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BETZONE REVIEW
Well, the bookmaker obviously has a cool name.
The Home Page is an attractive blue. It has a soccer player on the front, indicating who they are interested in, but no huge amounts of graphics or anything, which is also good. Bookmakers and people running punting sites – Black/green/purple (I even saw bright orange/green today at www.firststake.com) are not good combinations or looks. Although white on blue violates the human principle of reading dark text on a light background, it is actually one combo that does work and is pleasant to read. So points for that. Obviously some similarities with betmaker, too.
View Betting Odds is an obvious link at the top, as is log-in. Personally I think the ‘view company info’ in the same place is annoying, having it easy to find is good. Seeing it all the time you want to peruse the odds is bad.
Multiple language support has to be handy for some. Shows a recognition of the market but not sure about Scandinavia or Asia though.
For some reason the normal userid/password sequence is reversed on Betzone, as far as logging in goes. A little odd.
Once logged in you see the offers available. All European focused, so no need to have baseball – but why have college basketball? This page is a little annoying as it lists leagues that are currently not playing, although this serves as an advertisement for what they will be carrying, so could be the purpose there. However, an explanation or list would work well there I think. If you do select a league that is not playing you go to the generic league selection field. This is useful, and you can choose 1 league, several or all of them, by check box, also good.
There are links for all European leagues, and more leagues – how about an all leagues link?
Carrying a significant number of leagues is an attractive feature, although they do not go quite as far as some, comments made on Bettorsworld indicate more leagues will be added.
Navigation is pretty easy with pulldowns to get to futures and various sports. On the horizontal text link menu ‘Info’ is prominently displayed, also a good feature, which gets you to rules, etc.
When betting, being limited to 10 bets is a bit annoying, but not too horrible.
Something that is very annoying for the small punter, is the constant round down to the dollar. So if something is 1.33 and you bet 10, you actually get 1.30, or 1.35 and you bet the minimum of 6, you get 1.33. This is obviously programmed like this. I fail to understand why betting to a number of cents is a bad thing, if it comes out as winning 2.37, so what? Obviously this is good for profits for the bookmaker, but very annoying for the small punter (not interested in them perhaps?) Hopefully these extra dollars go to a staff party or something. Sportsinteraction handle this well, and are not scared of two decimal places, neither are several others.
You can select a team to see other bets, like half time betting, or half-time fulltime doubles, but no totals betting seems to be available on the times I have looked.
The other euro focused sports, Formula 1, tennis, golf are available, but you would not call Betzone a tennis focused bookmaker. Something I had not seen before, Formula 1 team matchups and some group betting, a bit like golf which is interesting. I had not noticed these before.
On rugby they have the annoying draw/handicap line – which seems to have not much other purpose than to win a bit more/increase the market. In general, i.e. Australia –10 South Africa – and landing 10 exactly is 14/1. Nice if you could pick it, but not too easy, especially on an event like this. Might be useful in some circumstance.
On the customer front, the account details and reconciliation is pretty good, once you get it, and is quite detailed (not the best thing to do at 3 in the morning. The live internet help feature is brilliant – especially for people overseas who don’t want to pay for those phone calls. Customer service all around for Betzone has been excellent. They even happily answered stupid questions at 3 a.m. Depositing money by credit card was fast and painless and worked well, unlike some of the closer to the Americas islands places I have tried. Your current balance and total amount in pending bets is always displayed, also a very nice feature.
If you are as someone tagged themselves as being on Bworld ‘a narrow minded yankee only interested in yank sports’, and not the wider opportunities, then Betzone is not for you, sometimes literally. Blame your government, I guess, and the fact that head honchos of some organisations probably want to visit Vegas without Janet Reno being after them. Which is really bizarre, as betting is illegal in all sorts of countries and people will take accounts from them, quite happily – they just don’t care if they ever visit there or not I guess. Maybe all these should be set up as holding companies in Nepal so Tibetan lamas with vows of poverty actually run the thing, don’t have to worry about US fascists, and still get the cash. With suitable donations to lama libraries, of course.
Anyway, if you are interested in soccer and other general options, Betzone is a must, I believe. Good markets inded for soccer, and a wide range of leagues, which hopefully increase. They did mention the ‘Asian Line’ word too, so we will see if that happens, and how long it lasts if it does.
Well, the bookmaker obviously has a cool name.
The Home Page is an attractive blue. It has a soccer player on the front, indicating who they are interested in, but no huge amounts of graphics or anything, which is also good. Bookmakers and people running punting sites – Black/green/purple (I even saw bright orange/green today at www.firststake.com) are not good combinations or looks. Although white on blue violates the human principle of reading dark text on a light background, it is actually one combo that does work and is pleasant to read. So points for that. Obviously some similarities with betmaker, too.
View Betting Odds is an obvious link at the top, as is log-in. Personally I think the ‘view company info’ in the same place is annoying, having it easy to find is good. Seeing it all the time you want to peruse the odds is bad.
Multiple language support has to be handy for some. Shows a recognition of the market but not sure about Scandinavia or Asia though.
For some reason the normal userid/password sequence is reversed on Betzone, as far as logging in goes. A little odd.
Once logged in you see the offers available. All European focused, so no need to have baseball – but why have college basketball? This page is a little annoying as it lists leagues that are currently not playing, although this serves as an advertisement for what they will be carrying, so could be the purpose there. However, an explanation or list would work well there I think. If you do select a league that is not playing you go to the generic league selection field. This is useful, and you can choose 1 league, several or all of them, by check box, also good.
There are links for all European leagues, and more leagues – how about an all leagues link?
Carrying a significant number of leagues is an attractive feature, although they do not go quite as far as some, comments made on Bettorsworld indicate more leagues will be added.
Navigation is pretty easy with pulldowns to get to futures and various sports. On the horizontal text link menu ‘Info’ is prominently displayed, also a good feature, which gets you to rules, etc.
When betting, being limited to 10 bets is a bit annoying, but not too horrible.
Something that is very annoying for the small punter, is the constant round down to the dollar. So if something is 1.33 and you bet 10, you actually get 1.30, or 1.35 and you bet the minimum of 6, you get 1.33. This is obviously programmed like this. I fail to understand why betting to a number of cents is a bad thing, if it comes out as winning 2.37, so what? Obviously this is good for profits for the bookmaker, but very annoying for the small punter (not interested in them perhaps?) Hopefully these extra dollars go to a staff party or something. Sportsinteraction handle this well, and are not scared of two decimal places, neither are several others.
You can select a team to see other bets, like half time betting, or half-time fulltime doubles, but no totals betting seems to be available on the times I have looked.
The other euro focused sports, Formula 1, tennis, golf are available, but you would not call Betzone a tennis focused bookmaker. Something I had not seen before, Formula 1 team matchups and some group betting, a bit like golf which is interesting. I had not noticed these before.
On rugby they have the annoying draw/handicap line – which seems to have not much other purpose than to win a bit more/increase the market. In general, i.e. Australia –10 South Africa – and landing 10 exactly is 14/1. Nice if you could pick it, but not too easy, especially on an event like this. Might be useful in some circumstance.
On the customer front, the account details and reconciliation is pretty good, once you get it, and is quite detailed (not the best thing to do at 3 in the morning. The live internet help feature is brilliant – especially for people overseas who don’t want to pay for those phone calls. Customer service all around for Betzone has been excellent. They even happily answered stupid questions at 3 a.m. Depositing money by credit card was fast and painless and worked well, unlike some of the closer to the Americas islands places I have tried. Your current balance and total amount in pending bets is always displayed, also a very nice feature.
If you are as someone tagged themselves as being on Bworld ‘a narrow minded yankee only interested in yank sports’, and not the wider opportunities, then Betzone is not for you, sometimes literally. Blame your government, I guess, and the fact that head honchos of some organisations probably want to visit Vegas without Janet Reno being after them. Which is really bizarre, as betting is illegal in all sorts of countries and people will take accounts from them, quite happily – they just don’t care if they ever visit there or not I guess. Maybe all these should be set up as holding companies in Nepal so Tibetan lamas with vows of poverty actually run the thing, don’t have to worry about US fascists, and still get the cash. With suitable donations to lama libraries, of course.
Anyway, if you are interested in soccer and other general options, Betzone is a must, I believe. Good markets inded for soccer, and a wide range of leagues, which hopefully increase. They did mention the ‘Asian Line’ word too, so we will see if that happens, and how long it lasts if it does.
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