Account Restrictions
How to make your bookmaker accounts last longer
The do’s and don’ts for making your brand new bookmaker account last longer – even as a shrewd bettor.
If you have been paying attention in the space that is profitable betting, you will have come across many articles that claim to understand how bookmakers restrict winning bettors.
The truth is, only the companies themselves know, and often those only in the specific departments whose job it is to restrict winners will know the exact methods for how they operate.
So if you come across an article that has been informed by a bookmaker employee then it is certainly worth paying attention to.
It’s why videos like this from the likes of Caan Berry are valuable. At SBC we don’t advocate taking the value ASAP like Caan mentions (you can see why below) but it’s certainly some of the best info out there in terms of how bookies profile accounts.
It’s also why I sat up and took notice when our inspirational leader Peter Ling put this old blog post in front of me…
The inside story on how one bookmaker restricts the stakes of its customers is a fascinating look at the specifics of how a bookmaker profiles its customers and then limits their betting activity by using stake factoring; sourced from an actual bookmaker employee in the know.
Go check it out. It’s a great read and unique to anything I had come across before.
My New Account Do’s And Don’ts
Such was its impact that I decided to write a new blog piece using some of the nuggets of gold found in the stake factoring article.
I decided to use these bits of info to suggest some do’s and don’ts for brand new betting accounts with the aim of making those accounts last longer.
Essentially we want to represent ourselves as a mug, losing, bad (take your pick) punter with the aim of throwing the bookies off our scent and gaining a favourable stake factor.
I call it ‘Priming’ an account because if you go in straight away with a new account and start betting on shrewd bets, it won’t last 2 minutes. Yet if you take time to make it look like you are a loser and ‘prime’ the account it could very well last a lot longer!
Why Priming Works
This approach is demonstrated perfectly by a story told by a betting associate of mine about the amount of money won on an account that was previously a big losing account.
The account was used over many years by an avid bettor who did not know what they were doing when it came to winning/profitable/value betting meaning the account was showing a huge loss (clearly this guy was not afraid to bet large sums as well).
My associate was able to win significantly more using this account than usual as he was not restricted as quickly either in profit terms or from the amount of shrewd bets placed.
In his estimation he won about 30 to 40 times what he would have been able to in a normal ‘new’ bookmaker account before it got closed down.
Clearly these types of betting accounts are hugely valuable to winning bettors and should be taken advantage of wherever possible.
Anyway…onto the do’s and don’ts for making your brand new betting account last longer – even as a shrewd bettor…
DO
- In general, bet like a loser and how the bookmaker wants you to. So bet on accas, bet on other multiple bets and bet in the casino. This point on taking accas is really key as its one of the most important things you can do early in the life of a new bookmaker account
- Bet in-play on football, especially on the big games. You might also consider the odd bet on a random league like Chile or Brazil where you don’t have a clue and it looks like you are bored watching TV late at night and needing a punt.
- Bet at different stakes as it looks like you don’t have a set strategy. When you have a winner, bet immediately on something else using the funds won as this makes it look like you are just a bad gambler.
- Bet on a wide range of sports and markets. Being completely scattergun will make it look like you don’t know what you are doing.
- Bet late and on favorites in horse racing. Make it look like you are watching the racing and needing a punt.
- Bet on the same football team like a mug punter would do betting on who they support.
- Bet on the overs markets. Mug punters love betting on goals a lot more than no or under goals
- Bet via a mobile phone. Most shrewd punters use laptops or desktops (I know I do)…mugs do it on their mobile as they sit in front of their TV or at the pub.
- Bet when the bookmaker is a mile off best price i.e. if best price is 10/1 and you take 8/1, it is clear you are not value sensitive.
DON’T
- Bet in a sensible, logical manner at the same stakes.
- Bet just on singles.
- Bet on racing into early markets. The bookies hate that.
- Take the max stake allowed on any bet. If for example the max bet a bookmaker will take is £100, don’t take the full amount on that bet. Take no more than 75% of the maximum being offered. (To check this – load up your bet and enter a really high figure – it will likely tell you what the maximum you can bet on it is – Skybet offer this facility for example)
- Take too many ‘boosted’ bets – one or two might be fine but taking too many bets that have boosted odds is not advised.
- Bet on shrewd bets that might beat Betfair SP or closing line odds.
- Take the free bet offers. They are tempting but bookies do log this and it might be used against you. Again is your account worth that £5 free bet? (no is the answer)
- Bet on tips from prominent experts that are known to move markets – the likes of Hugh Taylor or Pricewise.
- Bet into niche markets or sports they know they are vulnerable on.
- Bet using a VPN when priming an account. It flags with some bookies. Use a phone hotspot instead if you have to.
- Take a bet with the bookmaker when they are a stand out best price.
- Click on links from a site like Oddschecker. Your traffic source will be tagged as originating from Oddschecker and you will be tagged as a price sensitive customer (see the stake factoring article).
How to offset your mug bets
Clearly in order to attempt to throw the bookies off our scent, we have to make various bad bets that are not part of our winning strategy.
You may be thinking…this sounds like I’m going to lose a lot of money??
Well yes you are likely to end up losing some and to be honest if you win more than you lose when doing this you may not achieve the stake factoring status you’re after.
We can limit our losses, though, using a couple of methods.
Lay your win stake – thanks to the wonders of betting exchanges, it’s possible to lay the bet you’re taking at the bookmaker. This means you can have every eventuality covered and you’ll only lose what is known in Matched Betting as qualifying loss. This is the difference in odds between the win and lay price. If laying you can use a Matched Betting calculator to calculate your stakes.
Worth losing some? – theoretically speaking, you should only lose the margin that the bookmaker bakes into their odds. Using a casino slot game as an example, a typical RTP (return to player) is around 95%. This means that over the long term expect to lose only 5% of your stakes. So even if you don’t hedge/lay off any of your bets, you’ll expect to win some money rather than lose it all. This % figure applies to sports betting as well
Final thoughts
Inevitably our betting accounts will not last forever and eventually they will be restricted to the point of them being useless. This is due to the fact that, as winning bettors, we will start to profit at the bookmaker and we all know that bookies will react if losing money.
What we hope to achieve here is to prime our accounts so we can get the maximum amount of money out of them as possible.
If we get new accounts tagged as being ones belonging to a ‘losing punter’ then it might be can extract a lot more time and money out of it before it gets closed down or limited in stakes.
What is written here is not an exact science but it is based on years of betting experience coupled with insider knowledge from a real life bookmaker employee.
We think that’s likely to be as good as it gets…
As always, let us know if you’ve got any questions or comments on this subject. You can reach me on alex@smartbettingclub.com
Get More Help Beating The Bookmaker
As a Smart Betting Club member you can access several expert reports dedicated to helping you understand how and why restrictions are applied and how to avoid them as best you can, for as long as you can.
Whether it be through the use of technology, being selective as to the type of bets you place, how you spread your stakes around or the bookies more likely to accept winners – SBC is here to help you. Read more on SBC’s expert assistance.
Another route to profit is provided by betting on exchanges such as Betfair, Betdaq and Smarkets or with Asian bookmakers and/or bet brokers – something else as an SBC member you can explore in full.
In fact for every tipster we review, we explore the suitability of following them either via the exchanges or through Asian bookmaker or brokerage accounts as standard. Learn more on our Exchange Tipster focus
The inside story on how one bookmaker restricts the stakes of its customers
In today’s blog post, I want to share a fascinating document which outlines the lengths one bookmaker goes to in order to restrict winning punters and apply ‘stake factoring’ to their customer accounts.
The stake factoring details were kindly shared with me by Brian Chappell from the Justice For Punters website. I felt it was worthy of sharing with you all. The document was leaked to ‘Justice for Punters’ a few months ago. The leak was anonymised, hence no mention of an individual bookmaker.
To help with this article I also spoke with a current bookmaking employee who works within the ‘restrictions’ department for one firm, who helped outline more on what really goes on behind the scenes there. My thanks go to Brian and my ‘insider’ for their help with this article.
What is Stake Factoring?
Betting restrictions are called ‘stake factoring’ as this determines the percentage amount of the maximum bet size offered by the bookmaker that each customer is allowed to get on.
For example, a stake factor of 0.01 indicates a customer is allowed to get on 1% of the maximum bet allowed in that market.
Conversely a stake factor of 5.00 indicates a customer allowed up to 500%.
I am told that this maximum bet amount will vary from market to market and customer to customer and each firm operates this slightly differently. At some firms it is one layer of restrictions, yet what this stake factor table provides is insight into how one firm profiles gamblers based on their activity.
Here then is the stake factor table in all its glory:
When a new customer opens an account with this firm, unless it immediately draws a red flag (for example a link to a previously restricted or closed account) then he or she is given a stake factor of 1.00 to begin with. They are tagged as ‘To Be Stake Factored’ , no doubt as the bookmaker needs to build up a picture of the punter and the type of bets they are likely to place.
My insider tells me the first job head office staff at his firm have when dealing with a new customer is to gently promote the casino and games to find out what kind of punter they are dealing with. He tells me that if they see regular casino use for example, the punter is tagged as a good customer (i.e. if you look like a losing bettor). We see this in the above table where ‘Core Business’ punters are stake factored to 1.01.
At the insider’s firm, good customers will then be given regular free bets to encourage betting, especially if they go quiet for a week or so. He has seen punters lose thousands and then stop betting, only for them to be incentivised to restart with a free £25 or £50 bet, designed to encourage them to deposit more.
There is no evidence such practice goes on at the firm behind the stake factoring table above, but we can see a focus on certain punters (almost certainly all losers) as this firm will upgrade you to 1.5X the max stake as a ‘Possible VIP’, 2X as a confirmed VIP and 5X+ as a ‘High Value Customer’.
Providing the very distinct impression that the more you lose – the more they allow you to bet.
What Happens To ‘Unprofitable Accounts’?
Where it gets very interesting is at the other end of the scale with the stake factoring applied to ‘unprofitable’ accounts.
Unprofitable that is for the bookmaker, not the customers.
Bookies want to have their cake and eat it by targeting losing customers for as much as they can, whilst dramatically reducing the business they take from those with a modicum of ability. It’s the ultimate ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ business and it’s no wonder so many firms are making record profits.
And because bookmakers only win when their customers lose, these record profits are based on money taken from losing punters, some of whom are likely to be vulnerable people.
Back to the new account process and if after placing your first set of bets, it is not immediately obvious you are a losing punter, you will be given a neutral review. At this point you are factored quickly to 0.75. Even when ‘neutral’, the firm is already limiting what you can get on.
Should you be given a negative review, this reduces to 0.5.
And if you are confirmed as ‘unprofitable business’ – i.e. a winning punter then the starting point is a stake factoring of 0.1.
Oddschecker – A Necessary Evil?
There is also another stake factoring point from this table that I want to highlight – The use of the Oddschecker website.
Now most of us know what Oddschecker offers but for those unfamiliar it’s essentially a comparative tool to see which bookmaker offers the best odds on any given bet. Just as you might use Expedia to compare prices of hotels with different websites, so you would use Oddschecker to see which bookmaker offers the best odds.
Take 7/1 rather than 6/1 on a bet just by betting with William Hill over Paddy Power? It’s a no-brainer and a great tool for punters to use and in general I am a fan of the site and concept.
Yet, according to our leaked table, the simple act of using Oddschecker and being price sensitive will see your account stake factored to 0.45.
I imagine most bookmakers see Oddschecker as a necessary evil – a site that sends them a lot of customers, yet one that encourages price sensitivity and brings with it a fair share of problems.
This is because bookmakers love punters who have ‘brand loyalty’ – those who only ever bet with them and who don’t play the price comparison game.
Brand Loyal Punters Don’t Care About Value
Brand loyal punters don’t care about the value of their odds and whether they are getting 7/2 when they could have 9/2 by betting elsewhere. This immediately highlights them as someone not aware of the concept of ‘value betting’ – which is the recognised key to betting success long-term.
On the flipside, punters who are ‘odds-tarts’ are a concern, which no doubt links into the 55% reduction in max stakes they are being allowed as per the stake factoring table.
Speaking to my insider, he tells me at his bookmaking firm they don’t have a specific Oddschecker policy for profiling customers (their system is not that sophisticated apparently) and instead they use software that captures the price movement of bets both on Oddschecker and Betfair. This software will flag up those punters constantly taking best prices and if found guilty of this within a short period of time – usually 10 bets, you will be stake factored.
He was at pains to emphasise that this is not even about whether or not you are a winning punter that leads to such stake factoring – it’s simply the premise you are taking best prices far too often.
As we go down the stake factoring table, further restrictions are placed on you if identified as following a tipping line – Hugh Taylor or Pricewise would be two classic examples of this.
The stake restricting goes down as low as 0.02 or 0.01 if using e-wallets such as Moneybookers/Skrill or Neteller and if using a Bot or Arbing.
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Read more from SBC member, K.F on how SBC has helped his betting.
The Detail Behind Stake Factoring
The amount of detail that goes into a Stake Factoring decision can also be revealed, as within this leaked document were a list of requests put forward when analysing a customer’s account.
It covers everything from the time you bet, stakes, activity, type of bet, withdrawals and much more as part of an exhaustive list.
No stone is left unturned when it comes to identifying unprofitable customers from this bookmaker’s perspective (it is reasonable to expect that all major bookmakers do the same). Here is the full unedited list of analysis:
Requests
1.Price Advantage achieved (Taken Price/ Final Price)
2.Average Time of bet v start of Race/ Event
3.% Stakes that are Free Bets/ Bonuses
a.Record of free bets/bonuses?
4.BOG Cost
5.Singles v Multiples Ratio
6.Distribution of stakes by Time of Day/ Day of Week
7.Pre v BIP Ratio
8.Average Time Between Bet Placement and price change
a.Bet placement and Final price
9.Frequency of cross over into other products
10.Average length of session/ activity
a.Average length for bet placement
11.Stake distribution v quality/ grade of Events
12.What triggers a withdrawal?
13.Time elapsed from bet settlement to next bet
a.Bet settlement time stamped?
14.Activity triggered by Free Bet/ Promotion
a.Historical record of promotion?
15.Average price taken including split by sport
16.Average Stake by Sport
17.Metric for Stakes increasing when on winning streak
18.Average Time elapsed between Activity resulting in Zero Balance and next deposit
19.Behavior similar to other customers with SFx
20.Customers by Affiliate-typical behavior
a.Record of affiliate associated with account?
Other possibilities
1.Metric for decreased activity when on a losing streak
2.Metric for stakes increasing/decreasing when on a losing streak
3.Metric for increased activity based on winning streak
4.% of repeat bets based on win/loss
5.Price disadvantage from opening price to price taken (well backed horses)
6.Multiple and single ratio – do multiples convert to singles when no longer live
7.Wins to Bets ratio
8.Potential win amount to bet stake ratio
9.Out of character bets frequency
10.Period of deactivation
11.Seasonality of bets
12.BIP triggers by match situation/period in game etc available for football/tennis
13.For Horse racing there are additional metrics that can be measured, if required, such as propensity to back LTO/Course/Distance winners
Irresponsible Bookmaking?
Although this leaked document represents the stake factoring policy of just one bookmaker – these days all firms take this topic very seriously and have whole departments with the sole aim of tracking their customers. It is reasonable to estimate many bookmakers operate in a similar manner with some having even more sophisticated tools to help prevent ‘unprofitable customers’ slipping through the net.
This profiling ensures ‘unprofitable customers’ are limited to what they can get on (or indeed closed down entirely) and ‘profitable customers’ are encouraged to bet very large sums, without consideration if this is affordable for them.
Policies that surely go against the claimed aims by bookmakers that they are now committed to encouraging responsible gambling.
Surely, until such firms start to make betting a more level playing field with fairness for all – both winning and losing punters, such claims of responsible gambling ring hollow.
Should losing high value customers be able to get more than 5X the max stake on without issue? Are these not in fact, the customers that need stake factoring given concerns about their gambling habits?
For me, another part of being responsible comes in the form of allowing all punters and not just perennial losers the chance to win a reasonable amount when betting.
We have already seen the start of this with the £500 Minimum Bet Guarantee offers for horse racing punters from Betfair, Bet Victor and to a lesser extent, Skybet, but it needs more firms to join this and expand it.
Offering the chance for all customers to bet and win up to £500 on all sports, not just horse racing would be a clear step towards this. Given the record profits many bookmakers are making as seen with the results from Ladbrokes/Coral and Bet365 recently, then there is no doubt they can afford it.
And if they won’t do this on a voluntary basis, perhaps it should become part of their licensing requirements.
More Help Combating Bookmaker Restrictions
My thanks go to both Brian and my insider for their help with this article and I do hope it has helped you understand more on how stake restrictions and bookmakers work.
To learn more on how bookmakers operate, including access to SBC’s latest report on bookmaker profiling and our dedicated section on bookmaker restrictions you might like to consider a Smart Betting Club membership.
Available from just £27.99 per quarter and with up to a 90-day money back guarantee, an SBC membership is here to help you maximise your betting profits and educate and inform you on the betting and tipster world from a shrewd punters perspective.
Best Regards
Peter Ling
P.s. I welcome any feedback you might have on the above article. Feel free to contact me directly via pete@smartbettingclub.com with any thoughts or insight you might have on stake factoring and restrictions.
Are These The 3 Worst Bookmakers?
February is an exciting month for us here at SBC Towers as not only do we have a fantastic new magazine out next week (including a new review of a particularly profitable football tipster), but we will also be releasing our 2014 Betting & Tipsters Awards Report as voted for by SBC members.
I love these awards as not only do they reveal just who our members rate to run the best tipster services but also the best betting website, forum and experts…and of course the best and worst bookmakers!
And as I rate SBC members to be amongst some of the most clued-up punters out there, what they have to say is well worth listening to.
So today as a bit of a spoiler I want to discuss the perhaps least-sought after but most highly-competitive award of all – THE WORST BOOKMAKER!
Read on to find out just who took our ‘Wooden Spoon’ Bookie Award…. Continue reading