The goal of every sports bettor is to make real money gambling online. Every credible sportsbook is determined to make this happen, but there are certain instances that can jeopardize your chances.
For instance, think about cyber-attacks, either on the bookmaker, your bank, or due to lapses on your end. In this post, we will consider instances where you might not get paid your sports bet earnings.
Bookmaker Evident Error
When a bookmaker gives odds that are obviously impossible to win or makes a pricing mistake that would have made bettors more money, this is a palpable error. It is usually an unreasonable mistake, and it becomes obvious that the bookmaker could never have intended to set such odds.
Think about a football game where the average odds you saw for your favorite team were about 4/2. Even though that sounded good, you then saw that Bet22 was offering it at 16/1, which is a ridiculously better rate. You place your bet, it is confirmed, and then you find out that your bet amount was refunded because the bookmaker made a clear mistake.
If, for some reason, the bookmaker didn’t notice the mistake in the odds until after the game, they can still cancel your bet and refuse to pay you out.
Abuse of Bonus Terms
Most online sports betting platforms today offer bonuses of different types. Did you know that these bonuses have terms and conditions that often include a warning against abusing them and a “fair use” clause?
The bonus and any bets you made with it could be taken away if your bookmaker’s system has enough evidence to think you are abusing bonuses and tampering with their system to get more bonuses or use them more often than they intended.
Forbidden Bets
An example of an illegal bet is when your wager went into the computer system after the game was over. Even “live” or “in-play” betting doesn’t let you do this because it’s unfair to other players and would be a big scam. But sometimes, sportsbooks’ betting systems may still have odds available a few minutes after a game is over.
When this happens, you might be able to place a bet (on the winning choice, of course), but as soon as the systems notice the mistake, they will cancel your bet and, of course, not pay you for it.
Bottom Line
Besides the above situations, your bookie may have their own rules and regulations. This may be different from one platform to the next, but the overall policy of a bookmaker will always be the same: a gambling experience that is fair, clear, and free of any kind of fraud or manipulation.
If a bookmaker sees that an account is breaking company rules, such as by abusing bonuses, winning bets are often canceled.