me!!!" and before the race finished, I headed out into a beautiful serene garden setting.  I stood for ten minutes listening to the birds.

When I returned, the pundits on the radio were still chatting about how they had never seen that horse bolt out as it did and run such a clean race.....my account read pences instead of pounds.

With the account at nil I had several weeks away from the pixels.  Plenty of time to clean up the flower beds and put in new grass preparing for future "garden moments"

I do find it fascinating in exchange shops watching how different people cope with reverses but in my experience the most common reaction is quiet seething with the headphones firmly on. Seen a few people bang the table or kick something but quiet seething is much more common.

I suppose learning from our mistakes/misfortune is the most important thing.

When I was a full-time daytrader in 1999, I worked with 50K including margin.

My biggest win:  I came in one day pre-market to find out that a 'young' EBAY had been off-line all night.  The market was waiting for the bell for a massive panic sell since America saw this as the same as arriving at a shop and seeing it closed on a Saturday with no explanation.

I called my tech buddy for his view (I had no position on the stock) and he laughed.  "Do you know how many times a week my servers are off-line while I tackle problems??  The only reason people are noticing is its ebay."

The stock was at around 165 U.S.  I shorted my full bank and watched it plummet at the bell.  I honestly can't remember what I made but it was a fantastic feeling and the position was closed soon enough to play 18 holes that day.

I doubt it will affect betfair since the public are more aware of the common place of crashes but it does seem to lock them up for longer periods than the crashes did before.

"We have planned this work around the end of key sporting events on Sunday 30th January and with the aim of having the Exchange back up and running in time for the start of UK Horseracing on the afternoon of Monday 31st January (GMT). Please be aware, that while we will be doing our best  to have the sports exchange  operational again on Monday afternoon, it is anticipated that all other products such as poker, casino and arcade will continue to be unavailable until later on that day."

That's a long outage, must be oiling all the cogs.

So no Sri Lanka/WI cricket, Welsh Bowls or ATP tennis in the morning then...

Today found myself holding my breath around a half dozen times between 1:20 and 2 on horses thinking it was all coming down.

Also, my neighbor upstairs just got a new microwave that is a problem when he's home at lunch

"just got a new microwave that is a problem when he's home at lunch"
Shapeshifter, if you're using wifi, and you've control of the router, perhaps try changing the channel the router wants to use.

If I remember right, ovens + wifi tend to want to use the same 'free' frequency band and changing the channel shifts it a little which might be enough to move you off the worst of the neighbours ovens frequency, assuming it doesn't wander as it works.

Happened again today. Official line is they don't know when the site goes down, but how can that be?

Official line about which bit Lori?

About not suspending when the site goes down.

They do know as they are attempting to put up meaningful "site down messages"

One of my bets was taken a full 3 minutes after the site went down today. It was nothing like the biggest one I had in the market over the day and it's not cost me a large sum, but it's infuriating that someone somewhere is still able to bet because they can't suspend the market.

It must be possible to detect the sudden huge drop in bets and suspend automatically.

They would monitor all platforms for uptime time and usuability, they really must do. That is basic internet 101

It seems they have no way (either automatically or proceedure with a human in the loop) of globally suspending markets only on an adhoc platform by platform basis.

API was working for few minutes after betfair.com went down so its quite alot of people betting normally via geeks toy or whatever as well as lite

Site went down, API was up, then it went down (as I was trying to get out) few minutes later.
I think the lesson is, as soon as website goes down, if API is up, try to clear any liabilities ASAP.

It seems they have no way (either automatically or proceedure with a human in the loop) of globally suspending markets only on an adhoc platform by platform basis.

There was a bomb scare 2-3 years ago and everything was suspended instantly.

Site went down, API was up, then it went down (as I was trying to get out) few minutes later.
I think the lesson is, as soon as website goes down, if API is up, try to clear any liabilities ASAP.

Isn't that a bit harsh on those of us who don't use API?

IS it down AGAIN?

I suggest all you seethers just go for a little walk in the fresh air

its the sign of the times............cut backs everywhere

but what I don't understand is why they introduce austerity measures on a Saturday afternoon when the premier league is live, surely they should introduce efficiency savings at a less inconvenient time.

There was a bomb scare 2-3 years ago and everything was suspended instantly.

If thats the case there really is no excuse. The poor way they are closing the API and lite makes me think they dont have one at moment

.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-442428/Charles-Sale--Sports-Agenda.html

The company now have contingency plans involving their Australian outlets to keep markets operating throughout any further security upset.

Thats to keep markets open?

We know they can pull the webservers/platforms individually given 30mins. Still think they have no global way of pulling the different platforms and rely on humans shutting down processes individually etc.