Betfair crash warnings?

[Johnedale]

Thanks Shaun, there are certainly a few points there that hadn’t occurred to me.

I think my trading can withstand an occasional worst case scenario. I’ve already had one or two oversized wins and losses due to coding mistakes and connection problems. Luckily I’m ahead so far but if things had gone the other way it wouldn’t have wiped me out.

[alexmr2]

Has Peter ever advised on this forum to stop trading?

When there are signs of exchange issues I've saw him post on Twitter advising to stop trading or be cautious a few times (probably one of the best platforms to get live updates). One of the reasons I assume is to try and publicly get the attention of BF to recognise the issue and improve their reliability otherwise lose out on customers

[Derek27]

Has Peter ever advised on this forum to stop trading?

When there are signs of exchange issues I've saw him post on Twitter advising to stop trading or be cautious a few times (probably one of the best platforms to get live updates). One of the reasons I assume is to try and publicly get the attention of BF to recognise the issue and improve their reliability otherwise lose out on customers

Have you got a link to where he categorically said: "stop trading"?

I've often advised being cautious. So has anyone who's had API problems - the first thing you do is warn others to be cautious. Advice to stop trading is another entity. Not everybody is trading a race that starts in 5 minutes. You could be trading a future event.

[rik]

i won more from outages than lost people panicking too much dont stake what you cant lose in the first place

[Kai]

i won more from outages than lost people panicking too much

As someone who is down 4 figures from outages and extremely lucky not to be in the 5 figure club, this is definitely true for certain traders and their respective trading approaches, but some approaches are simply more vulnerable to outages than others and would take forever to even out in the long run as many banks have to be burned through.

dont stake what you cant lose in the first place

I think that's exactly the core issue but easier said than done, because most people aren't prepared to lose their stakes, let alone their liabilities, which are two different things, so to fully cover it all I'd rather say "don't risk what you can't lose in the first place". Since "don't stake" can sound a bit misleading, a lay stake of 200 can have a 4 figure liability and a lot of people are NOT okay with risking that.

[spreadbetting]

dont stake what you cant lose in the first place

I think that's exactly the core issue but easier said than done, because most people aren't prepared to lose their stakes, let alone their liabilities, which are two different things, so to fully cover it all I'd rather say "don't risk what you can't lose in the first place". Since "don't stake" can sound a bit misleading, a lay stake of 200 can have a 4 figure liability and a lot of people are NOT okay with risking that.

If people are too stupid to figure out what their potential losses are by confusing stakes and liabilities maybe they really shouldn't be trading and probably wouldn't understand any advice in the first place.

[Kai]

dont stake what you cant lose in the first place

I think that's exactly the core issue but easier said than done, because most people aren't prepared to lose their stakes, let alone their liabilities, which are two different things, so to fully cover it all I'd rather say "don't risk what you can't lose in the first place". Since "don't stake" can sound a bit misleading, a lay stake of 200 can have a 4 figure liability and a lot of people are NOT okay with risking that.

If people are too stupid to figure out what their potential losses are by confusing stakes and liabilities maybe they really shouldn't be trading and probably wouldn't understand any advice in the first place.

I didn't want to put it bluntly like you did since everyone is a bit oversensitive nowadays

[rik]

are you taking the piss? stake liability who cares dont place bets you cant afford to lose
there might be examples of extremely bad luck, generally in my long experience 99% of people bitching about extrenal factors the real problem is bad or average strategies
i had a 1.02 lay with relatively large amount win so you win lose win lose if your strategies are good you will win more

[ShaunWhite]

If people are too stupid to figure out what their potential losses are by confusing stakes and liabilities maybe they really shouldn't be trading and probably wouldn't understand any advice in the first place.

The 'chlorine in the pool' attitude is all well and good but punters aren't alerted to the risk of using exchanges vs the cosy consumer protections offered at the bookies. And judging by how many basic questions there are on here that are addressed in the Ts&Cs then people generally don't inform themselves of the difference.

That said, assuming that the internet will never go down or that a site will never be temporarily unavailable is kind of neive and the more you trade the more that becomes an inevitability. When you place a bet and your balance reduces that's the position you're in, end of, and your always at the mercy of the tech and the race result as to whether you'll ever see your money again.

[Kai]

Case in point

I might as well be, but anyone notice that it's mostly preoff traders that complain about outages? Coincidence? I think not, some preoff trading approaches offer zero value if they end up inplay despite offering loads of value preoff, so yeah, you can neither expect to win long term like that nor can you really brandish it a terrible strategy just because it's not immune to random outages. From an inplay perspective I fully agree, for my inplay approaches I don't care about outages, if anything I may even win more longer term if I regularly get caught out, like with your extreme example of laying 1.02.

But whatever, it's a pointless discussion going nowhere and offtopic too since OP asked a specific automation related question.

[ShaunWhite]

are you taking the piss? stake liability who cares dont place bets you cant afford to lose

The issue is that new traders only look at the liability across a pair of bets rather than the liability on the first part, not realising there's situations where you can't get the second part on.