General Betting
There is currently 1 person viewing this thread.
1. If this were a bone fide punter, with an account balance of $600m, and they made a mistake, then they have to pay out, as we all have had to over the years for the mistakes we've made from time to time.
2. If, however, as seems more likely this is not an external punter (after all who realistically has an account in excess of $600m?!), then this must be down to some error on Betfair's part. If so what sort of error?
Given that Betfair are not a bookie, the only way I can see they made an error is if their cross-matching bot threw a wobbly, otherwise they must have been engaged in an activity for which on the face of it they are not licensed, and/or do not declare in their T&Cs. This begs three questions in my mind:
1. Can BF be engaged in any activity other than cross-matching in the Horse IR markets?
2. If not, and therefore the cross-matcher is to blame, how can BF guarantee that the cross-matcher is working correctly, and has done so historically? How do we know that we have really been matched at best price in the past?
3. AND/OR - has this little £600m at risk problem exposed something deeper and perhaps more sinister going on?
2. If, however, as seems more likely this is not an external punter (after all who realistically has an account in excess of $600m?!), then this must be down to some error on Betfair's part. If so what sort of error?
Given that Betfair are not a bookie, the only way I can see they made an error is if their cross-matching bot threw a wobbly, otherwise they must have been engaged in an activity for which on the face of it they are not licensed, and/or do not declare in their T&Cs. This begs three questions in my mind:
1. Can BF be engaged in any activity other than cross-matching in the Horse IR markets?
2. If not, and therefore the cross-matcher is to blame, how can BF guarantee that the cross-matcher is working correctly, and has done so historically? How do we know that we have really been matched at best price in the past?
3. AND/OR - has this little £600m at risk problem exposed something deeper and perhaps more sinister going on?
sort by:
Show
per page
Replies: 168
|
By:
If it's possible for a punter to exceed their limit by 600m, does that mean there are people out there who could exceed it by, say, £20,000 that wouldn't get noticed?
|
|
By:
I doubt it underlies something sinister. More likely to be good old fashioned incompetence, most certainly by BF themselves.
|
|
By:
Perhaps this is someone exposing it Lori just like the clock beating was exposed.
|
|
By:
one big issue here is that someone's actions has caused a market to be voided.
which is a nice ace to hold. i have always defended betfair on the decision to not void in play markets which are affected by unscheduled downtime with the argument that the should someone have the ability to bring the site down, they can bet with massive advantage. it does seem that more time and care should have been spent trying to unpick this mess, perhaps with some partial settlement, instead of voiding the whole thing. |
|
By:
So this was "...due to an obvious technical fault which allowed a customer to exceed their exposure limit". That raises a few more questions:
1. How can "an obvious technical fault" allow someone to exceed their exposure limit? 2. Why did it only happen to one customer? Has anybody else inadvertently exceeded their exposure limit in the past? 3. Given that a lot of people (not including myself) would have made substantial sums of money, I suspect BF will have to provide some hard evidence to back up what they say. There will be all sorts of consequences if it transpires that BF were trading incorrectly on their own account, or the cross-matcher proved to be faulty, or that the customer in question did not exceed their exposure limit but made an error, or some customers have different facilities to others giving them an unfair advantage. |
|
By:
fwiw, the value of the lay does look like the maximum value of a 32 bit integer in pence (2,147,483,647)
|
|
By:
And yes Feck - you could be onto something.
|
|
By:
my immediate dork thinking too, dstyle. the 29 was obv a typo of 2.9 which was the approx sp, and the lay was up there for a lot longer than just at the end. just trying to think what you could do, perhaps on other exchanges, if you had foreknowledge of this.
what happened on purple? |
|
By:
If I had to hazard a guess....a techy sort has probed and found a hole. This is little more than... look at what I've managed to do. I can't personally see how someone could derive a benefit from having the inplay market voided? This site probably has a gazillion lines of code, the exploitation will have been quite cute. If someone found a weakness, void it all, put it right, and give the guy a job and move on.
|
|
By:
apparently, it was matched on daq at around 12's don't know if they voided or paid out
|
|
By:
The thing is, bot operators are very happy to sit back and cream in consistent profits, and what's happened here is the downside to their business which rarely shows it's face. If you're prepared to gain by automation you should be prepared to lose by it too, perhaps that's a concept bot operators can't accept?
I see no reason at all why bets should be voided, I think it's disgraceful to do so. |
|
By:
daq settled. sounds like a nice sting to me!
 respect  |
|
By:
driller 28 Dec 11 17:28
If I had to hazard a guess....a techy sort has probed and found a hole. This is little more than... look at what I've managed to do. I can't personally see how someone could derive a benefit from having the inplay market voided? This site probably has a gazillion lines of code, the exploitation will have been quite cute. If someone found a weakness, void it all, put it right, and give the guy a job and move on it's pretty straight forward. lay favourite large. bring market down if it's going to win. |
|
By:
DStyle, wouldn't work as only inrunning will be voided.
|
|
By:
I see no reason at all why bets should be voided, I think it's disgraceful to do so.
Depends how it happened if someone put up £5 at 29s then by some series of unusual events caused a software glitch resulting in 21m being put up, you cant expect him to cough up millions and neither betfair. ITs seems odd in that there would need to be a series of checks bypassed (balance then exposure limit) for this to happen all of which failed. Without knowing details its hard to say. |
|
By:
Betfair's t&c's supposedly cover these issues anyway
"Your betting limit is represented by the lesser of: (i) your 'Available to Bet' balance shown in your account and (ii) your ‘Exposure Limit’ (which is available in the “Account Summary” tab in “My Account”). However in the event that we process an offer for a bet or the acceptance of a bet in an amount outside the applicable thresholds, such bet will nevertheless stand." Obviously is this case they seem to have ignored that, if it was a bona fide customer it makes you wonder how often they've exceeded their limit in the past and profited from it. Although to be fair I imagine this customer is just a figment of Betfair's PR dept. |
|
By:
Dstyle....lay favourite large pre-inplay?. I thought the favorite won?
|
|
By:
The favourite didn't win.
|
|
By:
I'm not sure we're no all missing the point.
I'm doubtful that someone could inadvertently exceed their exposure limit because of a fault in the software. I suspect Betfair has a large customer where it has not specified an exposure limit, or the exposure limit was deliberately not set. In which case it is not a technical fault. It is the fault of the customer who placed the bet, and BF for allowing the customer to place the bet when they are not good for the money. I suspect m'learned friends could well have some sport with this one, and I suspect that a class action on a no fee no win may well spring up before too long. |
|
By:
The shear size of 600m exposure would expect the court case to be short and swift with anyone reasonable saying that that amount of exposure had exceeded any reasonable amount.
But the customer could well be betting without any balance or limits set, but thats another matter, |
|
By:
the fact that the value was a maximum for a 32 bit integer in pence now makes me believe that it could be a technical error. i don't really want to try it, but if you entered a lay with an exposure greater than 2,147,483,647 it may not be able to assign the value to the projected exposure, leaving the variable with a value of 0 and allow it go through.
someone else can try  (normal web, coupon and api please) as for the favourite winning, sorry i'm wrong, but it's neither here nor there. lay selection x, if x looks like it's going to win, bring the market down. |
|
By:
cant do that number on the web interface, mine anyway
|
|
By:
Dear Sir,
If you read the history of my account you will see i am indeed a mug punter who spends many hours trying to win enough to have a few more bets without putting in too much funding. My favourite thing is to watch colours during a race and back the ones going easy without looking at the names, or many times even looking at the odds. These are not the ramblings of a disgruntled loser , you have the documented evidence of the number of times i have backed as many as six in running in the same race just because thats my pleasure, I can honestly say that with my small stakes I never look at how much is available to back, if i had then surely i would have placed the £1100.00 in my account at the time on the horse at 29/1 not £77. I feel extremely let down by Betfair as I have been a loyal supporter through the years and my betting on that race was as per my usual pattern. I run my own company and if my employees or equipment should ever malfunction as a man of honour I would always ensure the customer was compensated.. Obviously your company is not an honourable one. I should add i hope your share price tumbles as a result of this disgraceful decision and that the board feel the full repercussions of that fall, SHAME ON YOU BET UNFAIR !!! --- On Wed, 28/12/11, info@betfair.com wrote: One or more of your bets, placed on the market has been voided/lapsed by Betfair. Whilst these bets were all placed in good faith, in order to be fair to all users we have had to void/lapse them. Should you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact us by emailing info@betfair.com or calling our helpdesk on 0870 0110444 (+44 20 8834 8060 from outside the UK). You will find details of the voided bets in "My Account, Betting History". Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience, and we hope you continue to use and enjoy the site. Kind regards www.betfair.com Voided/Lapsed Bets Runner Bet ID Placed Date Category Bid Type Status Stake (£) Liability (£) Odds Matched Voler La Vedette 17677809015 28/12/2011 14:06:17 EX B Matched 22.00 22.00 Voler La Vedette 17677802348 28/12/2011 14:06:01 EX B Matched 22.00 20.00 Voler La Vedette 17677798827 28/12/2011 14:05:51 EX B Matched 11.00 21.00 Voler La Vedette 17677793270 28/12/2011 14:05:35 EX B Matched 11.00 23.00 Voler La Vedette 17677781170 28/12/2011 14:05:09 EX B Matched 11.00 21.00 ________________________________________________________________________ In order to protect our email recipients, Betfair Group use SkyScan from MessageLabs to scan all Incoming and Outgoing mail for viruses. ________________________________________________________________________ |
|
By:
Brendan, why does the amount matter? If someone is prepared to trust in bots for potential gain, why should they be void of the risk when things go tits up? Live by the sword die by the sword I say.
|
|
By:
Good one dstyle
Why not just do it at 1.01 pre IR and then cancel immediately (assuming the cancel will work and the system hasn't been screwed up) |
|
By:
Sorry you're right it wasn't favourite. I still can't see how having the inplay market voided benefits anyone pre race. I'd have thought you needed this part of the pie intact to achieve your goal, especially as you placed the bonkers bet inplay.
There would have been examples of this before, postings, gripes, questions, history. It's someone saying look at me imo. |
|
By:
Brendan, why does the amount matter? If someone is prepared to trust in bots for potential gain, why should they be void of the risk when things go tits up? Live by the sword die by the sword I say.
Who said it was a bot? We dont know it wasnt a £5 punter |
|
By:
Dstyle
I've just tried that, the API returned an "unknown error", so they've either fixed it, or it's something else. |
|
By:
ok. the only other place to try it would be gruss using the HTTP interface, which gets round the limit on the website text box. (you can see how the Unit Test might have missed this)
|
|
By:
pmsl @ artisan can't believe you tried it
 |
|
By:
Who said it was a bot? We dont know it wasnt a £5 punter
Hopefully time will tell, but if it is a bot gone mad why should the operator be void of liability? |
|
By:
Artisan, you might be onto something...
Normally API is happy to return that exposure or balance is exceeded. If such an amount indeed throws it off it might indeed be plausable that there could be an edge condition or two letting something slip thru on exceptional circumstances. |
|
By:
Kinda strange they decide to void the place market too due to this 'technical failure' as the bet was placed on the win market only. Sort of suggests the bots playing the place market by reading the win market also came in with a loss , ummm maybe that mysterious punter also exceeded on that market too
 |
|
By:
Dstyle, if you have the time, can you explain what you mean by 32-bit integer? What does this lead you to believe happened then? Was this a technical fault from a robot and if so is it still one that should have been caught by the exposure limit?
|
|
By:
Hopefully time will tell, but if it is a bot gone mad why should the operator be void of liability?
Seems your criteria for whether the layer is liable to millions is if they are using the web interface to be let off and someone using the API to be held to account. They should be void in both cases as betfair stated they exceeded their exposure because of a betfair technical error. |
|
By:
prestbury, you need to remember computers store info in what's called binary code which is just a series of 1's and 0's, the first digit in the string represents 1's the next 2's then 4's then 8's and so on.
So 1010 would mean (1 x 1) + (0 x 2) + (1 x 4) + (0 x 8) = 5 With 32 separate bits the maximum number we can get is 2^32 = 4294967296 but we half this as the numbers need to be able to be treated as negative and posiitive numbers i.e -2147483647 to +2147483647 |
|
By:
fwiw the first bit is used to donate if the number is positive or negative in computer binary code so we have only 2^31 combinations of possible positive and negative numbers 2147483648 posssibles 0 to 2147483647
01000000 is 1 11000000 would be -1 |
|
By:
thanks Joe, makes sense. So easy enough to see the result of a bot f-up giving 29 followed by 011111111111111111111111... for the stake?
Would the price be entered as binary as well with the robot being used? Otherwise its hard to see where the 29 comes from. Doesnt seem any grounds for voiding this market at all then if it is a bot error rather than market error |
|
By:
not quite prestbury.
a 32 bit integer what's called a data type. when you type a number into the website, it probably gets assigned to a variable which is type in a certain way. it helps if you think about variables as boxes. a 32 bit integer is a box which you can only put numbers in and it has a certain size. you can't put a number which is too big for the box in the box. what i think has happened is that someone has put up a massive bet by mistake, and it can't fit into the box, i.e it's bigger numerical that the biggest size a 32 bit integer will allow. therefore when the program looks in the box, to see if the stake is too big for the exposure limit, there's nothing in there, so it let's it go. |