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have bots destroyed betfair?
have bots destroyed betfair?
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If you just want to bet on crap odds with no trading then you no where to go, exchanges are for smart activity even if it doesn't feel smart paying increased charges is better than bookmakers full stop.
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u25k
23 Sep 11 07:22 Joined: 10 Jul 05 | Topic/replies: 1,192 | Blogger: u25k's blog mythical prince -clueless -very naive -lacks knowledge regarding bots, chess and betting beat the overround- sensible post i'm a grandmaster myself u25k, what sort of level do you play at?  it seems i've stirred something up here and may have offended some bot fantatics. |
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DivideByZeroError
23 Sep 11 10:27 Joined: 18 Jul 07 | Topic/replies: 22 | Blogger: DivideByZeroError's blog I propose that betfair ban all automated programs. thats the only way to make it a fair playing ground for punters. Things are pretty fair right now because the barriers to using a bot are actually very low. If you know enough Excel you could have something up and running by the end of the day, if not you could get some of the free software out there in no time at all. If you can't find what you want I could build you a bot which makes sure you're the best price for a given selection up to a pre-defined limit, you could even be the best price on the purple place at the same time to improve your chances of getting matched. In return I would like 50% of each week's profit made from the bot. given if the bot is successful I might end up giving 60 percent to betfair as well, which would mean me giving 110 percent, thanks but no thanks [;)] |
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Hi M-prince, what type of player are you and at what stakes level please?
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don't be nosey bf-fanatic [;)]
I don't bet very big mate. i've been doing better lately although had a catastrophic year as I tried in-play betting (although god knows why) using betfair rapid (even more stupid) which i've now given up. actually betfair rapid is a good example of how betfair could be renamed "betunfair" not only are you almost always taking a bad price, but get to the end of the race and any money you put up will get hoovered up by the fast pic boys. so if you put up a bad price it will get taken, put up a good bet and it will be ignored. so my general point wasn't really about bots. it was about betfair in general, and how bots/fast pics/inside information leaves an average technophobe punter like me at a massive disadvantage. its like usain bolt turning up at the racetrack everytime to see he's racing against a car [;)] essentially the original essence of betfair, that it was something that offered a much better alternative to the bookmakers, for the average joe punter, has been lost. incidentally I personally think that a gerbil could win with fast pictures. I just need to get some and put my hammy the hamster on the case  of course if you go on something like the stock market, its automated to a far more sophisticated level than it is on here. which makes me wonder, why don't the people with bots who are doing well simply transfer their skills to the stockmarket? as they won't be taxed 60 percent? and theres a lot more money to be made anyway. I imagine that a lot of it is sophisticated algorithims that people use when arbritraging, hedging bets etc. presumably the guy who lost 1.3 billion recently simply forgot to turn his bot on [;)] |
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Nothing wrong with bots. It's the information available to them that facilitates parasitic behaviour.
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Betfair rapid was the worst betfair software ever and for betfiar to endorse it to the point that you could download it from them was foolish, there are far better products that betfair could of promoted like gruss which is amazing in comparison but of course its not free for the reason of excellence.
Free software is nearly always rubbish compared to commercial products. Perhaps the answer to bots and bookmakers that openly use exchanges but some do it covertly, taking money out of Betfair at will is to charge them and unfortunately all persisted winners will be roped in at the same time but to allow bots and bookmakers to run a muck would be more damaging to Betfairs profits in the long run so betfair has to have teeth in the form of premium charges to bite back at the losses.[;)] |
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P.S. sorry m-prince for being nosey about your activities as thats your business and nothing to do with others so I respect your privacy.
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Betfair and bots ? Recall the initial company atitude to this and weep. the key paragraph...
The bots are not merely a technical problem for Betfair. The site's image, as a place where punter meets punter in a battle of judgment and wits, is among its biggest selling points. A perception that its clients might in fact be taking on a bank of computers, or that it is pointless looking for serious value because a bot will always get there first, would be damaging. Bot owners..you are unwelcome here now and you were unwelcome then..not because you are cleverer than the vast majority of us..but because you have ruined the soul of the site...That is why the company and the site itself are a shadow of what it once was...all so you can nick a few coppers here and there...you are as distant from gambling as anyone could be on a gambling site. Betfair have copped for what they deserve by entertaining you after saying they would not. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Betfair takes action against rogue 'bots' Ban for odds computer programs after punter bonanza Greg Wood The Guardian, Thursday 26 September 2002 20.44 BST Article history Betfair, the internet's largest betting exchange, is expected to ban the use of automatic trading programs - known as bots - on its website, following a system crash that kept the site offline for two hours on Tuesday afternoon. The crash has highlighted a practice that has been going on for several months, much to the surprise of the vast majority of Betfair's regular clients, with one punter claiming that his computer program has made him hundreds of thousands of pounds. A bot is a computer program that can access a website and strike or lay bets, just as any human punter can. Unlike a regular punter, though, it does not need to eat, drink or sleep, and can request a web page several times a second. About a dozen Betfair clients are thought to have been using bots to scan the site for chances to bet overbroke, or otherwise gain a guaranteed edge on other users. They will now be warned to switch off their bots, or be banned from using Betfair's site. A Betfair spokesman said yesterday that Tuesday's problems were not caused directly by the use of bots on their site. However, the fact that a number of the programs were attempting to access Betfair dozens of times a second, while technicians were struggling to get it online, meant that the site was unavailable for much longer than would otherwise have been the case. The program responsible is believed to have been written by a Betfair user who regularly posts messages in the site's users' forum under the name "Gary". Although his claims are difficult to verify, he has stated that his bot has won him hundreds of thousands of pounds in recent months. He is also thought to have passed on his program to several other punters in recent weeks, increasing the strain on Betfair's servers. There are several ways in which a bot can suck the value from a robust and vibrant market such as Betfair. It is possible, for instance, to write a program that scans active markets looking for one that is momentarily "overbroke", allowing it to back every runner to return a small, but guaranteed, profit. The bot places the required bets automatically and instantly, and moves on to look for its next opportunity. Others can be programmed to notice obvious mistakes - a punter, say, who has tried to offer a horse at 2.0 in Betfair's digital odds system, and offered 2.2 instead. A bot could also be set up to back and lay consistently around a given price. Backing at 2.6 and then laying at 2.4, over and over again, would soon try the patience of most human punters, but a computer program does not get bored. "The result tends to be that there are lots and lots of very small bets going through, which are a pain for everybody concerned," Mark Davies, Betfair's spokesman, said yesterday. "And when we have a problem like we did on Tuesday, the program just keeps on trying to trade, asking the database questions which it is not in a position to answer. We're getting in touch with the account holders in question, and we would expect to make a statement on Friday morning." The bots are not merely a technical problem for Betfair. The site's image, as a place where punter meets punter in a battle of judgment and wits, is among its biggest selling points. A perception that its clients might in fact be taking on a bank of computers, or that it is pointless looking for serious value because a bot will always get there first, would be damaging. One problem for Betfair, though, is that a well-written bot will appear to be just another client logging on to the site. To be certain that no-one is using a bot, it may be necessary to study access and betting patterns over several days, or even weeks. "Depending on how well written a bot is, and if it doesn't hit the hell out of the server, it may be almost impossible to block it," said Glyn Wintle, chief technical officer of backandlay.com, an exchange which is due to launch in the next few months. "Over time, you can be pretty sure when someone's using a bot, but if someone's got a well-written program that means they can't lose, they'll probably think it's stupid not to run it." |
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bots/fast pics/inside information
They are really three different issues imo, lumping together just muddies the water, plus horse racing has its own issues because of the last of the three. of course if you go on something like the stock market, its automated to a far more sophisticated level than it is on here. which makes me wonder, why don't the people with bots who are doing well simply transfer their skills to the stockmarket? as they won't be taxed 60 percent? and theres a lot more money to be made anyway The data/information on sports is free and transaction costs pretty low. Its good entry point for hobbyists. Also its more fun I imagine. ie recreational sports botters doing it because they can. Same way people enter robot wars instead of building drone bommbers and tanks |
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No offence but if you open up a website to take bets and it interacts with web clients/browsers you will get bots.
Only way to get rid of them completely would be to close the site. Bots have been around betting on betfair long long before any API |
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All the bother and harm caused by the july 2011 premium charge update could of been avoided if Betfair had created 2 classes of market;
one being pc2 free but limited liquidity. and one being max liquidity for payers of the pc2 99.9 percent of customers would of been in a perceived safer pool of money and there could of been other benefits exclusive to customers using the smaller liquidity market. Not sure of the worth of this idea but now we are lumbered with all customers believing that they will soon be paying pc2 when this cound of applied only to premium users who use the premium liquidity market. If all races, sports and even poker have classes why cant customers be classed and therefore subject to different markets that would work in-unison with prices on the other class of market. |
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good stuff duncan, particularly this which I was trying to say myself:
The bots are not merely a technical problem for Betfair. The site's image, as a place where punter meets punter in a battle of judgment and wits, is among its biggest selling points. A perception that its clients might in fact be taking on a bank of computers, or that it is pointless looking for serious value because a bot will always get there first, would be damaging. but not only have they failed to ban bots according to others on this thread they now use their own. makes me wonder if they really care about their original image. brendan, that might be true but that was more intended for the people who are being charged 60 percent. Surely if you were playing the stockmarket and someone came along and took 60 percent of your winnings, you'd tell them to take a flying jump, and wouldn't trade with them again. Its only because betfair are a complete monopoly when it comes to sport exchanges that they can get away with this. |
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Banning bots would be a bigger disaster than the premium charge as you would have rubbish liquidity and no chance of making high profits.
The whole infra-structure of Betfair servers and business has been adapted and designed for bots and trading and Betfair has many bots of its own, thats how it all works and toy start pulling plugs out from both sides of the exchange would bring it too its knees. |
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60% pc is yet another different issue.
Type any successful website into google and put the letters "API" after it, click search. You need to understand why succesful websites use APIs. Not hearing any sensible reasons why bots are bad for betfair, at the moment its all abit ludditish to be honest |
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Nine years ago when that article was written..this was a superb site. Nobody could expect it to fully remain as it was but the complete turnabout on the bot issue was the start of BF`s deterioration. Now you have a 60% PC and punters flocking to purple in their droves and Wray and Black in the wilderness.
Progress..? I think not. Betfair has achieved the impossible in its decade...made traditional bookmakers seem like a reasonable alternative again.... after capturing their clients each and every one of them. Bots use is only part of the problem. The whole site resembles a mass money market infested with sharks and programmes designed to part the unsuspecting from their hard earned through manipulation, aftertime hoovering and worse. Sad. |
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Bots are good for betfair as logically the more money gets automatically
placed and matched into the system benefits all users of the system, if berfair banned bot then it would send betfair backwards and sink it completely for good, silly thread this. |
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An article about a crash from 2002, years before the API, when it was no doubt bots screen scraping and hammering 2002 era server technology (and crashing them) when most customers were likely still on modems. Not exactly relevant.
Your average customer wants the best odds they can get. If a bot makes this so, this is better for that customer. This conversation is completely moot and the religionist "betfair would be better with no liquidity and no bots" is a pointless argument as betfair surely aren't stupid enough to do such a completey unpragmatic thing as it would destroy liquidity. Unless they replaced it with their own internal system and thus became a normal bookie, which is hardly an 'improvement'. You might as well spend your day arguing how many angels there are on the head of a pin. |
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Oh god simultaneous post roughly agreeing with bf_fanatic. I feel violated
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Ha Ha brilliant posts brendauk and just checking, isnt there at least 99 angels on the head of every pin, let me just check[;)]
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BetDuck has an API system very similar to BFs, and surely the exact same sort of bots, I'm sure some run by the same people, it's a strange comparison.
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More bots please, bring on the bots, then more money and more whoosh for us all and betfair.
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just put a cheeky 2 quid up on daddy long legs in the first race at newmarket tomorrow, at 13. wonder how long it will take to be undercut?
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Betfair has been the better MAGNET for customers for many reasons and you cant say just get rid of some of the MAGNETS to sort it out, just a balancing out of where all the money is going and if more goes to betfair form only 0.01% of customers then so be it, wont stop the revolution or stall it, the main concern is where are all the top staff going, where is betfair going and can the whole thing be improved positively as soon as possible.
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A lot of things have happened since 2002. One is that Betfair realised they could harness the bots by implementing the api. Now that they are under betfair's overall control they are of benefit and welcomed.
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duncan idaho
Right, so i make 5-fig profits for the last 3 yrs despite having slow pics, make decision to go part-time workwise and am just supposed to go 'ho-hum' when they then allow people to go on course, something i was told was illegal, making 50% of racing practically unplayable? Yeah, simple. Of course i dont gift them money now on ATR. Thanks for your priceless advice tho. Muppet. duncan idaho, we joined betfair within weeks of each other so I don't need to outline the 'evolution' to you. But I do know that when I find myself swimming upstream and 'fighting the current', it is time to stand on the shore, look at the situation and find a better way to travel. I, too, like to earn on betfair. Infact, it is part of my monthly budget. But I do know that if there is an aspect to my betting or trading that is taking away from my profits, then it is time to close down that avenue and research other approaches. Last year, I went into greyhounds and left more in the pot than I took. On analysis, I didn't have the edge or enough knowledge to take on the market. I am sure that when I left, those who profit would have noticed I was gone. Since May, I have spent more time reading, researching and building strategy including greyhounds. I've built my filters that will create a list of targets and will stick to them. I've changed my tactics on staking which should smooth out the graph while allowing me to take on more markets without damaging the bank on a soft period. But the main thing is that I've done is planned a different approach than last year and the year before and the year before that. I'll adapt rather than fight something that is detrimental to my gains (i.e., whether backing or opposing, the NY Yankees have cost me dearly. So....I don't bet on any games involving the Yankees). So, would being at the dog track or at the the race track help me? No, not really. Because my strategy is research. Do I play in-running? Yes, horses and football. For horses, sometimes three horses at the same time. No pictures. I research which horses run how and plan my attack. Adapt if you want to make gains and don't be bitter on what others have in their arsenal. One survivor's opinion. |
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One thing that is assumed is that all bots are relentless arbitrage machines.
As mentioned above, many API users are hobbyists, and I would suspect that the during the development of any bot there are mistakes made and money lost. I certainly accepted a financial loss during the testing period of my own software. Yes, a bot has the advantage of being able to act within milliseconds, but it can only make profitable bets if someone knows how to program it to make profitable bets. My point is that not all bots are profitable and I'm sure that the attraction of the API has enticed nerds like myself to lose a few quid "trying stuff out" whereas they would never dream of punting on the horses/football/etc. |
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but the point I don't get is... we are in the 21st century. why don't we all have access to fast pictures?
on betfair you are lucky to have a picture at all these days, the live video seems to crash every other race. |
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Let's get back to Mythical Prince's original gripe: bots which automatically undercut you in an illiquid market. This is where bot owners are talentless parasites who destroy liquidity rather than create it.
Markets get priced up thanks to real people doing research, taking a risk and dipping their toe in the water. Without them, markets would remain forever empty. Without them bots would be unable to provide any liquidity. OK. I'm faced with a blank market, and after an hour's work I decide horse/team/player A is an even money chance. With 5% commission, the absolute maximum price at which I can offer to lay that selection is 1.94, so I stick up an offer to lay £100 at that price. I refresh immediately, and there on the left is my offer to lay £100 at 1.94, with right in front of it an offer to lay £10 at 1.95. I can't top that without betting at a loss thanks to Betfair's outrageous 5% commission rate. So I switch off and go to bed. Meanwhile, the bot, which never sleeps, has p0nced the knowledge of the correct price off me free of charge, and now gets to work all night, laying at 1.96,1.97,1,98, backing at 2.02, 2.00, 1.99. When I switch on in the morning, my offer to lay at 1.95 remains unmatched, while the bot owner has an all green book of £2.50, and spends the rest of the day on the Forum boasting that he will be paying Betfair £1.50 of that on Wednesday. I, on the other hand, realize that I wasted a couple of hours of my life on here last night, and next time decide to go to bed early and wait for the betting shops to open in the morning to have a bet. The bot owner finds the market blank next time, and his next post on the Forum claims this to be proof that the Premium Charge is destroying liquidity. |
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is this in horseracing where the best price you can do on on evens shot is 1.94. Pinnacle would easily beat that in footy you would be waiting to be matched long after the match finished
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Could be horse racing, brendan. Could be a non-televised cricket match. Could be the maximum UK summer temperature.
In fact, it could be any one of the innumerable markets every day on which neither "traders" nor bookmakers have a clue how to bet on without punters to p0nce off. |
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Markets get priced up thanks to real people doing research, taking a risk and dipping their toe in the water. Without them, markets would remain forever empty. Without them bots would be unable to provide any liquidity.
These are the people who can benefit most from the bots. |
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Screamings post sums up the problem perfectly. I would love to see a genuine non-bot exchange option. Sadly for both practical and commercial reasons i will probably be dissapointed.
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all i see is problems in horse racing and horse racing players blaming everything but there own sport
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If the bots take the value out of the market? And then your left more or less with the true price, with neither backer or layer gaining a real advantage on here, the resulting equilibrium in punters and layers fortunes would surely ensure theyed only be one winner on the exchange, Betfair.
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kublai, there would be no punters because the prices would not be competitive.
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only be one winner on the exchange, Betfair
The recreational punter is also a winner as they get better prices instead of being mugged off and having to take a bad price |
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And the long term winners are winners
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By: brendanuk1
Date Joined: 12 Jan 02 Blogger: brendanuk1's blog Add contact | Send message When: 23 Sep 11 23:31 Joined: Date Joined: 12 Jan 02 | Topic/replies: 17,396 | Blogger: brendanuk1's blog only be one winner on the exchange, Betfair The recreational punter is also a winner as they get better prices instead of being mugged off and having to take a bad price Providing there is an infinite stream of manual players prepared to waste their time putting up bets that will never get matched for the bot to top... I am mystified by the pro-robot stance of the company for two obvious reasons. (i.) Betfair makes most money when evenly matched players are blinding away commission payments off each other. Anything that distorts the even matched nature of those competitors skews their business model away from maximum effectiveness (ii.) one of the innovative features of the exchange, that of leaving an order in, is effectively made completely redundant. In the past Betfair has argued that anything that discourages people from using the site (trap bets, fast pics, hoovering, insider trading, whatever) is bad for their business. Making putting bets in a market futile, reducing the number of interested parties and allowing a monopoly that more often than not is based on topping manual players would also seem to be a pattern that will and has discouraged activity. |