Betfair And API Odds & Liquidity Dont Match

[nab]

Hi,

Whilst tracking a few soccer games, I notice that the odds on Betfair website are better than those shown as being available on Gruss, i.e. back odds of 1.68 are being shown on the betfair website, but Gruss is showing that the best odds available at 2 ticks lower.

Also, there seems to be the same problem with liquidity, i.e. 5,878 available at 2.2 on Betfair, but only 1,442 is shown as being available on Gruss.

I thought it might be something to do with refresh rate, but after looking into this and testing, it is not.

Does anyone know what is going on ?

[GaryRussell]

See http://gruss-software.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3845

[nab]

Thanks for that,

So does this mean that if using the API, we are at a disadvantage compared to using the betfair website directly

[GaryRussell]

I'm afraid I don't have an answer for that question. You don't get matched differently, it's still the same as placing bets through the website. You just cannot see the prices you will get matched at due to Betfair's cross matching. It's up to you to decide if you want to use the software knowing this, I cannot justify it to you. All of our competitor's software have the same problem.

[nab]

thanks for that.

i take it that companies that use the API have complained to Betfair, are betfair planning on having this available on the API, or are they saying that it will always only be available for their website directly

[GaryRussell]

Yes we have complained. It is very frustrating to pay £200 per month for the API and not have the option of displaying the odds the same as the website. They do plan to provide these prices through the API in the future, but cannot give us a timescale.

It also gives the impression that the program has a major bug and no doubt we have lost potential customers who never bothered to ask if we knew about the problem.