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Thanks for all who posted. Sorry for the delay in responding. Here are my answers to the issues raised:
Thedevil wrote:
11 or 12 plays over a period of three months all maximums doesn't sound kosher.
My gripe is that if your a gambler why did you wait till after you grabbed the $8200 to bitch and moan. The right thing to do would have been to try to settle the whole ball of wax when all the money was in the account. I can see the books side thinking this was settled when they gave the $8200 and you took it and I presume closed your account.
My response:
Clarification: I did not have 11 or 12 plays over a period of three months all maximums. Most of the time I bet the maximum and this had been going on over about the previous 10 months. Most of these bets are on lines that are comparable to other books lines. I identified 8 bets spread out over those 8 months for which I bet a line that I would consider was a very weak line where I could get a well-defined advantage. I won 4 of those and lost 4 of those as I stated in my post. To get an understanding of my betting pattern I posted the bets from the previous 2 weeks leading up to the overnight line. That part of my post is repeated here:
To get an idea of the type of action I gave the book, the 16 bets leading up to the overnight bets over a period of 2 weeks were: $2200, $280, $1000, $1125, $1450, $1100, $2000, $960, $2000, $100, $1100, $1800, $275, $1000, $750, and $1050.
I did not wait to cash out the $8200 to discuss this with the book. Maybe it wasn't clear from my post but I contacted the book the same day they deducted the $20,000 from my account. As I said in my post I called the customer service department and they said the message would be passed onto the owner. The owner then discovered a previous play on a dependent parlay and proceeded to deduct the remaining $8200 from my account. That he acted this way did not leave me in a position where I felt I could trust him while negotiating. Therefore, when my friend told me that the owner told me to look in my account since he had decided to give back the original balance of $8200, I felt the wise thing to do was cash out and then continue the case when the check cleared. BTW, the book actually told my friend at that point that he felt bad for taking that $8200 and it caused him to lose sleep. If this was causing him to lose sleep maybe it was a way of appeasing his own guilt over the handling of the situation. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case because only he knows, but from my point of view you cannot have a settlement unless two parties explicitly agree on the terms of the settlement. I don't think my cashing out is wrong because there was no stipulation made that by cashing out I would be agreeing to a settlement.
From AYCE:
Why would the "online limit" can be varied from 1000 to 4000 from time to time?
"Although I won $4,200 by betting on weak lines that consisted of dependent parlays, I have offered to return these winnings." Why don't you do it before you have another "incident" of involving $20000?
"I cashed out immediately. I waited for the check to clear before calling to discuss a settlement for the $20,000 in winnings still owed to me from the overnight line bets." What are you afraid of if you believe you deserve the money?
My response:
I'm not sure how the book determined the online limit. I also thought it was strange that it varied by that much.
When I won the $4200 on the 4 bets where I had a well-defined advantaged, at the time I did not think I had done anything wrong. These 2 years have been my first experience with on-line books and quite possibly my last. I was of the thinking that if a book offers a line and you bet it and they don't cancel it before the game is played then it has to be honored. Other than these 4 winning bets there were only 4 other bets made where I had a well-defined advantage and those 4 lost. After those losses the book actually sent a post on their web site saying that individuals were taking advantage of parlays on dependent events and thanks to these individuals the games involved would not be offered anymore in any parlays. Presumably their software didn't have the capability to specify which games these parlays could be involved with. I feel this is an important point because that tells me they were aware of my bets and they didn't address it with me at all. There was no contact made. It led me to believe that they played under the same rules I thought I was playing under: If a bet is booked and the game is started it will be honored. If they were not going to be playing by these rules then that would have been the time to inform me so. Not doing so clearly sent to me the wrong message. At this point, my thinking has changed as to whether placing bets on dependent parlays is wrong. I now realize that on-line books are not necessarily the same as Vegas casinos and I'm now open to the thinking that it is not the right thing to do. Although these bets broke no rules and although these bets simply turn the tables on the book for a change and give the player a well-defined advantage over the books, I now see these type of bets as being unethical and would not do this in the future. For that reason as part of a settlement I offered to subtract the net winnings on these bets of $4200 from the $20,000 that I strongly feel is rightly owed to me.
I don't feel the $20,000 in winnings from the two parlays can be placed in the same category as the dependent parlays. These parlays were made on a "fresh" overnight line for which I did not have any book to compare lines. The other games involved in these parlays were not "off". The line in the morning for these 2 games was the same as the overnight line. I admit at the time the bet was made I felt the line should have been somewhere between 160 and 170 when it was -110. However, overnight lines are risky and I have made limit bets before on an overnight line when I was wrong and didn't get the best of it. The bottom line for the $20,000 is: I believe if the bet was canceled before the game is started it should be open to a lot of debate. However, once the game is completed I cant' see why there should be much debate over this issue. With regard to the other issues that deserve debate, the dependent parlays, I have willingly conceded that these are bets that I will not take advantage of in the future and I have also offered to return the net winnings.
With regard to why I waited for the $8200 check to clear before continuing discussions for the $20,000 still owed to me: Please see the answer above in the response to thedevil's post.
-mlbfan
Thedevil wrote:
11 or 12 plays over a period of three months all maximums doesn't sound kosher.
My gripe is that if your a gambler why did you wait till after you grabbed the $8200 to bitch and moan. The right thing to do would have been to try to settle the whole ball of wax when all the money was in the account. I can see the books side thinking this was settled when they gave the $8200 and you took it and I presume closed your account.
My response:
Clarification: I did not have 11 or 12 plays over a period of three months all maximums. Most of the time I bet the maximum and this had been going on over about the previous 10 months. Most of these bets are on lines that are comparable to other books lines. I identified 8 bets spread out over those 8 months for which I bet a line that I would consider was a very weak line where I could get a well-defined advantage. I won 4 of those and lost 4 of those as I stated in my post. To get an understanding of my betting pattern I posted the bets from the previous 2 weeks leading up to the overnight line. That part of my post is repeated here:
To get an idea of the type of action I gave the book, the 16 bets leading up to the overnight bets over a period of 2 weeks were: $2200, $280, $1000, $1125, $1450, $1100, $2000, $960, $2000, $100, $1100, $1800, $275, $1000, $750, and $1050.
I did not wait to cash out the $8200 to discuss this with the book. Maybe it wasn't clear from my post but I contacted the book the same day they deducted the $20,000 from my account. As I said in my post I called the customer service department and they said the message would be passed onto the owner. The owner then discovered a previous play on a dependent parlay and proceeded to deduct the remaining $8200 from my account. That he acted this way did not leave me in a position where I felt I could trust him while negotiating. Therefore, when my friend told me that the owner told me to look in my account since he had decided to give back the original balance of $8200, I felt the wise thing to do was cash out and then continue the case when the check cleared. BTW, the book actually told my friend at that point that he felt bad for taking that $8200 and it caused him to lose sleep. If this was causing him to lose sleep maybe it was a way of appeasing his own guilt over the handling of the situation. I'm not saying that this is necessarily the case because only he knows, but from my point of view you cannot have a settlement unless two parties explicitly agree on the terms of the settlement. I don't think my cashing out is wrong because there was no stipulation made that by cashing out I would be agreeing to a settlement.
From AYCE:
Why would the "online limit" can be varied from 1000 to 4000 from time to time?
"Although I won $4,200 by betting on weak lines that consisted of dependent parlays, I have offered to return these winnings." Why don't you do it before you have another "incident" of involving $20000?
"I cashed out immediately. I waited for the check to clear before calling to discuss a settlement for the $20,000 in winnings still owed to me from the overnight line bets." What are you afraid of if you believe you deserve the money?
My response:
I'm not sure how the book determined the online limit. I also thought it was strange that it varied by that much.
When I won the $4200 on the 4 bets where I had a well-defined advantaged, at the time I did not think I had done anything wrong. These 2 years have been my first experience with on-line books and quite possibly my last. I was of the thinking that if a book offers a line and you bet it and they don't cancel it before the game is played then it has to be honored. Other than these 4 winning bets there were only 4 other bets made where I had a well-defined advantage and those 4 lost. After those losses the book actually sent a post on their web site saying that individuals were taking advantage of parlays on dependent events and thanks to these individuals the games involved would not be offered anymore in any parlays. Presumably their software didn't have the capability to specify which games these parlays could be involved with. I feel this is an important point because that tells me they were aware of my bets and they didn't address it with me at all. There was no contact made. It led me to believe that they played under the same rules I thought I was playing under: If a bet is booked and the game is started it will be honored. If they were not going to be playing by these rules then that would have been the time to inform me so. Not doing so clearly sent to me the wrong message. At this point, my thinking has changed as to whether placing bets on dependent parlays is wrong. I now realize that on-line books are not necessarily the same as Vegas casinos and I'm now open to the thinking that it is not the right thing to do. Although these bets broke no rules and although these bets simply turn the tables on the book for a change and give the player a well-defined advantage over the books, I now see these type of bets as being unethical and would not do this in the future. For that reason as part of a settlement I offered to subtract the net winnings on these bets of $4200 from the $20,000 that I strongly feel is rightly owed to me.
I don't feel the $20,000 in winnings from the two parlays can be placed in the same category as the dependent parlays. These parlays were made on a "fresh" overnight line for which I did not have any book to compare lines. The other games involved in these parlays were not "off". The line in the morning for these 2 games was the same as the overnight line. I admit at the time the bet was made I felt the line should have been somewhere between 160 and 170 when it was -110. However, overnight lines are risky and I have made limit bets before on an overnight line when I was wrong and didn't get the best of it. The bottom line for the $20,000 is: I believe if the bet was canceled before the game is started it should be open to a lot of debate. However, once the game is completed I cant' see why there should be much debate over this issue. With regard to the other issues that deserve debate, the dependent parlays, I have willingly conceded that these are bets that I will not take advantage of in the future and I have also offered to return the net winnings.
With regard to why I waited for the $8200 check to clear before continuing discussions for the $20,000 still owed to me: Please see the answer above in the response to thedevil's post.
-mlbfan
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