Mystery Bets

[Joe68]

I had three bets trigger last night but I can't see in my records. Mysterious.

Quick Questions:
1. What happens to a sub-minimum bet if the next quick pick race is selected after the Back order has been transmitted but before the Bet Ref is received? Is the process halted and the $5, 1000 odds bet stranded?
2. Have you ever seen the first frame after jump be "In Play", status "Closed" or some other non-null status?
3. Have you seen "In Play", status "Suspended" very early in the race, not the finish?

Specific Details
The usual flow of things (which has worked flawlessly on 120 races until now) is.
1. Logging prices in Excel, horses jump, E2 changes to "In Play", Status <> "Suspended" - my code flags jump time in cell E36, places back bets, (sub-minimum, so there's the usual jiggery pokery with the $5, 1000 odds bet)
2. Columns T and U show Ref and Time in the relevant rows for whatever bets get placed
3. The race runs, prices flummox about, maybe my bets get filled, Status is never "Suspended"
4. Race finishes, "In Play", Status reads "Suspended", my code copies the active spreadsheet and the My Bets spreadsheet for later perusal, clears a few cells and uses Q2 to select the next race in the Quick Pick List

So, I have a snapshot of the spreadsheet which placed these mystery bets. Except the bets aren't on there and neither are they on the matching "My Bets" worksheet.

The race was the 15:15 at Cheltenham, which I think jumped late. Certainly the final Chelt race jumped about 9 minutes late.

However, from the final timestamp on the previous race, it looks like my spreadsheet was active for the jump of this 15:15 race.

Symptoms:
1. Final update on my snapshot 2:21:08. Bets placed 2:21 according to BF bet data
2. Bets are not listed in the price logging spreadsheet or the My Bets sheet
3. Jump Time has not been logged
4. Bets (back) were filled at $5, odds 1000
5. Snapshot shows "In Play", "Suspended"
6. Prices on offer are close to SP, like the race has just jumped

Hypothesis
Nearest I can figure is;
1. The first frame was "In Play", status "Closed" or something (non null) - this triggered the sub-minimum bet, but failed to register the jump
2. Before the Bet Ref was transmitted back, 0.5s later, the second frame came in with "In Play", status "Suspended" - this triggered my code to go to the next Quick Pick List item
3. The next Quick Pick List item came through, interrupting the sub-minimum bet routine and stranding the $5, 1000 odds bets
4. Those bets were filled as the race drew to a close but were not listed in my spreadsheets as this was no longer the active market

Does this sound plausible?

[Captain Sensible]

There's always been problems with the API sending dodgy info as far as I can remember, I think they use more than one server and sometimes they're out of sync so old data gets transmitted. I'm sure most of us who trade manually have seen occasions where the odds flicker with old data.

I'm guessing you use VBA so it's probably wise to add in a delay to your code to ensure under minimum stakes bets have time to reconcile. On some of my sheets I set flag to count a certain amount of refreshes before moving to the next sheet, then have the flag reset on market change.

[Joe68]

Thanks for confirming that - I'd taken the road of "sometimes to data just doesn't do the expected" and threw in a run timer and coded to block Quick Pick handovers for 30 seconds. Should do the trick, but can't test for it as I don't know exactly what happened. Fingers crossed. Your refresh counter could be useful down the track.

[Captain Sensible]

I think you've always got to expect the worse with sub minimum bet amounts, I've had offsets hang at a 1000 on plenty of occasions too. Best to check the transaction log as that'll should show any error codes for why the request didn't complete. Only real way to avoid it is bet over the minimum and also plan so any offsets are also over the minimum. If your strategy is making a profit it makes sense to cash in but I do understand people don't neccesarily want to be throwing money at some of the larger priced runners or just be testing out a strategy.

[Joe68]

Transaction log is a good thought, but I see only the logs from today.

Do you know of some way to view the transaction log history for a few days or weeks even?

[Captain Sensible]

I think the transaction log is only stored in the programs memory so once you shut down the program you've effectively lost the list of bets and api responses

[rourkem]

That's not good. Especially when trying to trace a problem. Any chance that it could be stored elsewhere in case users might need to review it?

[Joe68]

OK, this is getting stranger.

I saw it happening this time.

Excel said "In Play", "Suspended" - no prices updating, but time updating.

BA interface showed a normal race in running - prices changing, not suspended.

Disconnected Excel price logging.

Reconnected Excel price logging. Still looks suspended in Excel, live in BA.

Saw another sub-min bet in BA interface, cancelled it.

So, there's one bet of $0.04 visible in BA interface.

$0.04 bet is filled. Excel shows a suspended market until the race finishes. Then I notice in Excel that there's a $5, 1000 odds that's been filled which I never saw in BF.

Actually, I did reconnect twice, so it could be that the bet refs were cleared by reconnecting near the end, resulting in the $5 bet.

Are bet refs cleared when connecting to Excel?

Still, why would Excel show the race suspended for the whole race until the end while BA shows normal race progress?

[Captain Sensible]

I'd be guessing you either have a poor internet connection and the program is waiting for bet status responses from the API or maybe there's an error in your coding that's causing excel to hang, do you use VBA in your worksheets?

[Joe68]

Good grief.

I got the In Play/Suspended combo at the start of the race again, which triggered a cascade of silliness.

"" > 0.00035 according to Excel (30s at start of race where race handover disabled), triggered my race handover code, disabled screen updating , then called a dynamic range that had nothing in it (it's populated as the race runs) - caused an application error, next quick pick code never ran, screen updating never re-enabled until end of race suspension.

Me faffing about in the middle of a live race with Excel reconnection probably lost the $5 and I couldn't even see it until the race finished.

Changed an incell formula from
=IF(JumpTime<>"", LastUpdate-JumpTime,"")
to
=IF(JumpTime<>"", LastUpdate-JumpTime,0)

Added code in my error handler to re-enable screen updates.

Then took a moment to write 1000 times on a mental blackboard somewhere "Nulls ain't numbers" and "Good error handling saves woe", "Test everything".

[Joe68]

Yes, thanks, VBA in use. Code to blame as outined. Ay yi yi.