Kudos to Spiro

[Winka]

Just a quick one from a long-time lurker, first-time poster.
Felt the need to publically praise Olympic and Spiro in particular for his diligence in chasing a ruling on a soccer bet on Sunday. Bet the over 2.5 goals Reggiana/Breschia in Italian Serie A on Sunday. Referee has called the game off a few minutes early with Breschia leading 3-0, and the home crowd getting rather restless!
Originally the bet was ruled as a push as the game has not been played to it's full conclusion.
Olympic, being relatively new to soccer betting have rather vague rules on this unique situation, and while I was happy to accept their decision, (based on this ruling being similar to a situation in baseball where the game is called before it's completion), Spiro actively chased a correct ruling from UK bookmakers, who pay out on such resulted bets in this situation.
As such the bet was ruled a winner, for with I am grateful. But more importantly the manner in which Spiro dealt with this matter was absoultely first class, and it was a chance for me to witness first hand why people in this forum constantly find positive things to write about this book.

[BBKing]

Spiro is the man. customer service, lines on everything, a fast website. i just signed up with olympic this year and i love them.

[alec]

I have a question. What about the "under" bets?

If these bets are lost, I doubt that those who took under in this match are as happy as Winka is.

I also disagree about this situation being "unique". It does not happen every day, but it is not something that happens once in a hundred years.

The conclusion is sports books must have very detailed rules. Unfortunately this is not the case with most of them.

[AussieVamp2]

Originally posted by alec:
I have a question. What about the "under" bets?

Had have played the remaining few minutes would have lost the bet as well. Makes sense to me.

[Railbird]

I think all totals should be a refund,in baseball it is 8.5innings,so it looks like Spiro gave you a gift.how many minuntes is a few?

[Cons]

The ruling was absolutely correct in this instance.

The moment the third goal went in, all bets were settled. Right then and there winners and losers were decided. Any goals which theoretically could have been scored in the remaining few minutes would have no further impact on the bets whatsoever.

Had the score only been 2-0, the situation would have been completely different as neither bet would have been decided at the time, and both bets would have been called a push.

Similar rules always apply to 'first goalscorer' bets. If a player scores and the game is stopped before full time, all bets will stand. But if the score is still 0-0 then bets would push.

This is the official way the world's largest bookmakers treat totals in soccer, and it's promising to see that Olympic is applying these tried and tested rules to its own soccer section.

[Socceroo]

Hey alec - It certainly is not a unique situation, in fact another game was abandoned on the same weekend would you believe. That was the clash between Lille and Paris St Germain. This game was 1-1 after 65 minutes when a waterlogged pitch intervened, not sure what the ruling was on that one.

There was a little bit of a scandal a few years ago when Far Eastern betting syndicates were deliberately getting English Premier league matches abandoned by tampering with floodlights when the result was suiting them. Due to this a lot of British bookmakers around the world will now only pay out after the game has gone the full 90 minutes, which in my opinion is how it should be. God only knows how many of those Brescia fans had a bet on the game!!!

[alec]

AV2,

You've got me wrong. I am no saying that this rule doesn't make sense. It does.

The problem is Olympic didn't have any rule at all for this situation.

English books have some rules. So what? Unless Olympic's rules have something like "if some particular situation in soccer is not covered by our rules we do what William Hill does", it doesn't mean anything.

The only solution that I would applaud to in this situation is to refund all "under" bets and grade all "over" bets as winners.

By the way, do your remember their "offside" offer for the Euro2000 final?

[alec]

Socceroo,

Actually, I like the rule that Olympic applied in this case. It looks natural for me. The problem as I said is that they didn't have any rule.

The scandal you are talking about, as far as I remember, was about match outcome bets (not totals). And I believe the bets were made in Asia (not in England) where bookmakers used to have a rule that if a match is interrupted after the first half the current score is used as the final one. But I may be wrong.

[AussieVamp2]

Originally posted by alec:

By the way, do your remember their "offside" offer for the Euro2000 final?

Yep. Anything based on fundamental sports stats is rortable, I know, being a sports stats type, unless perhaps like the USA for some events only you have multiple checks happening - certainly not going to be the case in soccer or say a Nowheresville State vs Podunktown College basketball game.

[AussieVamp2]

This of course is another example of the sports stats problem :-
http://www.bettorsworld.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/005379.html

The spread betting firms have some truly weird stuff adjudicated by Opta - those stats boys can make some money too if they feel so inclined

[PerpetualCzech]

Sorry to pipe up so late on this one but I have been out of touch, sorry ... actually I have to admit to being a little ignorant of other sportsbooks' rules, but the reason we decided to grade the game as 3-0 is because Italy ended up counting it in the standings, whic seems natural to me. I have to say, if the score were say, 2-2 and the match was abandoned and to be replayed in full later I would've cancelled all bets, including the Over/Unders.

Having said that we are working on a detailed list of our soccer rules and they will be posted in the next few weeks.

[alec]

PC,

Welcome back and good luck with rules!

[PerpetualCzech]

After doing a little more research on this I have to admit my instincts were wrong when I said I would void all Over/Under bets if the game weren't counted in the standings ... Cons was totally right when he said the moment the third goal went in all Over/Under bets were settled (I mean, I can post any rule I want I guess as long as I'm consistent, but when just about every single other bookmaker does it this way it would be hard to go against that ...)

A majority of other bookmakers also voided bets on the winner of the game (they void any game not played to the full 90 minutes) but some honoured the result and I'm afraid in this case I will indeed go with the minority. Our rules are that if a game result and statistics counts in the league standings then the result must count for betting purposes as well. I'm really surprised this isn't the norm ... I guess maybe I am influenced too much with North American rules (e.g. if a baseball game is called after 7 innings bets on the winner are settled but bets on the total are voided), but this seems totally natural (and obvious) to me.

More detailed soccer rules will be posted on our site soon ... please bear with us as our learning process continues!

[guidoS]

this seems much ado about nothing! from all i've read here, spiro's Olympic book is one of the best! but praise in this instance is misplaced! if the book pushes the bet, they refund both sides and dont make any money. the only way they make money is to pay off one side! they have to have strict rules to follow as to when they push a bet! for instance in this soccer game, spiro may have had 100 times the money on the under, and by paying off winka, he may have reaped a small fortune and gotten some free positive pub in the deal. the books have to have a strict policy and then follow it. of course, who the hell cares about soccer anyway. guido, the ugly american (just kidding)