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Old 05-04-2008, 12:09 AM   #31
DJofSD
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rich, excellent post. I'd just add that as a publicly held corporation, the CEO has a fiduciary duty to prevent problems like this from occuring. I believe this represents a failure that the board and the shareholders should not tolerate. I'm sure they lost enough money b/c of not being able to take wagers due to the (illegal) action on the part of the horseman's group. Having those losses worsen due to an inability to take bets on the one race they were allowed to take is just salt in the wound.
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:22 AM   #32
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Quote:
Originally Posted by richrosa
There are many components that effect the operation of a high transactional website. Certainly one of them is general internet traffic (Saturday after noon = very low internet traffic or 10% of weekly peak), and the local internet traffic aka the size of the pipe to their hosting center. With bandwidth being cheap these days, there is not excuse in not having multiple BIG pipes (I'll stay in laymans terms to keep it simple). I'd like to believe that the problem was not bandwidth today, and if hosted in a qualified data center, you can be assured that it wasn't the problem.
Probably so -- the non-betting stuff was working sluggishly but not nearly to the extent as anything transactional -- betting, checking balance, etc.

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Regular eCommerce businesses before holidays like Christmas, or Valentines Day in the flower business, or the World Series in baseball, or any kind of surge event, generally have a capacity planning exercise where the projected traffic is tested against the platform in an effort to understand how the environment will perform when the cash register is really open. These exercises result in enhancements and upgrades, and eventually a validation that ensures that the projected traffic will be serviced properly.
What if your projected amount of traffic severely underestimates actual traffic? Other "big days" in other industries suffer from these same problems, capacity planning or not.

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To say that it may not be fixable is completely not true. It is very likely that they have a sub-standard architecture that either did not pass a capacity planning test, or there might be amateurs running the operation who didn't bother to do a capacity planning test. Fixing a problem like this may mean an investment in the architecture, which I bet at some point was recognized as needed (like last year when it melted), and bypassed because, we the customer don't mean dirt to these firms.
I don't see how it could be "completely not true" when I qualified with the word "may", opening the door to be corrected by the likes of yourself. No doubt they need an investment in architecture, but if they really only need it for a couple of big events a year the question is can it be done in such a way to get the capacity on only those days when they really need it instead of having lots of underused hardware they are paying for the rest of the time? They have improved some -- they used to be sluggish EVERY weekend in the summer.

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I agree with some of this. they could redistribute their load to many locations. This would solve a bandwidth problem, and possibly overcome some architecture inefficiencies. I do disagree that they won't be able to tell until the next holiday. There are many companies and products out there that ssist in capacity planning. Its more likely that its amateur hour at TwinSprires.
That's likely, but capacity planning is no good if you can't really estimate the capacity properly other than to plan for the biggest day you can possibly imagine -- or more accurately the biggest MOMENT -- it did work most of the time, but as the Derby got nearer, the slower it got. (And was quite speedy after the Derby was over.)


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Your border routers can tell you how many connections are being requested, and the web platform should have traffic monitoring to do the same, so they should have a clue as to how much customer traffic isn't being serviced.
A clue, but still a lot of guessing. Lots of potential bettors probably get one or two time-outs (possibly just trying to login) and then give up. I can't see how they'd really know what is going to happen at the peak times unless they have the experience of actually having plenty of capacity one of these years.

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CD is to blame. They are the parent company for TwinSprires which purchased the AmericaTab platform before Derby Day last year when they recognized that their own internal development effort to build an ADW platform had failed. Occasionally there are tote bottlenecks that cause problems, however there is not reason to believe that happened today. Most likely the AmericaTab platform (which is over 10 years old) was never written to scale to todays usage levels and needs an overhaul itself.
But TwinSpires doesn't OWN AmericaTab -- they are an affiliate of AmericaTab. TwinSpires took over the BrisBet/TSNBet affiliates, but there are other AmericaTab affiliates that have nothing to do with TwinSpires (like BetPad.com, where they moved my account when they took over). TwinSpires.com is just a front page that sends you to the AmericaTab servers for the real stuff. (Although I notice they don't use AmericaTab domain names anymore on the affiliates -- maybe they are rerouting from one server to another causing additional bottlenecks?)

I believe Beulah Park in Ohio is the owner/manager of AmericaTab, correct? Issues of capacity, etc, would be up to them...
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:27 AM   #33
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Let me throw two more things into the mix.

First, CDI and TS are attempting to expand their market. Don't you think they would have had a plan to increase capacity of their IT resources in anticipation of the additional activity, especially on a day like today?

Second, do you think the different stock exchanges have a problem planning for spikes?
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:32 AM   #34
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Did the Youbet and/or TVG platforms just become more valuable after today?
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:48 AM   #35
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My wife advised me to go to charlestown today.But i am still recovering from knee surgery and that is a long drive.
Rosecroft is such a dump that was out of the question.
The derby appeared a difficult race to figure.
So i was taking in everything and just sifting the info thru my noggin.
I dont remeber exactly when i tried to get on but i am sure it was more than a half hour before post.
From now on i guess i have to make bets early on the Big days .
DERBY,PREAKNESS BELMONT AND BREEDERS CUP.
Not getting my bets down really cost me.
I cant sleep.I just took 2 vicadin and they are not helping.
This horse racing thing is an addiction i believe ,for me any how.
And getting the bet in is the fix.Win or lose ,i needed that release.
I f i had gotten the bets in and lost ,i could deal with it alot more then not getting them in at all
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:49 AM   #36
richrosa
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GameTheory,

I gave out my opinion and stand by it. I professed professional expertise in this area. This is what I do for a living.

Quote:
Originally Posted by GameTheory

But TwinSpires doesn't OWN AmericaTab -- they are an affiliate of AmericaTab. TwinSpires took over the BrisBet/TSNBet affiliates, but there are other AmericaTab affiliates that have nothing to do with TwinSpires (like BetPad.com, where they moved my account when they took over). TwinSpires.com is just a front page that sends you to the AmericaTab servers for the real stuff. (Although I notice they don't use AmericaTab domain names anymore on the affiliates -- maybe they are rerouting from one server to another causing additional bottlenecks?)

I believe Beulah Park in Ohio is the owner/manager of AmericaTab, correct? Issues of capacity, etc, would be up to them...
Please refer to this press release last year where Churchill acquires AmericaTab. They are the bozos responsible for not caring and feeding their platform by doing to proper exercise of capacity planning and architecture management.

YouBet has done better but not much better. I'm not aware of any substantial problems with the TVG platform.

Last edited by richrosa; 05-04-2008 at 12:53 AM.
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Old 05-04-2008, 01:01 AM   #37
DJofSD
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Debt Resolve, Inc.?
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Old 05-04-2008, 01:05 AM   #38
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yup. That's a company we founded in financial services selling web platforms to credit card companies. Scalable.

I cut my teeth on load testing being responsible for technical operations for 1800Flowers.com. I ran all of the websites worldwide for Scholastic Corp., the bookseller. Flowers and Harry Potter generate 10x more traffic than Derby Day for Twin Spires.

Last edited by richrosa; 05-04-2008 at 01:06 AM.
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Old 05-04-2008, 01:18 AM   #39
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So, why hasn't CDI (or whomever) at least hired you as a consultant <g>?

BTW, I just noticed, over $22 million in the exacta pool on the Derby. Just the track take on that one pool alone would have paid for a lot of hardware.
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Old 05-04-2008, 01:21 AM   #40
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DJofSD
So, why hasn't CDI (or whomever) at least hired you as a consultant <g>?

BTW, I just noticed, over $22 million in the exacta pool on the Derby. Just the track take on that one pool alone would have paid for a lot of hardware.
What I do is not unique. They should have at least one like me at their place. I mostly consult now. They could hire me. I'd fix things there.
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Old 05-04-2008, 03:36 AM   #41
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With TwinSpires (and other AmericaTab affiliates) being one of the few (if not the ONLY) place to bet the Derby online (YouBet did NOT offer the Derby, and I don't think TVG did either...perhaps XpressBet did, but what do they have, 10 registered users?), is it any wonder their servers took more of a hit than usual?
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Old 05-04-2008, 06:03 AM   #42
GameTheory
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Quote:
Originally Posted by richrosa
GameTheory,

I gave out my opinion and stand by it. I professed professional expertise in this area. This is what I do for a living.
Good for you. I'm not challenging your expertise. You seem to think I am.

Quote:
Please refer to this press release last year where Churchill acquires AmericaTab. They are the bozos responsible for not caring and feeding their platform by doing to proper exercise of capacity planning and architecture management.
Correct, thank you. I thought they had just taken over some of the affiliates but they are now in fact the managing partner.
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Old 05-04-2008, 08:11 AM   #43
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You can hackle this thing to death. However, one thing remains. I am the customer and I really dont care what your problems are, just dont make them mine. This is very simple.

In the 4 years that I have been dealing with TwinSpires (AmericanTab), this has never happened.
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Old 05-04-2008, 10:33 AM   #44
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i was locked out too...but good thing I had a backup site...nyra.com..but theres no live feed...
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Old 05-04-2008, 12:19 PM   #45
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Originally Posted by NoCal Boy
Did the Youbet and/or TVG platforms just become more valuable after today?
The "Al Capone" old school "platforms" certainly did man.
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