^if you're playing with those kinds of money giving up that many ticks due to a sense of match "momentum" would seem like a bit of an unlikely mistake to make.

unless you're just incredibly loaded and playing at it, I guess.

Sure in horse racing where the odds can change massively and legitimately from second to second... Doesn't happen in football (as the market should be suspended for goals, red cards etc.)

Shapeshifter,

There's little point in comparing IR racing to IR football, as far as these sorts of odds movements are concerned. In 99.x% of the time, highly liquid IR football markets, like the one under discussion, move in roughly straight lines, with a tick or two of movement deviation. Your putative trader, looking to close out, or open a position because he had detected a change in momentum would know this, and therefore know that a large bet placed 4 ticks deep into the market, say, would very quickly get matched. The only reason to sweep everything from 1.8 down to 1.5, say, as happened on Saturday in the Liverpool match, is if you know that you have about 1 second to do so (because you're trying to beat the Betfair suspend!).

in practice there's so little that can happen in a football match which will make taking everything from 2.4 down to 2.0 a legitimate move without also causing a suspension and market reformation.

obviously, horse racing is different.

yeah of course, but we see the swings also when: quick-pic player sees a goal scored, ball in the net, places bet, goal disallowed, Betfair DO suspend.

Which is what happened in the Liverpool match.

You know what...a few things have emerged over the past decade:

a) people expect everything for free ("FACEBOOK PUT ADS ON THE RIGHT COLUMN OF MY PAGE!!!!" they cried).  They boast about abilities to download music and films for free.  Well, as someone that has been involved in music since 1981, I can tell you that the 'free music you download'...actually sounds like crap compared to how it really sounds (sorry, too tired to explain compression/limiting and mastering).

b) people expect the internet to be flawless.  They expect platforms to run perfectly 24 hours a day.  they expect their 'demand' television to be there whenever they want it.  They expect Betfair never to be down or go down (people scream when an outage costs them (I lost 70% of a small bank once - I just don't expose myself as much-lesson learnt).   They are awfully quiet when they profited).

c) and they expect those who have their 'finger on the buzzer' to be 'perfect'.

In 1999, I had $50,000 U.S. in play with margin when I lost my feed from Montreal that went to Houston and back to the NASDAQ Floor.  By the time I got from my desk to the phone to make a trade directly, I lost thousands.

Though they couldn't reimburse me, I did get some of my transaction charges dropped. 

Still, the reality was that feeds went down.

That said, yes, betfair do have a responsibility to keep track of the situation 'frame by frame' and look at the situation.  But anyone that has been involved with a horse race that wasn't suspended properly due to a technical hitch knows it takes ten to fifteen minutes to sort then conciliate then post the decision.

Could they do that during a football match?  Not a chance. 

This platform will never be perfect.  But if you add up the number of suspends, goals, whatever during the year, I think the number of times there has been a slip up (human or technical) is equivalent to a blip.

Sorry, betfair, like most technology, will not be perfect.  The alternative to the internet - small pieces of paper that go through a scanner and can be crumpled up when things don't go your way.

The betfair delay on the India/England ODI (5 secs) is at least 3 seconds too short. Obviously no suspends, but hoovering on every wicket or boundary.

The betfair delay on the India/England ODI (5 secs) is at least 3 seconds too short. Obviously no suspends, but hoovering on every wicket or boundary.

On the Sky pics.

Erm, I know that Darlo...as it is on the football. Point is, maybe the delay should reflect that. If it's 8 seconds on the Sky football, reckon it should be the same in the cricket. Just another example of fast pics/people at the ground beating the delay.

Sky 409 about 6 seconds behind the analogue radio for the ODI.

I don't use it to bet. I get the Sky through an XBox and via internet connection hence why it's so slow. Cricket it's normally about a ball or two behind, but I've noticed in football that a goal has been scored and I don't see it for another minute.

TheInvestor2.  Do you have an account manager?

Yes I saw the slow suspend viva, easily more than 5 seconds behind radio, but I wasn't hoovered and couldn't see any evidence of it in graphs. Did you get done viva?

Yes Shapeshifter, got a meeting next week, will see if I can get some more evidence together, and make some suggestions, ask questions etc.

Two points:

a) 5 seconds behind radio would work within the delay.

b) If a third party is being used to 'trigger' the 'suspend' (i.e. Running Ball), it would need constant supervision and review by Betfair to avoid third party fraud.

c) the only way I can see 'big players' (and Betfair (on behalf of their clients) if they are using a third party) protecting themselves would be to collectively come up with an independent way to 'time stamp' goals.

Until then, it is 'buyer beware' or increasing the delay OR...

Increasing the delay if the bet is above a certain threashold (i.e. 8 seconds UNDER £xxx / or 8 seconds for the portion under the threashold and 10 seconds for the balance above the threashold.

Not "SUSPEND" - Just limit the amount a person can fire in at once under 8 seconds.  It will make hoovering on football less attractive.

What about giving betfair users themselves the possibility to "vote" for a suspend.  If there is a quorum of votes then the match gets suspended automatically.  If you use your vote frivolously then it gets taken away

An interesting idea, but, I fear, massively open to abuse.

a revolution is coming! the tables are starting to turn

SHAPESHIFTER     Joined: 04 Apr 03
Replies: 2574 13 Jan 13 18:31 
Not "SUSPEND" - Just limit the amount a person can fire in at once under 8 seconds.  It will make hoovering on football less attractive.


Your quoted suggestion seems to be in effect to allow the hoovering of managed markets upon a material event occurring on some occasions but to limit the amount any individual can submit to those markets within the standard bet placement delay.

Regardless of any objections on principle, I would observe that there appear to be some practical flaws with your suggestion.

Firstly, unless £xxx varies with price, the use of xxx certainly isn't sufficient in itself to indicate that the limit would vary with price, there is a huge variation in the potential takeout.  To the parties concerned, I suspect that the hoovering of £xxx @ 50 on the draw when a late injury time equalizer is scored would be of rather more significance than the hoovering of £xxx @ 1.01 on the leading team as a result of that team scoring an additional goal.

In addition, you stated just limit the amount a person can fire in at once under 8 seconds. I'll presume that by at once, you mean over a set period of time of perhaps 1-2 seconds. If not, your suggestion would be rendered almost completely useless by the ability of a single user to submit, with the use of technology, a great number of bets of £xxx within a fraction of a second.

Regardless of how successfully any individual limit of £xxx could be applied, that limit would do little for the losing party or parties if multiple bets of £xxx, submitted upon a material event by different parties, hit the market before it was suspended.

Ignoring the hoovering issue and again based on the assumption that by at once you meant within a set time period, your suggestion would also seem to disadvantage the larger players against customers submitting smaller bets.

Multiple smaller players would have up to, depending on feed delay, the set time period referred to above to gain queue position on anyone who wished to submit a bet greater than £xxx. That would not be welcomed by the larger players and would likely result in less liquidity.

Where bf are not confident that they can consistently suspend managed markets within the set bet placement delay upon a material event occurring live but are confident that they can suspend those markets within an additional 2 seconds of such an event on the overwhelming majority of occasions, I would suggest that it would be a better idea to increase the bet placement delay by 2 seconds in those markets or if possible utilise a faster feed.