betfair madness

Why wasn't it flagged up immediately to someone who could suspend the market? Are there no sanity checks in place?
 
I have spent a lot of this year away from Betfair-a Rolls Royce product with Ryanair customer service values.
 
Absolute nonsense from betfair this won't be the end of the matter court cases all round
 
Court cases? sorry but you don't stand a hope in hell.

Betfair have the power to do what they like, when you signed up you entered a contract and one of those terms would have stated that Betfair are liable for any breach of contract in which allowing a person to go over their agreed liability is a breach - malfunction or not.

Whether that persons account was Betfair's or a genuine person they are the only ones in the driving seat, the issue here is between them and this person so to be quite frank whether its morally right or wrong that this account happens to be funded by Betfair is just another reason why you're all part of the system.

People suggesting they will quit? yeah, you tell me one punter whose downed tools for more than a week without coming back. They've got you wrapped round their little finger and half of you blind twats can't see it, convinced by the idea that you are your on bookmaker.

Take a look at the forum over there, full of absolute factory workers who I wouldn't acknowledge in real life, I pitty them to the core and bringing their stupid ethics over here about "court action" "leaving the website" "Betfair are in the wrong" etc.

I tell you something though, I wouldn't degrade my self, my families reputation to work under that companies name as I have more self dignity and respect to honour anything but the £ sign, everything that comes of that website is downright laugable.

Go on, go and enjoy taking Betfair to court! - stupid stupid people.
 
Well, you don't have to worry about degrading yourself, Brucie, because you've stated on here that you don't gamble.
 
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Yes Bruce carry on talking drivel you imbecile.

And regarding betfairs t & c's works both ways

9. Minimum and maximum bet stakes
Depending on the product or type of market you are betting on and depending on the currency that you are betting in, there are minimum bet sizes that apply. These minimum bet sizes are subject to change and may differ depending on whether you are on our site or using the Telephone Betting Service. You are not permitted to place bets or try to place bets that are below the minimum bet size threshold and doing so may result in your account being permanently closed.

Your betting limit is represented by the lesser of: (i) your 'Available to Bet' balance shown in your account and (ii) your ‘Exposure Limit’ (which is available in the “Account Summary” tab in “My Account”). However in the event that we process an offer for a bet or the acceptance of a bet in an amount outside the applicable thresholds, such bet will nevertheless stand.
 
You can't get paid, simply for the fact that the price was unrealistic based on the horses chance. Now lets assume that there was over £29m at 5.9 instead of 29, you'd have to say the money behind the volume of betting was intelligent and constructive.

If anything, the people who are going out there way to try and claim court cases are nothing more than gambling looters, they saw a chance and took it but how they can expect to get paid is beyond a joke.
 
It's been suggested they needed to waith for the markets to close before they made an announcement.
 
Bruce_Savage said:
You can't get paid, simply for the fact that the price was unrealistic based on the horses chance. Now lets assume that there was over £29m at 5.9 instead of 29, you'd have to say the money behind the volume of betting was intelligent and constructive.

If anything, the people who are going out there way to try and claim court cases are nothing more than gambling looters, they saw a chance and took it but how they can expect to get paid is beyond a joke.
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Sorry so how about the people that have laid 1000/1 faves by mistake when the gate opened at wolves and in one case lost 250k. Is it an error cos it was unrealistic. No they had to wear it as betfair said it was matched. You can't have one rule for one and another for others.
 
Kauto said:
And regarding betfairs t & c's
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A little off-topic, but could I ask ................
does a company's T & C's preclude some individual customer from bringing a court case against that company? I'm no lawyer, but I don't think that it does; my understanding is that a company can put whatever they like in their T & C's but that doesn't prevent some customer initiating a court case ( and winning it) if those T & C's are inequitable.

Regarding Betfair's response, are we to believe that some individual/syndicate did have 600 million in their account? Or is it that Betfair extended a huge credit line to that customer ( they have done so with a few "special" customers in the past)............... and that their excuse of the exposure limit being broken through technical malfunction actually is true?
An open examination by an independent body/commission of this entire matter would help clarify the issue.
 
Is it technically possible to have one malfunction for just one price in one race from dozens on the day? I'd have thought that if there was a 'malfunction' it would have affected the entire race's prices, if not the entire card. And I do mean 'technical malfunction', not 'human error'!
 
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Sean Boyce's thoughts on the matter.

Betfair has a hard earned reputation as a good and fair operator. The company’s public relations have been an object lesson to others in the industry. Right now though the company faces its biggest ever challenge. The decision to void bets on the 2.00 at Leopardstown on 28th December could be a watershed moment in Betfair’s history. Betfair must act now to protect that reputation and they should immediately invite in an independent body to review what went on. I think that should involve the Gambling Commission, in fact I would say that the Gambling Commission should already be ensconced in Betfair’s head office making sure they get to the bottom of this.

Let’s be clear there is no scandal yet. The decision to void bets may be shown to be entirely justifiable. The bottom line though is that punters’ bets to the tune of £23 million are not being paid. It’s the biggest disputed bet settlement of all time. The Gambling Commission has a remit to ensure that gambling transactions are ‘open and fair’. We need to see some openness from Betfair in order to ensure what happened was fair. If that judgement is left to an internal Betfair investigation that would constitute a scandal.

The Gambling Commission has been a sleeping giant since its inception. This is a perfect opportunity for it to show its worth.

Betfair has said that the bet in question was offered by a single customer who had ‘exceeded his exposure limit’ due to a ‘technical fault’. Well, I’m sorry but that’s nowhere near enough information. They have gone on to state that this individual has no commercial link to Betfair.

This public statement from Betfair effectively rules out what must surely be the most logical explanation. My initial reaction was that only Betfair’s own in house ‘bot’ could be operating with that degree of financial latitude. Only Betfair’s own (under reported) trading activity within markets could operate with effectively a ‘no limit’ credit facility ‘underwritten’ by the company. The public statements already made rule this out though. Betfair have said it wasn’t them or anyone acting for them. So theory one goes out the window.

Unfortunately the public statements of the company, who have refused various interview requests, do not give answers to several pressing questions.

We are, apparently, dealing with a single customer who somehow managed to ‘exceed his exposure limit’ and get that bet fed into the market, and failed to cancel that bet, and watched as Betfair too allowed the bet to stand for several minutes during the race. The line that I’ve seen quoted that 29 was available as the mare crossed the line and was therefore ‘clearly wrong’ is of course nonsense. The odds in question were offered throughout most of the race. Besides which the ‘palpable error’ rule does not hold in the exchange environment. If it did we could all claim back for every misclick we’ve ever made.

The rogue/phantom bet then somehow managed to match the offers of scores of backers. What was the backers money being matched by? Thin air? It is a fundamental principle of the exchange platform that offers are matched only against available equivalent counter offers. If c£800,000 of backers bets were matched, and they clearly were, what were they matched against?

If the liability of greater than £22 million was outside of the customers exposure limit was it also outside of his available funds? If the answer to that is yes, then how on earth did it happen? How and why could Betfair keep trading that day against the knowledge that it was possible for legitimate customers to have their bets matched by fantasy money?

Unless of course this is a regular occurrence? Unless some accounts are allowed to operate on the never never on the basis that their M.O. means they will never lose? Problem is who picks up the tab when such bots go bad?

A forensic accounting investigation is now imperative. The Gambling Commission needs to find out everything there is to know about this particular account. How has it operated in the past? Does it have a track record of exceeding its available funds? If so, how was that possible? Who underwrites it? Who is responsible for any errors it makes?

Of course there may be a lot of smoke here and no fire at all. It may be that a small scale private customer tried to bet £2 and somehow that got converted into £20 million and somehow his account exposure limit was over ridden, and somehow his available funds limit was overridden and somehow real money was matched against his imaginary money and somehow this was allowed to continue for minutes and it was all down to a technological fault which applied only to his account and not one other account in the whole system. It’s possible. I do think it’s in Betfair’s own interests though to invite in a trusted, independent and objective third party to confirm what happened.

I’ve been shocked at how sanguine the media has been about all this. There are millions of pounds of punters’ winnings at stake here. Let’s hope the Gambling Commission takes this a bit more seriously than some pundits have
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Sean Boyce is excellent at these things, he's very articulate, you give him a blank page and he'd make a solid case either way but I don't think you'd rely on him on giving a straight forward answer as I think he tends to come to a conclusion based on the way the winds blowing rather than looking through things without emotional involvement on the matter.

Good read nevertheless.
 
I think we will be seeing calls for more regulation of the exchanges over the next few weeks especially in relation to bots and their secondary means of making a profit from punters.
Their former education manager has an interesting blog-I think it's called sportismadeforbetting.com.
 
They're paying out on win bets struck prior to the failure, and all bets in the place market.

How generous of them.
 
Do you think they should pay out on all the bets? Some punters win out of this - those who laid the winning bets before the technical glitch and those laying winning bets in the place market have been let off.
 
I don't, as it happens, but I think paying those who backed a winner before the error is the very least they can do and I don't like how the statement reads - almost as if they're patting themselves on the back for "going beyond" the Gibraltar Gambling Commissioner's recommendations.

You're quite right that those pre-error layers are getting let off, but I would imagine it would be a right can of worms for them to go after that money, both from a technical and a PR point of view.
 
Speaking of betfair madness well done to Rory de Largy on helping a betfair multiples punter turn £3 into something like £80000.
 
LUKE said:
Speaking of betfair madness well done to Rory de Largy on helping a betfair multiples punter turn £3 into something like £80000.
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Could you copy and paste the story on here? I can't access any Betfair related sites off this IP.
 
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