Four controls that work together
The risk engine is built around four controls. Each one covers a different way a live book loses money, and together they let a small trading team run deep in-play markets.
- Liability per market. The engine adds up what the book would pay for each selection and compares the worst case with the cap you set for that market type.
- Customer stake caps. A maximum stake per customer applies to every account, by market type or across all types.
- Auto suspension. Dangerous incidents such as goals, cards or breaks of serve close the affected micro-markets for a few seconds while prices are recomputed.
- Sharp flag. A customer with at least 20 settled bets and a win rate of 60 percent or more is flagged sharp and gets half the limits.
All four feed one decision. When your platform asks whether to accept a bet, the answer already takes liability, the customer and the market state into account. You do not stitch four services together.
The risk check call
Your platform asks before it accepts. The call is POST /api/v1/risk/check at https://realtimebets.com/api/v1 with the header Authorization: Bearer rtb_sk_ and your secret key. The request body carries the event_id, market_key and selection_key, the price the customer saw, the stake and your own customer_ref.
The response contains one of three decisions.
- Accepted means the bet fits every limit at the price shown.
- Reduced returns max_stake, the largest stake the engine will allow, which you can offer the customer.
- Rejected comes with a reason code: market_closed, price_changed or liability_limit.
If the price moved since the customer saw it, the response includes the current price, so your bet slip can ask the customer to confirm. After you accept, POST /api/v1/bets records the bet with your bet_id, which updates liability straight away and settles it when its market resolves.
Suspension in the seconds that matter
Most live losses happen in the few seconds around an incident. A goal is scored, the stream shows it, and some customers try to bet before the price reacts. A book that relies on a trader to press suspend will lose that race every time.
The RealTimeBets engine suspends automatically. When the incident feed reports a dangerous incident, such as a goal, a card or a break of serve, the micro-markets it affects move to suspended. They stay closed for a few seconds, the models recompute the fair probability with the new state, and the markets reopen with new prices. Every market also locks at its locks_at time and leaves the list, so nobody can bet into a window that has already started.
Every suspension is visible in the payload and on the once-a-second stream, so your front shows a closed market instead of a price nobody can take. The same rules drive the short markets explained on the micro betting page, where timing matters most.
Liability you can see and cap
Liability is calculated from the bets you record. For each market the engine knows the stake and price of every open bet, and it works out what the book pays out for each possible result. The worst of those is the liability figure the cap applies to.
You set caps by market type, or one cap for all types. A match winner market may carry a high cap, while a next point market in tennis carries a much lower one. Without your own caps the defaults are 50,000 liability per market and 5,000 stake per customer, in your currency. When a bet would push a market past its cap, the risk check reduces the stake to what fits, and when nothing fits it rejects the bet. Bets on the other selections, which reduce exposure, still go through.
The risk screen in the console lists the open markets with the largest liability at the top, next to the caps you set. Traders can add, change or remove a cap or a customer stake limit from the same screen. Read more about the console on the sportsbook management software page.
Sharp-flag scoring and customer limits
A small share of customers win consistently because they know something your prices do not. Some use better models, some watch faster streams, some simply bet late. Ignoring them costs money, and limiting everyone to stop them costs customers.
The sharp flag is built from settled results. Once a customer has at least 20 settled bets with a win rate of 60 percent or more, every risk check for that customer_ref returns sharp: true with the settled count and win rate, and the limits that apply are halved automatically.
Limits are simple. Set a maximum stake per customer for all market types, then a different one for any market type that needs it. Limits apply in the risk check, so a limited customer gets a reduced stake offer rather than a silent failure. On Enterprise, roles and an audit log are part of the plan for the team that runs risk.
Plans and the path to production
The risk engine is part of Growth and Enterprise. Growth costs $1,999 a month, or $999 a month when billed yearly as $11,988. It includes risk checks, liability caps, customer stake caps and the sharp flag, together with the micro-market generator with auto suspension, settlement webhooks and all sports. Enterprise, at $4,999 a month or $2,499 a month billed yearly, adds roles, single sign-on, an audit log and IP allow-listing for the team that runs risk.
Starter at $499 a month includes the odds and data feed with match markets and settlement webhooks, but not the risk check call or micro-markets through the API.
You can try the risk check with the sandbox key after signup: one sport, 60 seconds behind live, 1,000 requests, 7 days. Production keys need a paid plan and a stored licence record. Compare everything on the pricing page and buy at checkout with no call.