Betfair banning bots

[mattio]

I have heard a rumor that Betfair could be looking to ban bots after their servers were crashed last week, has anyone else heard this? Surely this rumor is a load of bull!!

[norisk]

Well if the idea was to completely destroy their business, yeh why not;)

[UselessBettor]

Bots provide the liquidity.

If they ban bots they will lose liquidity and then lose customers.

They already provide lots of warnings for using the free api without actually placing bets adn these may increase.

Before they ban bots they will remove the free api and make people pay to use the api. If they do this people will just convert to placing the bets using bots via screen scraping the front end. But this will actually be worse for server loads.

[AngryPixie]

I doubt its the Free API causing the problems. It'll be a comercial trading bot that places a very high load on the servers due to many multiple updates per second. They'll stop people using the bot in the same fashion they stopped the BetTrader Evo bot when it was first released and caused havoc. BF worked closely with the publishers to fix that because they realise how important the bots are to their business.

Rest assured, banning bots across the board is a complete crock.

[Shaun]

If they had the brains they might create there own and restrict API access to all but that one, but i don't think they want to get involved in the running and maintaining of the api product.

[mattio]

Yeah I heard it was mainly the ones making multiple calls per second that was causing them problems.

Shaun, off topic but have you had a chance to read my emails regarding the ratings spreadsheet?

[AngryPixie]

I think they do have brains. The smart thing is to build a platform that provides just enough functionality to get by with if you're desperate e.g. their web interface (can't tell you the last time I placed a bet that way). Then provide a very good API that allows developers to add value to your product at less cost to you than if you did it yourself. Best of all the developers pay you for the privilege. Microsoft has been doing it for years and years.

[norisk]

Good point AngryPixie, totally agree

[Shaun]

Yes mattio sorry for no reply will send you an e-mail later on.

[Chrome Prince]

I can't see them banning bots, but I can see them raising the API fees and lowering call rates per minute.

[AngryPixie]

Betfair to get out of the retail market completely to become an infrastructure provider in the same vein as the ASX. All retail interactions will be through interface providors (brokers) who compete with each other on the basis of brokerage and service.