The rules settle the market, not the price you traded
Every exchange publishes rules for each market: what has to happen for one side to win, when a market is suspended, what voids, and how a settled market can be corrected afterwards. They bind both sides of every trade, and they are decided by the operator, not by the participants.
Market definitions
A market definition is the sentence that says what a selection means. It is where most disputes actually live: not in what happened, but in whether what happened counts.
| Question | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Who is the governing result source? | Decides whose version of events is graded |
| Does extra time count? | Changes the outcome of the same match |
| What if a player withdraws before play? | Usually voids the market rather than settling it |
| What if the venue or schedule changes? | Can void or suspend a market entirely |
A market between two customers can still be voided by the rules both of them accepted. Two people trading with different assumptions is exactly how accounts end up disagreeing with the exchange and not with each other.
Suspension
Suspension is the exchange pausing a market — most often because something significant is happening and the operator will not accept money at prices nobody can trust. During a suspension you cannot place or close orders at any price.
- What triggers itA goal, a red card, an injury, a weather stoppage, a feed problem or an obvious pricing error.
- What it stopsNew orders, cancellations and trade-outs. An open position simply sits there.
- What it does not doIt does not settle the market and it does not decide the outcome of your position.
- What happens nextThe market reopens or is voided according to the market rules; both are allowed to happen.
A plan to trade out depends on the market being open. If the plan needed a suspension not to happen, the plan was not fully hedged.
Voids and corrections
A void returns the stakes on both sides of the market and is not a win for either customer. A resettlement or correction can revise a market that already settled, which moves balances after the fact.
- Void a market and return matched money on both sides
- Resettle after an error or a corrected result source
- Publish the change and apply it to every position in the market
- Take a settled market’s outcome from the largest position
- Guarantee that a settled result is final forever
- Compensate a position for a suspension it did not choose
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