My 30k misclick

Badly worded, I got matched on Na Li at 2.53 when she should've been 33

That's juicy, and not in a good way.

Just playing devil's advocate, but wouldn't you have had to have committed more errors than just one click. You would have had to change the price (which would have meant deleting the first price which would have meant missing that the price said 34 rather than 1.04.) Then clicked in "place bets" before checking that you were happy with the bet and then clicking "confirm" before you had given a final check that you were happy with it.

Sorry i'm not trying to criticise (although your probably saying "yeah right" having read my above paragraph) as I have done exactly the same before and yes it is annoying. Fortunately for me it wasn't to the tune of £30,000 or my wife may have removed various important appendages with a rusty farm implement, but what would be your suggestion to improving the situation whilst still allowing people to place their bets as quickly as humanly possible while events are in-play(assuming your mistake was in-play).

Perhaps mrs Bayes on hand nearby with a deliberately blunted scythe would sharpen the mind?

Mrs Bayes was typically ambivalent as I miraculously ended up winning on the match (and she is obviously myopically results based) I made the mistake because I hadn't had a bet for a while and 15 minutes before Na Li was favourite.

What I'm after is something that stops your bet if it is more than x% out from the last price matched. Safarova had been sub 1.2 for a while and it is absolutely absurd to allow a bet of 32k liability at 26 at this point

Ah yes but there are problems with this. Firstly, it requires more work from betfair to implement this and unfortunately this work doesn't really generate any profit for them.

Also you have the problem that some people actually like putting in a price significantly lower so they may get annoyed with this.

Say for example Na Li was 1.8 and the price was moving around quite a lot and i just wanted to get a bet matched there and then. The best way and quickest way for me to do it is put in 1.1 and I know it will get matched (and not at that price but at a price somewhere around 1.8ish subject to liquidity). If I put in 1.78 it may have dropped to 1.76 by the time that's gone through then I have to repeat the process again which I may find annoying.

Of course having functionality that allows users to decide and set that they can have this option and set the x% figure to whatever figure they wanted would be good but how much work would that be for them.

Not after sympathy. I'm a big winner and I can afford it.

You only lost 18k Bayes.  Betfair lost the other 12k

it is staggering how much gets matched on a non descript tennis match

I personally would like to see us able to set adjustable non delayed limits on e.g.
- losses on a market
- losses on a single bet
- a settable limit on losses for "today" independent of the one that takes like 7 days to come into effect.
JUST to help stop a silly mistake costing us a large whack of our bank.
- ability to move money that's still ours into a safety bank that's still ours that can easily be transferred back to the bettable account, but is a surefire protected from "mistakes" as requires an extra 15 seconds of clicking to get it out to the bettable balance.

I don't believe for one second it would be at all hard never mind impossible to add the above. A days or two work for an average competence programmer?

The fact the might make more money out of our mistakes might .. well you finish that sentence :(

We all make mistakes. I just did one today when I bet on wrong team for reasons best known to my own stupidity, and again (bad day, heatstroke? :)) caught myself half second before clicking a bet with 1 digit too many in it ...

Those things wouldn't help in the case of a mistake like this though JC, but some people use the Aus wallet to hold funds, and use simple software to set a liability per click.

Hard luck there Bayes, but do I remember that you narrowly avoided losing around 100k some time ago on a nearly identical mistake, then had some code added to your software to prevent a similar occurrence?

On stock exchanges etc they'll often cancel trades like this (calling them 'busted trades') and notify you hours later, but I do think the dramatically greater price changes and hedging/liability management (among other reasons) make that almost impossible on BF.

I guess I would just ask... why bet through the website and not custom software which has whatever functionality you would like?

You don't need my advice Bayes but if I ever see Safarova at 1.03/1.04 I put my hands in my pockets just in case.

the x matching nicking bot is in clover...

Had the kids running wild here last week and instead of laying £50 @ 10 I...well i'm sure you know the rest...

I'm confused Na Li won the match no?

It would be fairly easy for them to add a client side warning that you were requesting odds way out of line with the most recent matched prices on that outcome. Certainly that would be the case pre-ir but I suppose it wouldn't be so clear cut ir where the odds can fluctuate wildly. The warning could be optional and turned off if not wanted. Bayes is still here but if it happened to a loser he'd probably be lost forever, a fact that doesn't seem to bother betfair.


You only lost 18k Bayes.  Betfair lost the other 12k

Fair point clydebank but I wonder how much of it the no. 1 top trapper (their x-matcher) got of it.

I'm seriously considering moving funds over to aussie wallet due to this thread. Thing is if this happened to me I wouldn't be coming back

SIR_Bond     Joined: 14 Nov 07
Replies: 4369 13 Aug 12 12:37 
I'm confused Na Li won the match no?

Yes and as Bayes pointed out "I miraculously ended up winning on the match" but 9/10 times she probably wouldn't have done, well ok maybe not 9/10 times it was Safarova and she can't be trusted even at 5/1 up. But Bayes point remains the same.

All these suggestions have been put to Betfair before and they have ignored them. THEY DO NOT CARE.

Bayes

Having done similar many moons ago, (it was a match involving George Bastl to give you an idea) i made changes to my software to prevent my doing the very same thing, it warns when anything is too far away from "a correct price".

incidentally, i would like to touch on another point here which i raised some weeks ago: in the Safarova - Li market, like most markets, inverse prices were being rendered  in the UI. i.e. if you submitted a back at 1.1 on Safarova and it was unmatched, it would appear in the UI as being available as a lay on Safarova at 1.1 and also as an unmatched back on Li for 11.

However if cross matching is switched off on the market, this inverse rendering is bluster and misleading. if you fired in a back on Li at 1.03 by mistake it would touch any of the UI rendered inverse odds and instead be matched solely against the "real" lays on Li.

It's misleading and i'm increasingly feeling, grossly incorrect for inverse odds to be rendered when cross matching isn't on.

*it wouldn't touch any of the UI rendered inverse odds and instead be matched solely against the "real" lays on Li.

Here's the full list of the carnage. I assume the on/off cross-matching lottery was turned to off at this point. The list seems to be in a peculiar order.

Na Li         1.38    10.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    3.80
Na Li         1.31    191.23         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    59.28
Na Li         1.1    2.60         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    0.26
Na Li         1.33    2.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    0.66
Na Li         1.1    43.87         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    4.39
Na Li         1.3    7.05         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    2.12
Na Li         1.77    3.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    2.31
Na Li         2.14    103.16         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    117.60
Na Li         5.2    2,357.04         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    9,899.57
Na Li         7.2    3,959.74         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    24,550.39
Na Li         1.52    22.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    11.44
Na Li         1.15    1.80         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    0.27
Na Li         1.26    1.64         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    0.43
Na Li         4.8    2.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    7.60
Na Li         1.09    2.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    0.18
Na Li         2.12    3.00         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    3.36
Na Li         1.15    4.10         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    0.62
Na Li         1.34    12.19         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    4.14
Na Li         1.25    574.53         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    143.63
Na Li         1.3    63.74         Back    12-Aug-12 20:07    12-Aug-12 20:07    19.12

Only lets me post 20 lines. Anyway here's a few more of the juicy ones. Can only laugh at some really. Fancy having 10k on to win 600 on something that I make 33/1


Na Li        1.1    99.99        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    10
Na Li        1.44    8.11        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    3.57
Na Li        4.4    7.18        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    24.41
Na Li        3.55    2.84        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    7.24
Na Li        1.55    4.46        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    2.45
Na Li        1.25    5.74        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    1.44
Na Li        1.2    1.64        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    0.33
Na Li        1.66    2.11        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    1.39
Na Li        1.29    3.13        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    0.91
Na Li        1.14    341.98        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    47.88
Na Li        1.5    2.55        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    1.28
Na Li        1.05    6,502.36        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    325.12
Na Li        1.06    10,000.00        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    600
Na Li        1.64    210.98        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    135.03
Na Li        4.2    300        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    960
Na Li        1.5    19.15        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    9.58
Na Li        1.69    3.19        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    2.2
Na Li        5.6    3.13        Back    12/08/2012 20:07    12/08/2012 20:07    14.4

exactly, where are you getting matched at 34s and 26s which would have been safarova's inverse odds rendered in the UI.

i would argue that you would have a strong case if this bet had gone against you and the inverse odds rendering was on.

If I was sticking thru bets of £32K per click I think I'd be looking to commission someone to write me a bit of API software, you've been on here long enough to realise Betfair aren't going to do fa.

Bayes,

You were using your own custom-built software before weren't you? As Trevh said, you made a similar mistake a while ago and then added some code to insure against rogue prices being entered.

Why are you going through the website now?

What I'm after is something that stops your bet if it is more than x% out from the last price matched. Safarova had been sub 1.2 for a while and it is absolutely absurd to allow a bet of 32k liability at 26 at this point.

Do you mean betfair should have something that stops your bet? That really would be absurd.

Contrarian

My software was rewritten so that I can't change who I'm backing or laying. This is usually enough but last night the market flipflopped and I was inactive for a while. I got back involved but forgot that my software was set up to back lay Na Li only. I backed the 32.5k at 1.04 thinking I was backing Safarova when in fact I was backing Na Li.

Still very easy to solve. Just have it check that the runner I'm backing is odds on at last refresh, if not no bet. Can't lose 30k like this laying. Took my coders 3 hours to sort it today and it won't happen again on my part. Still utterly bonkers that a) it can happen for this amount of money (and someone benefited for the same amount for zero effort or skill) and  b) it can still happen to someone else at any time from now on for possibly more than this

Bayes just out of my own curiousity, after the match how did you feel.

On the one hand you must have been livid that the mistake was made and was allowed to happen. On the other hand if you hadn't made such a mistake and bet properly you would have been £30k down instead of in profit so you benefited from the mistake by over £30k (obviously subject to any further trading) which must feel rather quite pleasing.

So did you feel more annoyed or happy as the 2 lasses shook hands.

UA: As trite as it may sound I'm never really that interested in the actual result, I'm interested in the overall equity of my bets. Having a -30k trade in there is not entirely clever and that is what determines my mood. I had a really good day financially, but that kind of mistake is unforgivable, and comes straight off my bottom line. I was gutted, proper gutted. I reacted as all true pro's do and had an extra bottle of red!

why complain about betfairs system if you are using your own software, I dont get it?

I agree with Northbouy.

It was pilot error not changing player.

Pilot error, yes. My badly written software, yes. But should anyone be allowed to give away 30k so easily in a well formed market? It was 5-1 final set to Safarova. Laying her at 26.0 was quite obviously bonkers.

I don't think you should legislate against stupidity though. You could say the whole system thrives on people doing bonkers things, I mean a few people win good money on BF because many people are prepared to take or give away bonkers prices. I do know what you mean though, your example is extreme bonkers, but where would you draw the line of allowable bonkerism? x + 50%, x + 100%?

Personally I prefer the idea of an exchange where all prices/offers are accepted, and we all know what a shark pool it can be, but we have to learn to look after ourselves :)

They could let you set your own level of bonkerism Trev.

I'm talking about the normal interface there as I think the checks should all be client side. Anyone using the api would have to code it into their own software or have their vendor do it for them.

Aug 15, 2012 -- 11:36PM, Bayes. wrote:

Pilot error, yes. My badly written software, yes. But should anyone be allowed to give away 30k so easily in a well formed market? It was 5-1 final set to Safarova. Laying her at 26.0 was quite obviously bonkers.

Unless of course Safarova has just suffered a horrific injury, eg a broken leg, and you were trying to hoover everything in the market before everybody else.

"What I'm after is something that stops your bet if it is more than x% out from the last price matched. Safarova had been sub 1.2 for a while and it is absolutely absurd to allow a bet of 32k liability at 26 at this point"

"do know what you mean though, your example is extreme bonkers, but where would you draw the line of allowable bonkerism? x + 50%, x + 100%? "

I don't see how you can include this in BF'S software, since cases arise like this aren't bonkers but are quite regular and occur every day in horseracing: a horses may be well clear trading very low and gradually lower, then ties up in an instant and another horse gains momentum rapidly. Some hores will then pick up again and go low again. Everyday there will be at least 1 case of a winner which has gone from sub 1.1 to big odds maybe 20+, and then back to sub 1.1, all occurring in a couple of seconds.

Feck N. Eejit
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They could let you set your own level of bonkerism Trev.


Yes, although the point is that this protection is important for less sophisticated players who probably wouldn't set these levels anyway. If a guy comes on Betfair and finds it complicated, then making a mistake like that may see them leave, never to return again, sticking to traditional punting.

There is a problem with establishing floor prices. If a favourite in a football match is trading at 1.9 in play, I would be happy to have a huge amount up laying 1.7 in case someone makes a mistake (or is crazy enough to move the price that much). The problem is that I would get matched so infrequently, that it would not be worth my while. That's why trap bettors sit ridiculously far away from fair value; they have to make loads to compensate for getting nothing matched 99.x% of the time. I think trap betting is bad for the exchange because fun bettors will feel like they've been conned and leave.

In some of these cases Betfair could establish a floor. One way of doing this would be to take their own fixed odds bookie prices (with an increased margin), and use this as a floor to match silly bets against if the liquidity isn't there for the market itself to match it.  The good thing about that is that it would work if the exchange markets are relatively empty (meaning you can't get an idea of fair value by looking at market prices).

I think what I object to most is that these mistakes are only made possible because of Betfair's totally arbitrary two ladder system on two runner markets. My equivalent bet on a one ladder system (ie a lay of 1200 at 26.0) simply hits the first available back money and I lose the spread and perhaps a tick or two.

In other words why can't Betfair convert my 32k back at 1.04 into a far more sensible (given that the market is sub 1.1) lay of 1200 at 26.0

agree.  the only thing bonkers here is the OP.

I don't think my idea would work ir anyway Investor but there could be a changeable pre-event default value for newbies. Agree with the floor idea in your post but it's a waste of time expecting this rancid mob to change anything.

In some of these cases Betfair could establish a floor. One way of doing this would be to take their own fixed odds bookie prices (with an increased margin), and use this as a floor to match silly bets against if the liquidity isn't there for the market itself to match it

But that still wouldn't have worked in Bayes' case. As a previous poster mentioned, fair value in a tennis match would switch from 1.1 on player A to 1.1 player B in a couple of seconds if, say, player A suddenly suffered a serious injury. Betfair can't (I presume) be so active in their fixed odds market making that they would be able to respond to this sort of situation.

Yeah, it would only work if Betfair have odds up themselves.

At present they ask you to check if the odds are over 100, which I find a bit of a waste of time.

If they can do that, my feeling is that they should alert e.g. if your bet liability is 100 times more than yr average stake or if yr price requested is a certain multiple of the last matched price. These controls cd all be discretionary and user-side, like whether you want to see your profit net of commission or not.

Decades ago there was a tv drama about a girl band called the rock follies. At one point they stay with this porn king who's trying to get them to appear in a porn film. As he tells them the plot the follies look on horrified. When he's finished one of the girls asks "have you ever thought of making a film about straight sex". The porn king replies "We tried it once. We made a film about straight sex. We called it 'Straight Sex'. They stayed away in their droves. As far as I'm concerned, people who are into straight sex are all w@nkers".

I have this image in my head of a betfair big wig being asked if they've ever thought about having an interface that supports fair betting..............

what is a straight sex?

He means no pre-amble, no pretence, no smoke and mirrors and cr*p background music.  Both parties just get straight down to business and both end up satisfied.

a phrase that springs to mind is

'a fool and his money are parted easily'

I always thought it was a fool and his mummy.

I prefer the equally famous idiom

a lucky fool and his money are soon reunited

Easier to buy toilet paper in the supermarket or take it from the job.

Anyway, at least we've sorted out that Bayes is a big winner who chucks 30k at tennis match bets.

I wish i had had some of the 26's.