Betfair down time: Quit moaning and prepare

Daily Result: £67.75

Lost on both matches from Shanghai I got involved with today. Around £20 on the Davydenko Blake game - one of the strangest I've ever traded - and the rest on the Nadal v Robredo game. Mainly due to my deciding I'd lay Nadal at 1.0x for a lot of money near the end in the hope he'd lose a few points and I could finish nicely up on the day. He didn't, and nor did I!

During one of the games there was a "degradation in site performance" as Betfair call it and it seems many were not able to place bets through the website. It affected me in as much as the website just seemed to hang and then intermittently disappear. Service was a bit hit and miss for around 20 minutes.

Which led to the usual spate of posts on the Betfair forum about how Betfair had cost everyone so much money and how Betfair is "getting beyone a joke" as API users were still able to place bets hassle free and "pick off" the non-API users. In fact nothing less than you'd expect on a forum that appears to be increasingly filled with posts by people who have little better to do than moan.

Now don't get me wrong, service interruptions are annoying and have caused me to lose money in the past. But instead of continually moaning each time it happens surely it would be a better idea, frustrating as it is, to act to limit the impact of any future downtime like thousands of other people have already done.

Let's look at the facts for a minute. Betfair describes itself as a "software company" for good reason. In 2005 it processed more than 1 billion transactions - more than the combined number it had between 2000 and 2004. It has over 645,000 registered customers. Of which over 160,000 are active each month. It processes more transactions than most stock exchanges.

With that kind of activity going on, however annoying it is, one just has to accept that from time to time things are going to fuck up. And you might get caught in a position you don't want to be caught in. Yesterday's "degredation" wasn't even down to Betfair, but rather its ISP. Not that it really matters whose fault it was. The fact is there will never be 100% uptime. So prepare for it.

It truly staggers me that there are professional traders using Betfair, churning tens of millions of pounds, who are sat there using the Betfair website interface with a phone as their only back up. Who then start moaning that API users get an unfair advantage and are Betfair's "favourite" customers. For fuck's sake. There's plenty of free API programmes advertised on Betfair itself. Surely anyone taking out such large positions on Betfair can spare 30 seconds to download one? These free official Betfair API solutions, clearly advertised by Betfair, aren't just for "favourite" customers.

BetTrader PRO has a free trial. The Sports Trading Workstation has a complete free Starter version. Bet Angel Basic is also completely free. And can connect through either the website or the API. For big traders making tens of thousands of profit surely it's a no-brainer to have API access even if it's just as a back up for peace of mind. And I'm sure the £30 a month or so for an upgrade to the full version of each product wouldn't stretch the old budget too much either.

Failing that there is always the www2 option. How anyone can play for serious money on Betfair without being aware of this is beyond me. But it seems plenty are. Who, incidentally, never seem to moan when the API goes down and the website users "pick off" the API users. Funnily enough the API users don't moan about that either. But maybe that's because they've taken the precaution of having a website connection running in the background to the API connection, or maybe even on a different machine.

I'm sorry if it all sounds a little harsh. I do have some sympathy with people who place the odd bet, might be trying an in-running market for the first time, and get caught out by a techinical problem. But for traders who are relying on Betfair for their income who can't be bothered to do a bit of research and protect themselves a little I have much less sympathy. Of course, I realise sometimes a bet needs to be placed or cancelled immediately. I trade too. I know. But there's no reason why if either the API, or the website fails, you can't switch browsers, or mouse for a different computer in my case, and complete the transaction you wanted to with only a second or two delay.

Anyway, rant over. It just staggers me that people who regularly manage large positons on Betfair don't take the simplest of steps to help protect themselves. They may say why should they? Betfair should just work. I say be realistic. Betfair is a pretty amazing technical achievement and from time to time things will fuck up.

So why not prepare beforehand instead of moaning after? It might cost a little time. It will save some money.

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