SBR Bill Dozer reports on BetOnSports today

[bigboydan]

02.23.2006 (09:09 AM CST)
SBR Bill Dozer reports: BetOnSports(SBR rating C) cancels bettor’s winning soccer wager after match. The sportsbook claims the price of the wager was listed incorrectly due to human error while the player states the odds offered were comparable with other sportsbooks. SBR is speaking to BetOnSports about paying winnings at what they believe to be the correct price. BetOnSports management is expected to reassess this decision, understanding that voiding winnings after funds are risked is unacceptable.

Player to wagering department: "Receiving no notice by email, phone or messageboard though hours and even a day passed before the events I betted on took place leads to only one conclusion: The odds offered by you where perfectly alright when I placed my bets. There was no no flipping of lines at that time. Id was only after the results where clear, that the process of denying my bets started. Instead of balancing their book properly your colleagues accepted and by their odds even teased and aquired bets on the "underdog" result of the two events. This is the explanation why nothing at all happened until the games where finished. Even then no contact with me as the customer, just quietly deleting the bet from the account. I am more than sure, that if the results would have beeen like your colleagues expected and I had lost my bets, nothing at all would have happened and the bets would be on the account as lost."

[Mudcat]

Books can't go cancelling bets after an event is over. That is so fundamental.

When they discover and correct bad lines, they need to immediately check if there were any wagers and void them on the spot. Ideally they would also make an attempt to contact the player.

I understand the need for "bad line clauses" in the rules, but when they wait until the final result is in before voiding bets there is just such a blatant appearance of impropriety. Even if it is just an honest mistake attributable to being disorganized or slow, I believe books should take full responsibility for their error - and then work behind the scenes at not being so slow and disorganized any more.

[SBR_John]

They have had a past history of this kind of complaints. We are trying hard to convince them there is a better way. Its just plain lazyness bot to catch a bad line until after the game is over.

[Dark Horse]

Reputation is a funny thing. Takes years to build, just seconds to destroy.

[isetcap]

How bad was the line? That makes a significant difference in this situation I think. The player claims the line was not a flip. If BOSports claims that it was a bad line and they were just slow to clean up the mess, well that's bad. But if it is evident the line wasn't a flip, and they're trying to void the bet under the pretense it was, then that is downright underhanded and SBR should clip their wings.

[Bill Dozer]

BOS agreed to pay the player at the adjusted odds. This is the least the book should do when they catch their error after the game.

Too many books try to assess what the bettor's intentions are and make the decision based on their subjective view of the player's character. If the bettor can truthfully say his winning wager was voided after the event, it should be a no-brainer and never get to this point.

This wager was played at +110 and BOS believes the correct odds were -140. 50 cents is very small in ML soccer and not enough to say the odds were flipped. Regardless, the guy had action and it's not the book's luxury to make the call after the results are known.

We are going to see if BoS will commit to a policy of never canceling a bet on a game once it goes off. Their problem apparently only exists with soccer since they do very little volume in the sport. They actually consider it a prop wager and a prop manager made the initial call.

There is also a 2nd canceled wager that is being addressed. Mgt. is still trying to determine if it was canceled prior to game time.

[SBR_John]

If the correct line indeed was -140 and the player got +110 then that was a bad line. How can a book as big as BoS not catch this line until the game was finnished? And what finally drew their attention to it? Was it a lopsided loss and they went back to find out why?

In any case, they booked the bet, the game was played... and as the saying goes...all bets are final.

[isetcap]

It certainly was a bad line, but it was not a flipped line. That tells me what I need to know and it has nothing to do with a 'C'.

[Bill Dozer]

The problem is that there really isn't a consistent market like there is in NFL or hoops. Right now you can find 50 cent differences between BOS and 10bet and Pinnacle. For the book to make the case that it's a bad line they would need to show where the margin was off. If the margins are consistent and they just fell asleep, it is only a bad line to them. The book gets the leeway here if they catch it before letting the player sweat, but there is something to be said for voiding out a good investment.

[raiders7201]

I can't believe this math that Dozer is using so I had to come back to post this.



A bad line for ML should be 9% or more at most.

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I was thinking about the BoS case and tried to determine what constitutes a bad line. I think that using Pinnacle as a guage anything over 9% should be considered a bad line.

So the first number is what you can get at Pinnacle and the second number is what you get.

+100/+110 would be 2.44% scalp
+100/+120 = 4.76%
+100/+130 = 6.98%
+100/+140= 9.09%
-110/+140 = 12.00% BoS case

+150/+215 = 9%

+600/+900= 4.48%
+500/+1000= 8.20%
+150/+240 = 11.84%

[SBR_John]

You know the rules: No schill working the boards Raiders.

[Santo]

No coherent market in soccer? Betfair often has millions traded on individual and fairly meaningless games..

I don't know what market it was on, but if you look at the data Betfair makes publically available through the BDP, you could probably see if the market was ever at a given price, and see how it moved..

If you can find 50c differences between BOS and 10bet/Pinny then something's wrong with BOS's line maker.. certainly I've not seen a 50c scalp between any combination of the major US Books/Betfair/BetDaq/UK Books, excepting BetRoyal whose lines are always well off and I've left alone..

[tacomax]

If the margins are consistent and they just fell asleep, it is only a bad line to them.

Indeed.

Incidentally, if the action on soccer is so small and they can't manage to handle the lines then they should stop offering them. Is a small level of profit from soccer really worth the bad PR they get in cases like this?

[Chuck Sims]

New management, same bullshit by BetOnSports. According to the player he made the bet more than a day before the start of the match. Its obvious BOS was going to do what they have always done, which is to cancel the wager if it wins, keep the money if it loses.

[Mudcat]

I'm still chuckling at Raiders. He went to the trouble of creating a new identity for that post; I guess he must have thought he was saying something.

Interlude With a Shill

[Chuck Sims]

A wise decision to ban the unscrupulous shill known as raiders72001.

[SBR_John]

It does not make any sense to discuss this BoS issue with a company schill when we are talking directly with BoS and the player. Bill did a good job handeling a delicate situation and both player and bookk are happy.