The Betfair betting exchange has issued a statement explaining the technical problems that affected Wednesday’s Christmas Hurdle at Leopardstown, and which appear to have stemmed from a rogue bot running up huge theoretical liabilities.
The exact problem remains unclear, but it seems that a customer with around £1,000 in an account was accidentally able to allegedly put in a bet with hundreds of millions of pounds’ worth of liabilities attached. Betfair ended up declaring some of the bets on Wednesday’s race to be void in an attempt to deal with the problem.
It seems that the bot developed a fault that meant certain safeguards did not function as they should. Usually, a customer would not be allowed to place any bets for which his or her account did not provide full cover. The problem is apparently sorted out now, leaving Betfair to prove to customers that the whole thing was just a one-off.
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