Fastest finger first. Booking tee times

[Yorkhacker]

Yeah....that's what our course has.....blocked out times for ladies days......every Tuesday. EVERY TUESDAY. They call them comps.....and continue to do so. It sounds like you might have more blocked out times than you indicated.....

Exactly the same at my club. I was told that it had to be called a comp, rather than a ladies slot.

They also quite often get prime slots on a Saturday which is a bone of contention, especially at this time of year.

The funny thing is, they do it because they don't like playing in between men, but often they don't fill all the slots, so the slots are released and they end up playing amongst the men!

 

[twrmgoat]

When I took over the oversight of the tee booking system a few years ago, I investigated the issue whereby it appeared some members may have been using software scripts to book tees. These software scripts used to be referred to as ‘sniping’ which became popular in the early days of Ebay to win bids.
We use BRS which, as was previously mentioned, records the time, to a second, of when a booking has been completed. I spent many an hour taking the data from BRS and analysing the results. In our case there was evidence of regular ‘success’ of booking the popular tee times by the same groups of members, some of whom I knew personally.
I engaged two outside software ‘experts’ who independently came back with the same answer, that to use software to book a tee would need ‘direct access into the server’ and not ‘direct connection/access to BRS’. My background is aircraft mechanical engineering and, whilst I do have a rudimentary knowledge of software at management level, I did not really understand their assessments, but they were both insistent that it was extremely unlikely that a sniping tool was being used.
I discovered that the successful booking groups were well organised, with all four trying to book on BRS whilst connected by telephone chat/ video links to select the most suitable time and then they released or did not pursue the other ‘not required times’.
This last sentence has significance, if the non used times were not actively shut down, they would time out which could be seen by a number of tees becoming available at BRS booking start time + 2 minutes and then being booked around BRS start time +2mins 10 secs. I'm aware of one group who regularly watch and wait for these timed out slots to appear - it’s all in the crucial timing of the refresh.

For interest, our Board Members do have some booking advantages, with each member allocated pre bookings for certain competitions, carefully arranged and split across the year. Along with a shared parking space , I don’t think that they are over rewarded for the significant effort that they give to the club.

Sounds like your experts have considered the possibility that someone has a program that uses an API to book a time ( as opposed to using the app or web front end). My assumption is that the automation is via the front end, ie automating the app navigation and data entry. Is that not correct?

 

[Mandofred]

Not at all - the ladies comp is a booking for 2 hours

We have around 85% of the tee times each month just free for anyone

Not at all - the ladies comp is a booking for 2 hours

We have around 85% of the tee times each month just free for anyone

Yep.....sounds like a pretty regular ladies morning. As mentioned elsewhere.....they call them comps, but it's every Tuesday for clubs around here.

 

[NearHull]

Sounds like your experts have considered the possibility that someone has a program that uses an API to book a time ( as opposed to using the app or web front end). My assumption is that the automation is via the front end, ie automating the app navigation and data entry. Is that not correct?

I’m afraid that I don’t have the knowledge ( or memory) of the subject to add to the technical discussion in any wothwhile way. Both of my ‘experts’ seperately founded and partially owned Application development companies. My friend an, at the time neighbour, developed a series of specialised Apps and my brother’s area of expertise was software that App developers used to create Apps ( as far as I understood it). He was also the Head of Hewlstt Packard R& D UK for a while. I’m not sure if that information would enable you to deduce their approach to my request to help me.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

Yep.....sounds like a pretty regular ladies morning. As mentioned elsewhere.....they call them comps, but it's every Tuesday for clubs around here.

They are called competitions because guess what - they are competitions

And when they don’t play a competition the tee is open for all - just like today

 

[Mandofred]

They are called competitions because guess what - they are competitions

And when they don’t play a competition the tee is open for all - just like today

My rollups are competitions as well.....but not really. I think the ladies just schedule these millions of comps to justify their blocking the course for that period of time. I don't really have a big complaint about it at all, most Tuesdays around that 10am time are pretty quiet.....although a few weeks ago I scheduled a tee time for myself right before their first tee time. They had most of 3 hours booked and when you looked at the tee sheet half the tee times were empty. That's something the club should crack down on though.....

 

[Imurg]

Our Ladies have a booking system on Tuesday mornings and the Men have one on Sunday mornings
Booking opens 2 weeks before
With 7 days to go, any slots not booked are open to all.
The Ladies rarely book a Sunday slot, mainly because they're as rare as hen's teeth, but Men regularly book into the Tuesday slots that are free..

 

[TigerTime]

For me personally at my club. It's the time of day that's a pain in the ass. 7am and 8 days in advance, so if I want a long lay in bed I can't. . Thankfully I have a regular group who are much more on the ball with getting tee times, although I have contributed by booking a few here and there.

In all seriousness at my previous club which used BRS at the time, there was many groups who booked the same times every single week. Having chatted to a few of them at the time they just use bots/scripts. One in particular spoke about leaving his laptop on after he finished work at 5, and had a script set up that automated the clicks for him (open browser - navigate to booking page which was bookmarked - click here, then there, then tick boxes) done and if for some reason it didn't work, it automatically ran the script again and went for the next again free time etc. Another had similar, where the script would automate the clicking on several times one after the other on the same page, and then tried the booking button after each click and it would stop whenever it booked one.

I do understand why folk think the above sort of practice is unfair really, but at the same time I don't really see an issue with it, it's arguably not that different to coordinated efforts of groups sitting at their PCs a minute before booking opens and them all trying to get a time etc.

It's a tricky one for clubs - as the software whether it be BRS or others is fairly limited in what it can do. I'd argue there could be a gap in the market somewhere for a software that manages booking tee times differently. Perhaps a system that you can register your intent for a tee time in a specific time period for that day, and after a certain period of time the system automatically allocates you or you and your group one. Then the software could also be sophisticated enough that it can allow easy swaps or something. That would certainly stop the bots at least, and give everyone a fair shot.

 

[simsini]

We only have competition for spots on Sunday mornings, and I don't play then. Is there any punishment for members that book tee times, but don't turn up? At our club they have been talking about blocking people from booking if they regularly don't play after booking a tee time, although nothing has been implemented yet.

 

[chellie]

We only have competition for spots on Sunday mornings, and I don't play then. Is there any punishment for members that book tee times, but don't turn up? At our club they have been talking about blocking people from booking if they regularly don't play after booking a tee time, although nothing has been implemented yet.

Would think most clubs are all bluster about doing that.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

We only have competition for spots on Sunday mornings, and I don't play then. Is there any punishment for members that book tee times, but don't turn up? At our club they have been talking about blocking people from booking if they regularly don't play after booking a tee time, although nothing has been implemented yet.

Thankfully it’s not something that appears to happen regularly for us

It’s very hard to also monitor without a marshal etc

If you don’t turn up for a comp then you are DQ’d and then banned for a comp

 

[PaulMdj]

We only have competition for spots on Sunday mornings, and I don't play then. Is there any punishment for members that book tee times, but don't turn up? At our club they have been talking about blocking people from booking if they regularly don't play after booking a tee time, although nothing has been implemented yet.

When we book for Comps at weekends on IG the entry fee is automatically taken from your account, no money in the account, no booking.

If you withdraw from the Comp more than 24hrs before playing the money is returned to your acct.

Withdraw in under 24hrs you have to speak to the GM for a refund.

Was brought in this year as we had a spate of people booking and just not turning up or withdrawing on the morning of the event leaving no time to get replacements.

Working well so far.

 

[jim8flog]

This whole “fastest finger first” malarkey sounds like a real pain.

Reading the thread it seems the people with this challenge are members at clubs where they can only book a week in advance. Have your clubs experimented with different booking windows?

I can book a month ahead at my club and it seems that times fill up gradually over a 3 week period as people firm up their plans.

Our time was decided when I was on the committee

8 days in advance because if it was 7 some it might interfere with a players regular golf day.

8pm because the office is closed and would not have to deal with loads of phone call when the system goes wrong (although some still email the manager, who can do nothing about at that time of night).

If we went a month in advance every single day would be booked up by the regular players of those times regardless of whether or not they knew they would play on the day. Which would also leave insufficient spaces for late booking societies.

 

[Doon frae Troon]

I recall when we introduced an electronic telephone booking system around the early1990 to combat a huge queue around the clubhouse starting at 3am.
The golfers hated it to begin with and I was getting dogs abuse.
I went in at 6am one Sunday morning to check how efficient it was to be met by one of the two golf assistants with huge relief as his fellow assistant had not turned up [he was ill]
I sat in the back office with the phone and computer to start taking calls from 6.30 am. All the early tee times had gone within about 15 minutes, the phone rang the instant you put it down.
This guy rang asking the earliest time I said 10.40 he said I'll get back to you on that. About 20 mins later he came back on and said OK I'll take that 10.40 time. Sorry next available time is 3.20 pm

BTW the booking system was for council residents only until 10am, non residents could book after 10am which generally meant first available booking was around 3pm. They really hated the system.
IT settled down after about 3 months and worked really efficiently. Slight dip in income then soon back to normal.
PS The hidden bonus of the system was that it started filling up the weekend late afternoon/evening tee times which historically are always the quietest times on any golf course.

 

[IanM]

Saunton have brought the booking time forward to avoid the most commonly used booking time on iG.

Servers are under less strain! Having two courses helps too!

 

[Springveldt]

Sounds like your experts have considered the possibility that someone has a program that uses an API to book a time ( as opposed to using the app or web front end). My assumption is that the automation is via the front end, ie automating the app navigation and data entry. Is that not correct?

API would be a much better solution. I had a quick look at BRS and it seems that each booking slot has a random identifier added to the href so you can't call the same url each time e.g. /newbiggin/bookings/book/Njk0MDI0OGU0NWNkNDhlMDYzNGFlMzg3NzdlZTliNWU%253D/1/20260102/0844 is the url to call if you wanted to book the 2nd Jan at 08:44 at my place. No one knows this random identifier until the page is refreshed as before it the links aren't rendered. I'd imagine they added this to try and combat bots booking time slots.

Still, if you have a script running in your browser and the booking page open, the script could wait for a page refresh, grab all the time slot links from the DOM, get the one that ends with the time you want and then post that to the server. That would grab the time slot for you and send you to the next page if you wanted to do it manually. If not, you could have the script wait a random time between any number of seconds you want and then post the booking based on the player id's you want to book for.

Nothing complicated with it really, just need to make sure it parses the DOM quick enough to grab the exact time you want before someone manually clicks it. If your PC isn't from the 90's you should win that race every time.

The problem with the "navigation" version is that the number of tee times available changes each week due to sunrise so you would be constantly changing your script to click a certain button each week. Would quickly become a pain in the rear.

And no, I don't have a script as I'm too lazy to write one, it doesn't really interest me. I'm happy enough logging on and booking a time manually, don't think I've failed to get the time I want.

 

[The Squirrel]

Sounds like your experts have considered the possibility that someone has a program that uses an API to book a time ( as opposed to using the app or web front end). My assumption is that the automation is via the front end, ie automating the app navigation and data entry. Is that not correct?

Yeah, they don't seem expert at all, frankly, if they thought that such actions would require server-level or even API access.
I'm not a software developer and have zero formal training. I was involved in a software project where we repeatedly scraped data off several different webpages every few seconds (all with different formats) though - exactly because a public API wasn't available for many of the sites we wanted data off - and so I do know a little about some of the challenges with that (e.g. how to combat or work around sites that attempt to block such activity).

Compared to what we got up to, auto-booking a tee time every week at 0.01 seconds after it opened would be an absolute peice of cake.

 

[Arthur Wedge]

Yeah, they don't seem expert at all, frankly, if they thought that such actions would require server-level or even API access.
I'm not a software developer and have zero formal training. I was involved in a software project where we repeatedly scraped data off several different webpages every few seconds (all with different formats) though - exactly because a public API wasn't available for many of the sites we wanted data off - and so I do know a little about some of the challenges with that (e.g. how to combat or work around sites that attempt to block such activity).

Compared to what we got up to, auto-booking a tee time every week at 0.01 seconds after it opened would be an absolute peice of cake.

It’s a very basic script

No need for api integration or any server level access

 

[NearHull]

It’s a very basic script

No need for api integration or any server level access

But, if it is so basic, then it would be widespread wouldn’t it?

 

[KenL]

Why any member thinks it is ok to use any automation to help them get a time before other members is selfish and arrogant. That’s my opinion anyway.