There have been some pretty crazy technical glitches over the years that I remember from my Betfair days. Everyone assumes that all the software works perfectly but on occasion there are gremlins in the system. The real question if you do spot one is whether you will get paid.
The most famous example was horse racing and Voler La Vedette in Dec 2011 at Leopardstown. VLV was still being matched at 29 when the horse crossed the winning line. Crazy bets were matched in running. VLV was matched for £800k and was the result of a technical glitch.
Had the winnings been paid the customer would have needed over £600m in their account. Obviously, no one had that type of money in an account, Whilst frustrating as users took bets in good faith in running, voiding the bets was clearly the only decision Betfair could make.
In many regards being so spectacular made the decision much easier for Betfair. If it had been 10% of that total I suspect Betfair would have had a much harder decision to make. In theory the same outcome should have happened but it doesn’t always work like that.
It was particularly eye opening to see so many people feel hard done by, by Betfairs decision. The reality is that without the software glitch the prices would never have been offered in the first place. Yes it’s a free market but only if bets/accounts are being processed properly.
There was an interesting technical glitch that I talked about when talking about Site Outages (Tweet 20). Betfair went down for a prolonged period of time because of an issue with bet numbers. When the site was built an arbitrary number was put into the system as an upper limit for the bet number. It would have been something like x billion. A number that seemed so improbable when the site was built. When it reached that number and no new bet numbers could be generated the site failed. It took BF ages to actually identify the issue.
There was a fascinating technical issue involving a forum user call Scousebarry. In essence the user found a work around to bet delays. As anyone knows that is a potential goldmine when betting in running. It involved placing multiple bets into a market that would be rejected unless they cancelled a bet at a massive price on a different market. It was an ingenious way around the delays and is something Betfair just hadn’t considered when creating the site. I just remember disbelief that the issue existed and took so long to come to light.
The craziest part of the whole story though is that Scousebarry ended up telling all and sundry about the issue on Betfair forums instead of filling his boots even more. He did very well from it but who knows how long it would have lasted.
The final one involved Betfair poker and a played called Dave Shallow (Dubai Millennium was his name on BF). He was very prominent on the BF forums back in those days. He stumbled across a situation where the payout on an STT was incorrect if all the players went all in on the first hand.
He spotted this overnight and spent the whole night absolutely smashing these STTs to pieces. The issue was spotted the following day but not before some serious damage had been done. In those days withdrawals happened pretty instantaneously so it became very hard for Betfair to get the money back off him. I am not sure how much he made but it would have been six figures and I believe given a choice between staying a customer of Betfair (i.e. returning the money) or keeping it, that he kept the money. No idea what the others involved did.
These little snippets show that technical glitches/issues do happen even on the biggest platforms. Sometimes people fill their boots and other times they will be left disappointed when bets are voided. Just be aware that it can happen albeit its less likely to occur now.
ProPunting 