Leopardstown - 14:00 - Christmas Hurdle - Voler la vedette

[spreadbetting]

I've been having a good nose around and the most plausible explanation to me comes back to this integer error.

I saw this link which explains how it can cause errors. How many sites out there have a similar error that isn't trapped?

http://weblogs.asp.net/dvravikanth/arch ... sited.aspx

It does seem to be the most likely explanation, I thought I saw 22M in the box when I spotted it, but if you look at the youtube video someone stuck up the market ended with around 20,660,000 left unmatched and 800,000+ matched it all adds up. I guess someone should download the fracsoft data as that should confirm things better.

Beggars belief that betfair hadn't stuck in error trapping as the integer problem should have been anticipated and I remember having problems when the betid's reached the limit. Even more surprising no bedroom coder hadn't tried exploiting it for fun in the 11 years betfair's been around.

[mugsgame]

There are several observations that I want to make.

1) At no time in the race did the horse warrant a LAY price of 29. Almost anyone at all with the tiniest bit racing knowledge could see that the horse was always travelling well within itself. In fact I would go as far as saying that it should not even traded bigger than SP.
2) Who would "hack" an account and place this bet? And why 29? Why not 1000.
3) This exposes exactly understands how the market (exchanges) work within the celebrity racing pundits. I have heard hardly anything coherent. Except for the people who you would expect to be in the know. Graham Cunningham springs to mind. Big Mac has once again shown how little he knows (no surprise there).
4) This reaks of the cross matching bot. The way the market behaved shows this. At no time did it go over/under round. Hence the 1.04 on Mourad.
5) Betfairs customer service was once again bought into focus and showed to be badly lacking.
6) I had a substantial green on VDV. Am I disappointed? No not really. As a long term Betfair "customer" I knew immediately that the race would be voided. It is exactly the sort of "poor betting and customer experience" that I have come to expect from the world's leading betting exchange.

[payuppal]

As a matter of interest, what should Betfair's response be, in your opinion?

[mugsgame]

As a matter of interest, what should Betfair's response be, in your opinion?

They should tell the truth.

I still cannot understand why a peer to peer betting exchange can have ANY liabilities.

The circumstances in which they are hiding behind to not add up.

[andyfuller]

2147483647

The number 2,147,483,647 (two billion one hundred forty-seven million four hundred eighty-three thousand six hundred forty-seven) is the eighth Mersenne prime, equal to 231 − 1. It is one of only four known double Mersenne primes.

Was the stake not £21m rather than £2.1b?

[payuppal]

They should tell the truth.

I still cannot understand why a peer to peer betting exchange can have ANY liabilities.

The circumstances in which they are hiding behind to not add up.

I certainly agree they should tell the truth.

So far as I can see, for it to be a customer error, not only would there have to be a fat finger on both odds and stake but also a similtaneous glitch that allowed the customer to bet far more than was in their account.

Unless there was £600 million in their account, which I find unlikely.

So can't see how it could be a customer error.

IMO, either a very disgruntled techie, or a cross matching error, as you mentioned

[jimrobo]

isn't it in pence andy?

[spreadbetting]

As a matter of interest, what should Betfair's response be, in your opinion?

Bit hard to say considering Betfair haven't given, or are likely to give, people the full facts. They need to start being a bit more professional and transparent in their approach.

I'm sure the majority of players realised there was something wrong and never any realistic chance of being paid out once a £600M liability bet went in. But Betfair rather than do anything like suspend sit and let the market play out???? They then drag things out as long as possible and finally bomabard us with poorly written half hearted apologies that don't even clearly state why the market was voided.


£21,474,836.47 Andy

[andyfuller]

isn't it in pence andy?

Was just checking you were paying attention - honest

[Euler]

Further update to 2pm Leopardstown race

Firstly, we would like to re-iterate that anyone betting in-running in yesterday’s Leopardstown race clearly received a very poor customer service and betting experience. We apologise once again for this.

We have identified the issue and replicated it in a test environment last night. A fix was applied overnight, and is now subject to rigorous testing. A further update on this will be made today.

Contrary to some media speculation, we can confirm that all in-running bets on this market would have been voided, had Voler La Vadette won or lost. There was never any chance of the account in question profiting yesterday. The account in question was also immediately suspended after the Leopardstown race.

There has been some criticism from customers, and in the press, that Betfair took too long to void. Quite simply, we made the decision after we were in full possession of the all the facts and input from the relevant internal departments. A decision was then made to void in accordance with our terms and conditions.

We will update when more information is available.

[Iron]

'The account in question was also immediately suspended after the Leopardstown race.'

It would be interesting to know on what grounds it was suspended, and if Betfair has decided to hang onto the customer's deposited money, for safe keeping...

Jeff

[hgodden]

As entertaining as the whole thing has been (though I do have big sympathy for those here that thought they may have hit the jackpot) I don't think this episode has told us anything we didn't know already about betfair, except that they have some kind of technical flaw.

The lay money at 29 clearly didn't exist. Backing it is no different really than going to the cash point expecting to see a few grand in your account only to see a few trillion there.

I don't think the cross matching bot caused it. It may well have reacted to it and pushed the favourite in more than it should, which then is betfair's liability, but if another betfair user had a cross matching bot of their own and the 'bets' at 29 were voided due to a website error, then surely they'd be expecting the rest of the bets on the market to be voided, if not it would just open up another loop hole for criminals to exploit (i.e. do something to one runner which they know would get voided but take advantage of how that would affect the other runners if they weren't also avoided.)

I've been saying for years how active betfair are in their markets but they didn't cause this, other than perhaps poor security / technical stuff.

P.S. those of you who thought you had massive wins, I applaud your calmness over this, I don't think I'd be quite so dignified if it had happened to me

[Iron]

The lay money at 29 clearly didn't exist.

Possibly, but then why did Betfair say that the customer had exceeded their allowed liability, rather than saying that they bet with money they didn't have?

Jeff

[hgodden]

The lay money at 29 clearly didn't exist.

Possibly, but then why did Betfair say that the customer had exceeded their allowed liability, rather than saying that they bet with money they didn't have?

Jeff

Isn't that the same thing?

[spreadbetting]

Betfair wouldn't have a clue about the customer's assets, Jeff.

It came out in the Findlay case that they were offering credit to certain clients. I'm sure plenty of the larger syndicates prefer their cash earning interest in their bank accounts rather than Betfairs.