Originally posted on 12/17/2012:

This case is not active at SBR. I'll offer a few thoughts.

If the book mistakenly deposited $400 into an account that had $40, the account would have $440. If the player logged in and genuinely could not remember his balance, found his balance to be $440 and ran that up to $4,400; How much should he be paid? He did nothing improper. He simply bet what was offered.

In a case like that or similar I would hope a mediator would at a minimum give the player credit for his percentage of winnings. In the above example 10% of the bankroll belonged to the player, free of any errors, 90% was the books money. In the above example I would award 10% of the $4,400 figure to the player.

Lets test the other side:
If the player had $40 in his account and the book mistakenly deposited $400 so again his balance is at $440. And again the player finds his account balance and plays but this time losses it all. Does he owe the sportsbook $400? He only had $40 of his own money. Of course not, he only had $40.

In both examples its not the player's money, he can neither profit or lose from the mistaken deposit.

In this case to rule outside of the parameters in the examples above you have to say there was no material mistake with the odds or perhaps there was a mistake but the book did not catch it in a reasonable fashion or some other scenario which grants the player the money free and clear.

I haven't seen the details of this case so I purposely did not use any numbers, names or scenarios stated in this thread. There could be exceptions. If the same dispute came in front of me and the player proved he did not actually bet the sportsbook's portion, so using the example above he started his roll with a bet of $40 or less and did not dip into the sportsbook's portion of the bankroll I would consider that obviously highly material and award the player the full balance. Not sure what the details were here but that's what would have happened if the case was mine.