Delays

[steve88]

I'm trying to understand how the delays on the exchange work.

For in-play events there is a delay of a few seconds for orders (presumedly to let limit orders sitting in the orderbook response to developments in the race/game).
Q1: After these orders arrive at the exchange, but are waiting to be placed due to the delay, are they visible to market participants? Or does betfair hide what orders have been received and are waiting for the delay to expire?

Q2. Also for the events which are yet to go in-play/jump is there any mandated delay which the exchnage applies to incoming orders?

Also, is there documentation which BF publishes to explain how the delays/mechanics of it's matching process work?

[jabe]

I'm not 100% certain of the following:

1. There is a delay in digital broadcasting. Those watching events potentially know about in-play occurrences a number of seconds before those following on digital TV or radio. This may be the reason for the delay in in-play betting.

2. As far as I'm aware, Q1: no. Q2: the delay does not apply prior to the in-play period. However, I believe there is a "tick time" of one-fifth of a second in processing, so that Betfair processes the latest requests five times a second.

(I assume requests that have arrived in the previous fifth of a second are processed, where possible, in timestamp sequence, athough I can see that this might mean an earlier bet request might go unsatisfied, then a request might arrive that would satisfy it, and then a subsequent request might arrive and be satisfied by funds unavailable to the earlier request. Or they might attempt to fulfil the earlier request first.)

3. As far as I know, the only exchange documentation is under the API Docs header higher up the page. There may have been clarification elsewhere on this forum