Betfair

[4legs]

Anyone having problems with Betfair? ... Times are all out?? .. Would it be because of daylight savings - even though it does not come in until tonight?

[The Ocho]

Yep. UK daylight savings must stop tonight while it starts here in Oz. I've stopped my bot about 1 1/2 hours ago as it was going all over the joint (and just when I started using real money - go figure). :rolleyes:

[beton]

4Legs Hi To me they have been out all week. The bot still works and that is all that counts to me.Beton

[Shaun]

This happens twice a year, goes to show you what cowboys they are at Betfair, totals twats.

[moeee]

This happens twice a year, goes to show you what cowboys they are at Betfair, totals twats.

They may well be , but its a bit harsh hanging them for this.
It would be nice if they had a Service Announcement explaining the situation though.

[The Elk]

I got exasperated many months ago with BF not adjusting times when races were put back/abandoned, so added code to download UniTAB times - these are some messages I have been getting today (so times adjusted in the program and all works well):
Toowoomba 2 Time changed from 16:50 -to- 17:50
Mudgee Race 5 - ABANDONED
Northam5 Win Pool < $10,000 - deleted
Toowoomba 4 Time changed from 17:00 -to- 19:00
Newcastle_7 - Late Scratching
This is good for when times are early, I have just realized that I now need to write more code to take into account when we go back from daylight saving and race times are late :grr

cheers

[AngryPixie]

UK daylight savings must stop tonight while it starts here in Oz.

British Summer Time ends on October 30th.

[4legs]

Can't agree with you Moeee - this is so basic - if this has happened before then we must be dealing with a bunch of cowboys. There is no excuse for this.

[4legs]

I have sent an email to Betfair in relation to this, and I would urge all others to do the same. I just do not think this is acceptable - it is so basic.

[4legs]

The Elk - wise move. I was initially driving everything off Unitab and then silly me switched to Betfair!

It looks like its now back to Unitab.

I do hope everyone responds with an email/complaint to Betfair, as if it is just one lone little voice it will be ignored.

I can't say enough times how basic this error is - and as it has happened before it shows how much concern they have for their clients - LIKE NONE!!!!!

[Shaun]

I know they added the time changes for when races are delayed but i can't see why they don't sort the daylight savings changes.

[moeee]

I guess the problems have been sorted.
MEADOWS Greyhounds working just fine and dandy.

[UselessBettor]

I just ran through my bots logs and it worked fine through the whole time you guys were reporting issues. It had all the races at the correct times.

I download the race times every 5 mins though to ensure that I am updated for delayed races. Maybe that is why it worked ok for me.

[UselessBettor]

I just looked at this more closely. I finally found the issue you guys are talking about.

The Markert Suspend Time Text and Market Start Time Text are showing the wrong time. But if you call getMarketTime it is returning the correct time.

It seems just the display text is wrong.

[The Elk]

UB,
when I 1st came across the problem (many moons ago), I tried calling getAllMarkets, Get Market & GetMarketInfo and none of them updated the time if a race time was amended by the stewards during a race meeting (in Aus).

My fix was to check BF race times with UniTAB times 5 minutes before race start(as stated by BF) - this worked well Saturday by displaying the difference and amending the the race time.

Times being shown earlier on BF is annoying in that if a clock is displayed by the bot, it will just show the race being delayed and will continue to show an hour later (very annoying) - it also upsets any bot that commences betting 5 or so minutes before scheduled start time.

In Aus (apart from Saturdays) there is very little money on the bet/lay side until < 5 minutes before the start - the prov/country meets would be affected however if you were betting them yesterday (Toowoomba, Gold Coast & Mudgee until it was abandoned).

Those are the concerns IF the time is early as would happen when we go into daylight saving - now reverse that and the times when coming out of daylight saving would be an hour later than the real race starts - real fun & games.

I also find it interesting that Betfair update the time in one place and not do any of the more frequently used calls.

I have just checked the Sports Exchange HTML for the free Betfair API and can't see any reference to "GetMarketTime" - can you give some more info on this.

cheers

[UselessBettor]

The Elk,

The updating of the times for delayed races has only recently been added to betfair. I think in the last couple of months.

I call getAllMarkets. I do this every 5 mins. This gives me a listing of all the markets and it includes the times. I use this to update an array of races and race times. At 20mins before the race I call getMarket(marketId) and then I call market.getMarketTime(). This time matches the time I have 99% of the time. When it doesn't match I recall getAllMarkets and this always updates my array to the correct time.

I suggest using the getAllMarkets call to determine the times and to update it often.

My code is below. It should be fairly obvious but ask if you have questions. bmMarket is just a wrapper class I have written to hold market information with a few extra attributes.


a = getAllMarketsUK(HORSERACING);

st1 = new StringTokenizer(a, ":");
bm = new betfairMarket();
while(st1.hasMoreTokens())****
String token1 = st1.nextToken();
StringTokenizer st2 = new StringTokenizer(token1, "~");
int count = 0;

while(st2.hasMoreTokens())****
count++;
String token2 = st2.nextToken();
if (count == 1)****
bm.setMarketIdWin(token2);
****
if (count == 5)****
bm.setTimeOfMarket(token2);
****
if (count == 7)****
String timeOfMe = bm.getTimeOfMarket();
bm.setTimeOfMarket(token2.substring(0,token2.lastIndexOf("/")+1)+timeOfMe);
****
if (count == 9)****
bm.setEventId(token2);
****
****
betfairMarket aTemp = (betfairMarket)winMarkets.get(bm.getTimeOfMarket());
if (aTemp == null)****
winMarkets.put(bm.getTimeOfMarket(), bm);
bm = new betfairMarket();
****

****




For some reason this forum has changed the brackets to stars but I think you can work out which are opening and closing brackets.

[Mark]

Ultimately it comes down to the user, HOWEVER, they stuff this up every time. There is simply no excuse for it. What time does the NRL grand final start?, oh that's right it's on already and not in one hour from now. That was fixed just before kickoff.

[AngryPixie]

It's just the AUS exchange I think. The UK exchange had everything listed correctly.