Betfair announce end of trading then delete tweet

[Derek27]

I agree about voiding the whole market, everyone comes out breakeven. But I don't understand how BF gain from the current situation, the net money won and lost is the same, larger positions might mean larger commissions but in a curtailed market the overall volume which is the main driver for commission is reduced. Where's their upside?

Horse racing may be a sport that people don't trade until near the off, but think of all the other markets that will have a lot of open positions, resulting in massive amounts of money changing hands.

The trader that typically averages £2 a market could win or lose £50; the trader that would have won £100 could win or lose £2K. Once the twitter attacks have died down, the Betfair accountants must be secretly rejoicing in the extra commission!

[TradingBettor]

Hardly the end of trading, just poorly trained social media staff, probably an 18yo Romanian girl that's never even bet let alone truly understands the exchange.

[Derek27]

18yo Romanian girl...

Don't get me excited.

[Naffman]

I would never use Betfair again if I bet on a horse in the morning and then I came home and found my bet was void because some traders couldn't get out of positions.

Maybe Betfair should make these races commission free, even though traders are non the better at least it hurts BF too

[Euler]

Maybe have a cut off then. At T-15 minutes all bets will be void if the exchange crashes.

Double bubble, Betfair keep their bet commission and traders keep their shirt!

[Derek27]

Maybe Betfair should make these races commission free, even though traders are non the better at least it hurts BF too

It is quite piss-taking to screw up so badly and still charge commission for it!

[Naffman]

Maybe have a cut off then. At T-15 minutes all bets will be void if the exchange crashes.

Double bubble, Betfair keep their bet commission and traders keep their shirt!

I dont agree with this but it seems like I'm the minority so I'll keep quiet now

[weemac]

I don't agree either. It's beyond preposterous that everyone in the world who placed a bet with a willing counterpart at a point in time prior to an outage should have anything voided. In any case, it'd just open the door to a scenario similar to the supposed 'football floodlights' scandal, where if things aren't going your way, just initiate a ddos attack or pay a BF monkey to pull the plug and get out of jail free.

What Euler, and others, seem to be seeking, is protection for traders' positions whilst not giving a hoot about non-traders' positions. Are traders the "special ones"?

As if betfair making extra money from such a solution somehow makes everything alright.

[ShaunWhite]

When it comes to straight betting, and as I assume there's usually more losers than winners, then voiding bets would probably get the popular vote on any given event. On every outage there must be hoards of losing punters praying 'void it void it void it'.

But as a blanket policy there's probably a lot of psychology about whether a break even punter would want all bets voided or all bets honoured, Prospect Theory probably. If you're in the tiny % of profitable straight punters you'd say honoured, but a policy favouring the interests of the other 95% losing customers, would be to void. The only thing that's bad news for everybody is uncertainty about the rules.

[ShaunWhite]

brimson25, 614 views so far! You've spooked a lot of people.
My 'Brexit Cancelled' April Fools thread only got 298 !

You're now the Clickbait King.

[northbound]

I’m all for: no voiding, all bets stand.

What’s puzzling is that Betfair takes this same view when it comes to horses, but they void without any problem when it comes to football and VAR.

[brimson25]

I'll take it. I'm king of something.

In case it is some solace to those I annoyed with this thread, I nearly broke my back last night falling over while playing football with my daschund, and I've been up all night vomiting.

I like to think that settles the cosmic account for this thread.

As of this morning, I don't care in the slightest about betfair, but am merely hoping for a quick and painless death.

[napshnap]

If only all traders will evolve into bettors there will be no conflict of interests.
I mean, look at your lifetime betting history, maybe you are good at laying and suck at backing (closing your posititon) or visa versa. Of course it will take some time to shape your trading strategies into betting strategies and your pl graphs will look like a roller coaster, but you'll generate more commission, less premium charges (especially when you'll reach the 60 % charge level) and less stress cause of exchange fkups.

Traders - evolve!

ps. Except, of 1-2 tick scalpers, they can't evolve, they are like trilobites of exchange ecosystem

ps2. Strange, no one pointed yet that it's a good tone to have an account in a few other places to close your position (betdaq, some trustworthy bookie, like pinnace and others).

[pythonic]

Sorry, but voiding entire markets because of technical problems later on would be good for traders but terrible for about everyone else. Arbers and straight punters just could not rely on betfair anymore. But traders really want to trade against exactly those people, not just against each other.
It might be an unpopular opinion around here, but I think a voiding policy would ultimately turn out to be the worst option for everyone.
The best solution would be if betfair invested a bit in the platform to reduce these incidents to a minimum.

[Euler]

Here is the dilemma that Betfair face, generally speaking your Joe punter is a loser and pumps the exchange full of losing money and there (were?) a lot of them, by number. But traders provide the bulk of liquidity by far that allows the punters to get on in reasonable quantity at great prices and bets will be honoured. So who do you piss off the most?