Betfair data charges

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DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

I'm running a scalping bot on horses and sometime the transactions are over 300 per race and am worried about going over 1000 transactions an hour

I've searched here, google and Betfair for a definitive answers to see if I will be charged for going over 1000 in an hour but get conflicting answers

Someone on the Betfair forum said you don't get charged the provided a link to the T&Cs but that says:
Transaction Charges
This section only applies to the Betfair Exchange.

In addition to any commission payments, Betfair customers will be charged a transaction fee if they process a large number of transactions on either the main Betting Exchange or on Exchange Games.

NB - Transaction Charges only apply to customers placing or editing more than 1000 bets an hour (although in the case of Exchange Games, the editing of bets is not included). The number of bets placed across the Betting Exchange and Exchange Games are calculated separately for the purposes of calculating any Transaction Charges payable. So, for example, if within the same hour you placed 800 bets on the Betting Exchange and 700 bets on Exchange Games, no Transaction Charges would be payable in respect of any of those bets.

At the end of every day, we add up all the bets you placed or edited (whether matched, cancelled or lapsed). If this number is in excess of 1000 in any hour of the day then:

for customers placing bets through the Application Programmers Interface (API) on the Betting Exchange or for customers placing bets either through the API or on the website on Exchange Games, we will multiply this number by 1p; and
for website customers on the Betting Exchange, we will multiply this number by 2p.
For the purpose of Transaction Charges, bets on financial markets will count as 0.25 of a bet. This will form the basis of the transaction fee, but we will offset this fee against the following amount:
So far I've been limited the bot to about half the time it should be active (5 minutes from start until 2.20) but this is probably throwing the results out because it's not working in the time range it is supposed to (5 minutes out until 20 seconds)

Any help would be appreciated
weemac
Posts: 1216
Joined: Mon Sep 16, 2013 8:16 pm

I was charged over £1,000 and only discovered it because I was baffled as to why my BF balance wasn't going up in line with my self-measured trading results. I only found out how much I'd paid after telling them to email me a CSV file of all these charges. To say I was dismayed is a considerable understatement.

The charges are very deviously hidden; they are not itemised other than by visually scanning every one of (in my case) thousands of individual transactions on my account. The 'help desk' didn't even know what the charges were - they described them initially as "text charges", which, as you can imagine, set my heart racing as to what on earth was going on.

Expect zero help on this matter from betfair, as per usual.
DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

Thanks mate - it could turn out to be a total nightmare on a Saturday or a bank holiday with 16 meetings

What I'll do is create a better filter so I have less qualifying races non handicaps seem to be doing best but so do handicaps with the favourite over 4 (set to over 3 at the moment)

Bot is set to trigger 100 times on both back and lay sides so I will reduce that too instead of limiting the active time of the bot

I am confused about one thing though - my last race had 122 matched bets and over 360 transactions - I assume the unmatched fill or kill bets are counted too?
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Dallas
Posts: 22671
Joined: Sun Aug 09, 2015 10:57 pm
Location: Working From Home

DaveJessop wrote:
Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:11 pm

I am confused about one thing though - my last race had 122 matched bets and over 360 transactions - I assume the unmatched fill or kill bets are counted too?
Each bet placed or even moved/re-priced counts as a transaction, and if it's below the £2 minimum then its 2 transactions
DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

Cheers Dallas - my bot is set to £1 stakes so it would make sense to change it to £2 then and in theory that should halve my transactions (and double my profit or loss :D )
spreadbetting
Posts: 3140
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm

They also offset any charges against the amount of commission you've paid in the day so as long as you're generating commission from your bets you'll usually be OK. Every £10 paid in comms (implied+paid/2) gets you a 1000 transactions over the hour before getting hit with the charge. Think I've been hit by the charges once when my bot was testing and cost me £56 other than that I go over all the time and yet to pay again.

The charge is basically there to stop people continually firing in bets but generating little commission by either having few matched bets or low stakes. Check how much you pay daily in commission and you may find it's actually nothing to worry about.
spreadbetting
Posts: 3140
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm

Dallas wrote:
Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:17 pm
DaveJessop wrote:
Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:11 pm

I am confused about one thing though - my last race had 122 matched bets and over 360 transactions - I assume the unmatched fill or kill bets are counted too?
Each bet placed or even moved/re-priced counts as a transaction, and if it's below the £2 minimum then its 2 transactions
They changed the minimum limits on the API so as long as the payout is £10 the bets should be able to be submitted in a single bet

Ability to place lower minimum stakes at larger prices

In order to allow customers to bet to smaller stakes on longer-priced selections, an extra property has been added to our Currency Parameters – “Min Bet Payout”.

As currently bets where the backer’s stake is at and above the ‘Min Bet Size’ for the currency concerned (£2 for GBP) are valid. In addition, bets below this value are valid if the payout of the bet would be equal to or greater than the value of ‘Min Bet Payout’ - £10 for GBP. For example, a bet of £1 @ 10, or 10p @ 100 or 1p @ 1000 are all valid as they all target a payout of £10 or more.

Please note: This function is only enabled for UK & International customers and not .it, .es, .dk and .se jurisdictions.
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DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

@spreadbetting

Thanks mate - I do pay a lot of commission due to arbing :)

I don't suppose Betfair make it easy to find out how much commission someone pays in a day do they? Other than adding up all the profitable bets and then working out the commission

My transaction list for today is on 438 pages already :D
DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

@Dallas - they do like to make things confusing don't they?

I've change the re-arm rate from 3 seconds to 3.5 so that should help too
DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

140 transactions on the 17.45 - happy with that

... and a £1.22 profit to £2 stakes so very happy :D

Set to trigger 100 times on both back and lay at 3.5 second re-arm from 5 minutes out until 20 seconds - still a little scope to reduce it a little as I'm running other stuff on football markets etc if I get too close just in case but it's probably beneficial to limit the races to the more profitable ones as well

I'll avoid running this bot on dog races though :D

Thanks for your help everyone :)
spreadbetting
Posts: 3140
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm

DaveJessop wrote:
Mon Mar 04, 2019 5:40 pm


My transaction list for today is on 438 pages already :D
:o Jesus , that's one hell of a lot of bets, I've done around 80 pages of settled/lapsed/cancelled bets today but 438 pages is mental :)

I'd certainly start to keep a track of your transactions and comms paid if you're doing that many bets a day as it could get very costly if you don't generate any comms. I'd guess your arbing is keeping the charges in check at the moment so if there are any arb free days it'd be worth keeping an eye on the comms and transactions. Sadly as you'd expect Betfair don't have any easy way of showing you your current figures.
DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

8.36pm and it's 848 pages long :D

Looking at the commission on this bot I can see their point - 300-400 transactions per race eating up the data for less than 5p in commission if there is a profit and nothing on a loss

On the other hand they make billions a year so they can afford to give us a break

I can't see a way to export the account statement - if I could do that I could fiddle around with the excel sort to delete whole chunks of data and just leave the commission figures
spreadbetting
Posts: 3140
Joined: Sun Jan 31, 2010 8:06 pm

You can download the betting history and use those details to recreate the exact figures Betfair would use as you also have losing markets for implied Comms. Or even simply use the betting profit and loss CSV files to get your comm figure

All you then need is to get your transaction count per hour and I'd imagine that's displayed in BA
DaveJessop
Posts: 37
Joined: Mon Jan 15, 2018 10:55 am

Yes - finally sussed it - PITA that there is a separate csv for each sport so a bit of copy and pasting :D

Really slow day with only 3 decent arbs and a few football trades making a profit at Betfair so only around £10 in commission today

Not sure how much liquidity there is at Betdaq - may look to use that for a few races if there is any money about as I get 0% there at the moment - probably a waste of time
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