Problems with Bots on Betfair

[DeepBlueDevilFish]

Not sure if this is quite the correct place for this thread but I thought I'd put it in here. Seems that there was a race at the weekend where all the bots on Betfair got stung for a serious amount of money. £100,000 is reported. The race in question was the 3:40 at Newton Abbott yesterday. There's a long thread on the Betfair forum about it. Apparently one guy who was running a bot ended up with a £40K liability from a starting balance of £200 ! It seems what happened was that the horse Catch The Bug was a non-runner but this wasn't picked up by Betfair and it had a declared 0% reduction factor. The normal human bettors knew about this and kept the price low on Catch The Bug so that the Bots kept laying on a book that they calculated as being over 100%. All the figures on the screen were green so the Bots just kept going and Betfair let them because they didn't know about the liabilities that were being built up. But hey presto when the non-runner was removed - Red everywhere ! :eek Question is should Betfair foot the bill or should they go after the money from the Bot operators who weren't paying enough attention about what was going on ? Suspect the former as Betfair would not want the adverse publicity of ruining some of their best customers (ie. the bot operators). Interesting stuff I thought. What a mess for Betfair to sort out !

[GaF]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair

It seems what happened was that the horse Catch The Bug was a non-runner but this wasn't picked up by Betfair and it had a declared 0% reduction factor.

Not a big Horse Racing man - so bear with me - does a "0% reduction factor" mean that there is no rule 4? So all of the bets on the NR were voided, leaving the bots with losses on the rest of the field and no rule 4 to compensate? Why would there be no rule 4? Was this the official BDP bots or unofficial ones? Regardless, do the bots not have a stop loss? (i.e. a maximum stake on any individual race - user defined) That's madness!!! Not betfairs fault, but the negligence of the bot developers/operators, surely. Does Betfair have a duty to pick up on NR within a certain amount of time? Don't your highstreet bookies sometimes delay putting NR in, to make their odds look more attractive, then hit with a rule 4 after the market is reformed? If bookies can delay, then surely betfair isn't responsible for an accidental delay..... Anyway, as you say, interesting - I'm off to betfair to find the thread......

[GaF]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair Ah - click....gotit..... Hmmm.....no way someone with £200 in their account can be liable for £40,000. They don't have a credit account, haven't applied for a credit account and haven't asked for credit - Betfair are, I presume, not licenced credit brokers - the user can only be liable for the money in their account - this has to be one for betfair to pick up......

[Datapunter]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair right, here's the maths : imagine a 3 horse race where the odds are : Horse 1 : 1.03 Horse 2 : 34.00 Horse 3 : 34.00 A book of 103% effectively an arbitrage on the Lay side. In your account you have 500 units, you lay all 3 horses with 360 , 11 and 11 Horse 1 , profit = 360 , liability = 10.80 Horse 2 , profit = 11 , liability = 363 Horse 3 , profit = 11 , liability = 363 so the liability for each bet is smaller that your balance and you can place these bets, one by one or simultaniously. The effect is profit all around : Horse 1 wins : lose 10.80 win 11 and 11 = 10,64 after commission Horse 2 wins : lose 363 win 360 and 11 = 7.60 after commission Horse 3 wins : lose 363 win 360 and 11 = 7.60 after commission so profit all around AND your balance is still showing the original 500 units, so you can do this again and again and again. Lets say you do it 10 times. You are now showing : Horse 1 : 106.4+ ( layed 10 times 360, profit 3600 , liability 108 ) Horse 2 : 76+ ( layed 10 times 11 , profit 110 , liability 3630 ) Horse 3 : 76+ ( layed 10 times 11 , profit 110 , liability 3630 ) You are thinking wow , these guys that are backing at those prices are crazy, they are giving money away. And basically they are. Now, Horse 1 is taken out of the market as a non-runner without a reduction factor. That means the bets on Horse 1 are voided, stakes are returned as if the bets where never placed. But the bets on Horse 2 and 3 remain in place. ( at least thats how i understand it, please correct me if i'm wrong ! ) You are now showing : Horse 2 : -3520 ( layed 10 times 11 , profit 110 , liability 3630 ) Horse 3 : -3520 ( layed 10 times 11 , profit 110 , liability 3630 ) A lot more negative all around than your balance of 500. Obviously on the side of the people backing it only works if you are absolutely sure the horse will be taken out. Otherwise you run the risk of having to pay-out should the horse actually run. Just use a football market with 3 outcomes and fill in the numbers. ( just make sure you don't press submit :lol )

[DeepBlueDevilFish]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair That's exactly it DP. And of course the people who were backing knew the horse had been taken out but the Bots didn't. So as long as they kept backing the non-runner to ensure the lay percentage remained above 100% the bots kept doing their stuff, they knew they were going to get their non-runner money back and they could continue to make a profit on the other runners. It was a licence to print money and a real free-fall feeding frenzy. About 10 times the usual amount was traded compared to a normal race of that size and stature (about £500,000 apparently). Loads of people were troughing it, taking their chance to get their own back on the bots which are not well liked over there. :lol

[PAULM03]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair IMO using bots on betfair is cheating and if anyone has buggered up bigstyle then that's their problem. It's incredibly difficult to have any sympathy with them.

[Datapunter]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair I have no sympathy for the losers in this, either way, you play the game, take the outcome. But how is using a bot cheating ? The bot doesn't do anything you can't do manually. It just does it faster. Nothing more than a tool. So if people who use tools cheat, then we are all guilty of that. Everyone using a database, spreadsheet, calculator, forum, script, double monitor, or whatever other tools is then cheating compared to the person not using those tools. Granted it is a 'mean' tools to use and not within the reach of most people. Nevertheless a tool and no more. If anyone was cheating in this it is actually the people on the Back side. They are the ones who used the non-runner information to manipulate the market. In this case at the expense of the bots, or so it seems. But what about joe punter who happened to look at the race at the right time, saw the arbitrage, and layed the field manually. He is also out of pocket. Did he cheat ? No just saw an opportunity for easy money and it backfired. Too bad.

[DeepBlueDevilFish]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair I'm not sure you could even actually accuse the people on the back side of cheating as it wasn't really insider information that the horse was a non-runner and it wasn't them that set the 0% reduction factor either. They were just working with better information that was readily available to everyone against bots that were working automatically and didn't have up to date information.

[PAULM03]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair I can see your point of view with the cheating DP and am tempted to agree, but I just can't help feeling it's an underhand way of using betfair. At least we can agree that the losers deserve no sympathy

[Datapunter]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair they get as much sympathy as the bookies get :lol

[GaF]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair The bots lost fair and square because they didn't use all the information available in the market place. No loser here deserves any sympathy and the rules, which are known, need to be applied. However, there is a major structural flaw in the system here - Betfair does not offer credit and is I presume not licenced to offer credit. Because of this, I don't believe anyone should be liable for any sums greater than what they had in their account and I don't see any way that these debts could be enforcable (legally). But Betfair urgently have to address the issue so that the system is changed so that it can't happen again. Ultimately, the failing is Betfair's, because they allowed themselves to be exposed to potentially large bad debts through a system that didn't work properly.

[DeepBlueDevilFish]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair It's a difficult one Gota. Because if that guy who only had £200 in his account when his bot went mental had had say £50K then do you think Betfair should refund him ? He's not ran up any debts and Betfair hasn't operated as a credit company in this case but he's still lost £40K. I think Betfair have to take the hit (and I believe they have done so) regardless of whether the bot operators ran up a debt or not because like you say it was a flaw in their system / staff for not spotting the problem. The last time I looked at the thread on Betfair it was clear that anyone who had ran up a debt because of this have had that debt written off but it's not clear if say that guy has lost all of his £200 and anyone else operating a bot all of their balance as well.

[GaF]

Re: Problems with Bots on Betfair Hmmm....I view it as a flaw because it allows people to run up a libility for more than they have in their account, not because the bots lost. However, in this specific case, the information was in the Marketplace and the bots lost because they didn't "read" the information that was available - so my view is that the bot operators should be responsable to the limit of what they had in their account. So the guy who had £200 in his account but lost £40,000 should be liable for £200. If he had had £50,000 in his account, then he should have lost £40,000. It's not betfair's fault that his bot didn't "read" the information available in the market. It is betfairs fault that a liability for more than was available in his account was run up. As Datapunter says - you play the game, you take your chances.