SAN JOSE, COSTA RICA -- SportsBookReview.com has issued a scam alert warning online sports bettors to be wary when betting correlated parlays, because certain sportsbooks have canceled these bets and have seized money from bettor's accounts.
It all began with an email to players announcing this sportsbook and all others on their network would retroactively cancel all correlated parlays dating back to September 1, 2007, claiming bettors had taken advantage of a "loophole" in their system, and insinuating that these bettors were knowingly cheating them.
A correlated parlay includes bets that are related and are usually on the same event. An example of a football correlated parlay would be one that includes bets on the underdog as well as under the total points scored.
Yet, there was no flaw in their software or "loophole" as they call it, these bets were always allowed by this sportsbook and its software, and there are other sportsbooks that allow these types of wagers as well.
Why are they suddenly canceling them, you ask? Well, it is obvious to anyone looking into this situation that September 1 to present was the chosen timeframe because the book noticed it had been beaten by some large balance holders.
The outcry to SportsBookReview.com and on public forums from the stiffed players was loud and fierce, with the prevailing opinion being that these bets had always been allowed, and if the book didn't want to take this kind of action, all they had to do was to block bettors from making these types of bets.
Some SBRforum.com posters had this to say:
"...it's a license to steal for the book, and they are now doing so. They are retroactively determining what is correlated in their view. They can say ANY 2 bets are correlated. Same game/total, 2 teams in the same division/conference, etc." TheGuesser
"[they] have every right to change their software and not allow certain pars. But they have no right to go back 6 weeks and disallow bets they no longer like now. It's theft, plain and simple." HedgeHog
"I'll say it again, the only solution, as it has been since the beginning of time (or at least online bookmaking), is for each book to program their software to accept the games they do want and reject the others. Nothing else works." DrunkenLullaby
(To view the thread in the SBR forum click here)
At this time, it is confirmed that a minimum of 31 accounts were affected and over $200,000 was removed from these accounts. It is believed the actual figure is significantly higher.
Two sportsbooks in particular, Sportsbetting.com and BetUSA.com, have gone against the stance taken by others regarding correlated parlays, and announced that they would not confiscate winnings from these types of bets.
SportsBookReview.com believes the only reason the sportsbook is choosing to apply a vague rule now is because there were some large parlay winners since the beginning of the 2007 football season. Had most players actually lost hundreds of thousands of dollars, this whole issue would never have arisen; they would have kept player losses as they have been doing for years. Players who lost money on these same exact wagers prior to Sept 1 are ignored.
SportsBookReview's Bill Dozer summed up the whole mess this way, "These books cannot wait for the result of the wager and then decide which subjective rules to apply and how. If you take a bet, you pay the bet, nothing else is acceptable."
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