More strange stuff going on with refreshes in-running

[doris_day]

Over the past two weeks there seems to have been numerous times when very strange in-running horse racing refreshing appears and I wonder if anyone else has noticed this.

I'm aware that I have started numerous threads about this issue and its because I need to get to the bottom of what is happening.

If I ask for a 0.1 sec refresh I expect it to refresh about 10 times a second with an average of 100ms refresh period. Now I know this varies quite a lot and there are numerous things that can get in the way to hold things up. I'm looking to see what the common factors are.
Generally there is no problem and the refreshes happen as expected. However, today at around 16:30, the next couple of races the refreshes varied from 120ms to around 500ms and I was only getting 3 or 4 a second. I phoned Betfair and they said no-one else had reported anything. Then in the 17:10, the refreshes seemed to be OK but the market kept sticking and seemed extremely volatile.
This is happening on 2 remote servers, each with 7 ISP's multiplexed, so its probably not an ISP issue.

I doubt whether it could be Gruss but it seems to be happening more since I upgraded to v 1.1.0.63 and it would be nice to hear from anyone else if they've had any similar problems.

[doris_day]

Mmm, looks like I'm the only one experiencing these problems.....I've downloaded the latest version of BA to see if that makes any difference tomorrow....

I still believe there are issues with in-running bet matching at Betfair but I'll continue to monitor things until I can build a clearer picture....

[pugs]

Hi ya, no you’re not.

I have also noticed this on many occasions and mentioned it before on the forum. There is a pattern to it, for me anyway.
99% of the times when I notice it is when I drop my refresh down to 0.3 second for in-running and I am concentrating on my screen, but 99% of the 99% of the times when I do notice it is in the last 50 to 100 yards of a race, and this happens on average 5 to 8 races per week.

My BA, internet connection, and API are generally lightning fast, and as my BA and internet wouldn’t know when the last 100yds of a race was that only leaves the API. So I have come to the conclusion that very occasionally the API stutters when excessive requests are thrown at it

[doris_day]

Yes, one of the downsides of Betfair using their ill-gotten PC gains on getting more users is that their servers and bet matching engine often can't keep pace with the requests from the growing userbase. This is particularly noticeable on Saturdays of course, when the soccer is on. But its also noticeable that after an upgrade of their servers things improve.

Personally I think they need an upgrade now.

[doris_day]

It's apparent though that Betfair do realise they have problems. Here is a quote from Adam Todd on his forum :

"Betfair have told me today that they plan on releasing a fix to their API on Wednesday which should solve their current performance issues. They apparently have 25 people working on fixing the API issues so we'll see what next week brings. A positive effect of all this is that everyone will now benefit from the new and improved Betfair API that's emerging from this episode."

At least this does consolidate my findings.....

[doris_day]

Its interesting to note that the erratic nature of the site that I've been banging on about has disappeared since the upgrade on Monday....vindicates my opinion that there were issues at Betfair's end all along.....

[doris_day]

I thought their previous upgrades solved the previous issues with bet matching but today is the second day I've had to stop betting.
When there are a number of soccer matches being played the bet matching engine just cannot keep up.
Weekends for in-running horse racing is becoming useless, just like it was a couple of years ago.

[osknows]

This weekend is the worst I've ever seen it in the horse racing markets, even today has been bad which is surprising as I thought there were less soccer matches inplay than usual?

[doris_day]

Its certainly the worst I've seen it for a long time.

And thats after thinking things were improving after the previous upgrades. Really frustrating....

[osknows]

Are you experincing bursts of activity with pauses... eg I get maybe a second of normal updates then a big pause then another burst

Cynical side of me thinks that this could be part of BF's new trading strategy.. trading on combined market movement between defined intervals....

[doris_day]

Yes, I found the same with pauses interspersed with normal activity. I doubt BF would be manipulating this. I think their bet matching engine simply can't keep pace with the bets queuing to be matched.

[orange]

I haven't previously noticed a problem (I only trade football) even at the weekend but this weekend has been slow, they (betfair) just don't want to through enough resources at the problem to fix it obviously.

[DFK]

If I look back at my diary throughout the year (and last year), I can see that most Saturdays are very bad for in-running betting. It is becoming so bad that I am considering taking Saturdays off. This is obviously due to the very high demand. Last Saturday was particularly bad, I had two second stutters during racing which is unplayable, particularly on the flat where two seconds equates to about 10 lengths! Sunday wasn't 100% either.

DFK.

[Spike]

I used to really stress about this but I've mellowed a bit recently.

A while ago Gary very kindly wrote me a bit of code to track actual refresh rates in excel (it's somehwere on this forum if you search for "excel actual refresh"), for a while I logged the refresh rate along with all the bets my sheets placed to get an absolutely objective view on the effect of a stuttering API on my results. To my surprise I found that my results didn't suffer at all when the API was bad- even though I had percieved it as being a big problem.

I suppose this is becuase we're all in the same boat, my bets may be going in slowly but so are everyone else's.

You could also argue that although there are times when API problems work against you there are just as many when it goes in your favor (like the IR delay in this respect). As an example consider a short price lay- if the horse you're laying is going on to win then a hiccup in the API can get you a shorter price (reducing losses). The same hiccup might mean your bet doesn't get matched if the price is going the other way but the overall effect of these gains and losses is likely to even out to zero.

[doris_day]

Sure Spike, I can see where you're coming from regarding the fact that stutters and delays effect everyone but it depends how you're analysing the data in order to create your trigger. And this is where things get a bit more difficult to assess. In my own case I need an efficient system of bet matching because when things arent working correctly my losing bets increase in size rather than frequency.
Naturally I can't tell you what I'm doing but I can assure you that in my case at least a poorly performing bet matching engine doesnt do me any good at all.