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This an old article from the Guardian, but may prove of interest to some:-
Greg Wood<br>Thursday September 26, 2002<br>The Guardian
Betfair, the internet’s largest betting exchange, is expected to ban the use of automatic trading programs – known as bots – on its website, following <br> <br> ADVERTISEMENT <br> <br>a system crash that kept the site offline for two hours on Tuesday afternoon.
The crash has highlighted a practice that has been going on for several months, much to the surprise of the vast majority of Betfair’s regular clients, with one punter claiming that his computer program has made him hundreds of thousands of pounds.
A bot is a computer program that can access a website and strike or lay bets, just as any human punter can. Unlike a regular punter, though, it does not need to eat, drink or sleep, and can request a web page several times a second.
About a dozen Betfair clients are thought to have been using bots to scan the site for chances to bet overbroke, or otherwise gain a guaranteed edge on other users. They will now be warned to switch off their bots, or be banned from using Betfair’s site.
A Betfair spokesman said yesterday that Tuesday’s problems were not caused directly by the use of bots on their site. However, the fact that a number of the programs were attempting to access Betfair dozens of times a second, while technicians were struggling to get it online, meant that the site was unavailable for much longer than would otherwise have been the case.
The program responsible is believed to have been written by a Betfair user who regularly posts messages in the site’s users’ forum under the name "Gary". Although his claims are difficult to verify, he has stated that his bot has won him hundreds of thousands of pounds in recent months. He is also thought to have passed on his program to several other punters in recent weeks, increasing the strain on Betfair’s servers.
There are several ways in which a bot can suck the value from a robust and vibrant market such as Betfair. It is possible, for instance, to write a program that scans active markets looking for one that is momentarily "overbroke", allowing it to back every runner to return a small, but guaranteed, profit. The bot places the required bets automatically and instantly, and moves on to look for its next opportunity.
Others can be programmed to notice obvious mistakes – a punter, say, who has tried to offer a horse at 2.0 in Betfair’s digital odds system, and offered 2.2 instead. A bot could also be set up to back and lay consistently around a given price. Backing at 2.6 and then laying at 2.4, over and over again, would soon try the patience of most human punters, but a computer program does not get bored.
"The result tends to be that there are lots and lots of very small bets going through, which are a pain for everybody concerned," Mark Davies, Betfair’s spokesman, said yesterday. "And when we have a problem like we did on Tuesday, the program just keeps on trying to trade, asking the database questions which it is not in a position to answer. We’re getting in touch with the account holders in question, and we would expect to make a statement on Friday morning."
The bots are not merely a technical problem for Betfair. The site’s image, as a place where punter meets punter in a battle of judgment and wits, is among its biggest selling points. A perception that its clients might in fact be taking on a bank of computers, or that it is pointless looking for serious value because a bot will always get there first, would be damaging.
One problem for Betfair, though, is that a well-written bot will appear to be just another client logging on to the site. To be certain that no-one is using a bot, it may be necessary to study access and betting patterns over several days, or even weeks.
"Depending on how well written a bot is, and if it doesn’t hit the hell out of the server, it may be almost impossible to block it," said Glyn Wintle, chief technical officer of backandlay.com, an exchange which is due to launch in the next few months.
"Over time, you can be pretty sure when someone’s using a bot, but if someone’s got a well-written program that means they can’t lose, they’ll probably think it’s stupid not to run it."
Regards – Matron<br>:cool:
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Larry maybe i`m involved in the gaming and betting industry,maybe i`ve had dealings with this company:o
Bet collector are a Swedish company based in Stockholm,they use a modified trading software (As per Stock exchange) which waters the markets when required .ie early doors/Live betting etc.
They are not alone in this,funnily enough (Thinking of Redman) the best software on the market (so i`m told) is operated by an Australian syndicate fronted by a guy called Zeljko Ranogajec,apparently they are more interested in the Horse race markets!!
IMO these bots are excellent for Exchange betting,they help create value which in effect keeps the margins tight!!
Betting exchanges welcome Bots as their competivity and liquidity relys upon them.
Thank you Matron.
Team gamble have often entertained Gaaaary, in the pristine sanctity of the cyberspace cafe three blocks down from mean street. Last year, before he left for South Africa he offered allcomers free tickets to the comedy store at a central London venue. I declined the offer, but sent an agent with large lugs to lurk in the shadows. He spied; a dressed down Mr Black with those famous trainers, a mixed group of beer swillers, pockets stuffed full of unimaginable readies, and in the middle Gaaaary.
There was some secretive talk of nineteen and even a rumour he might have brought her along. But no, nineteen had not been built for comedy, and was more inclined to stay at home arching her prosthetic sleekness back and forth in that top room with her sisters, with a whirr and a wanton smile and in perfect rythmical unison. Sisters doin it for themselves and their maker Gaaary. As the moonlight spilled in they slightly increased their tempos and cleaned up.
 The most amazing thing about Gaaary is that he is completely self taught. I suppose that’s why we won the war. Come back mate your country needs you.
 Tony the most successful bot operator has offices in Japan, and loves the big pool bets where he can either screw up or down eight million in a final race. He tinkers with Betfair as a hobby.
<br>flatcapgamble…You can sense the presence of a bot, they tend to snap.
I can see how it would be in BF’s interests to be ‘bot friendly’.<br>Let’s face it, the objective is to get as many bets struck in the shortest timeframe possible hense earning all that luvly commission. If a bot can do this more economically than an individual, then bots can earn BF more money than mortal minds. If a bot can strike three bets in the time it takes a human to place one, then the bot is 300% more profitable (theoretically).
Don’t be silly. Of course Bots don’t exist. Its Betfair propaganda to make naive people believe that you can actually make money from horse racing without even opening a form book.
I make a good living from racing and the 23 hours a day spent perusing the form book are a joy…
A couple of thoughts…
Rule one of preferential commission treatment – it’s confidential – you tell anyone, or it becomes known that you receive a certain rate your commissin rate, your commission will revert to 2%+your differential below 2%  [and they are now big enough, with a queue lining up to replace anyone that fell from grace, that they could do this]
‘bots (short for web robots) exist but generally refer to systems that automate a user’s access to a website – hence they can cause all sorts of problems – due to the lack of expertise of the programming user, or too much… because they cause high access rates to pages that are designed to be viewed by humans so are ‘heavy’ in "look and feel" – this is why Betfair (and most other operators) seek to get rid of bots (as per the Guardian article Matron posted).
However… there are other ways….
Betfair (et al) provide deep system interfaces (and some deeper than other) to third parties (eg. Betcollector) – calling these systems even "very good bots" is akin to calling a tenth dan black bet just a black belt.
These deep system interface make it simple for some to automate their transactions (without interferring with webiste performance) – and more simpler for others – at the high end we are talking about sophisicated wagering risk managment systems (operated by companies/syndicates that are not in it for the ‘love of the punt’ but on a purely business basis).  They earn their revenue in two ways – (i) by profitable risk management and (ii) by receiving rebates on losing bets (or put another way a revenue share of commission receipts from the winners on the other side of their losing bets).
I’ve been through the math before – there is a lots of reasons (from Betfair’s perspective) to go as far as revenue share with marketmakers (irrespective of the means the use to do that) that said I’m sure that (from purely commercial perspective) those arrangements would be limited in number BUT still represent an enormous amount (proportion) of matched bets.
The relationship with these parties also goes some way to explaining why ‘mere mortals‘ don’t get a commission rate less than 2% … why?  because betfair’s payment to market marketmakers may have a minimum guarantee on losing bets (because if you are running a sophisicated risk management system optimally you would have to fact to this into it).
It should not surprise you find out that these risk management systems "multiple home" viz. they collect to more than one wagering operator to (a) seek out arbitrage opportunities and (b) manage risk.
The practice then of guaranteeing rebates / commission share is then a means of frustrating competition (from other betting exchanges) because offering lower commission rates to everyone means marketmaker (the creater of depth and liquidy) is likely to earn less if punter expenditure migrates from (say) Betfair to another exchange (say Backandlay).
One thing to be remember is that the HMCE report and the judgement by Justice Hooper in the Sporting Options v HBLB (along with outher comments by Betfair et al) clearly state that winning "punters" winnings are (in aggregate) about twice what Betfair (other exchanges) earn in commission revenue.
Given Betfair’s announcements about the small percentage of users who earn more than some UK tax treshhold it should be pretty apparent that the "winnings" must be heavily concentrated with a smallish number of risk management providers – it also means that for a very large amount of their "matched bets" their expected commission rate is well below 2%.
Other users of deep links are the so-called white label betting exchanges.
Lastly, just for the record it wasn’t me (as an Aussie)who told Tony25 about him whose name should not be spoken… much less written down ;) – if you can spell it :)
(Edited by redman at 10:26 am on May 8, 2004)
Does anyone who knows about bots have any view on how much they have evolved in the last couple of years on Betfair?
I’m sure I have run into a few in the past and they were no bother at all. It seemed easy to outfox them or just leave them to their own devices and move on somewhere else.
I don’t doubt that they have become more sophisticated (less obviously "bots" for a start) and more widespread since then, however.
(Edited by Prufrock at 11:13 pm on May 7, 2004)
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