Betjoint vs TheGamblersUnderground
The following article has been written in good faith and is based on the facts as we have been told them. All major parties involved have read the article and ammendments made to reach its final state.
Background Information:
In November 2007 the American gambling forum TheGamblersUnderground (TGU) merged with the UK website TheGamblingTimes (TGT). TheGamblersUnderground had many forum members who followed the plays of various cappers; often without any promotional bonuses, they just tried to beat the house through skill and luck. One of the people involved (Kidpoker) knew the BetJoint owner Mark Roberts and had been promoting BetJoint for a long time at TGU before TGU and TGT merged. On this basis he had been able to get a lot of good quality mainly US players for BetJoint and they offered him good exclusive bonuses, prizes, etc etc for promoting them. Over the next twelve months the focus and type of member on the forum TGU changed from being mainly US sportsbetters to being mainly UK “advantage” players, very very few of these new members at TGU had very much experience of playing at US sites and had no accounts there.
At the beginning of December 2008 it was decided at TGU that it would be a good idea to add some threads discussing and explaining strategies and offers for wagering at US sites, which to UK players had previously been daunting due to the different odds format, different currencies, and unknown sports rules for BaseBall, BasketBall, NFL, etc, etc. Kidpoker managed to get very good bonuses at two of the best “US facing” sites we knew about, BetJoint and HeroesCasino which were exclusively for TGU. Over the next few months on the forum Kidpoker and myself (Andy) gave help and advice to people explaining how we would bet and on what in order to make $s. To get these bonuses you either had to be a new user to the sites and choose TheGamblingTimes from the drop down box on the sign up form OR go onto live chat and tell them you were a member of TGT and request the reload bonus that way. A LOT of the people who followed/joined in had never tried this type of betting before and were just betting those lines mentioned and also were JUST in it for the bonuses this time.
I (Andy) did not mind those two Sportsbooks being so heavily promoted as my personal experience of them had always been 1st class, they had good odds, good bonuses, good limits, efficient Customer Support and they had always paid me large amounts within the hour. At the beginning of 2009 if i was asked which US Sportsbooks were "must have" accounts BetJoint would have been one of them. There was not, right up until the BetJoint accounts got closed, any real indication of the trouble to come. The bets being posted which BetJoint later stated they objected to were very public and it was not being done covertly, the fact someone bet somewhere else on the opposite line should be neither here nor there to them. If any bookmaker doesn't like taking certain bets then they should sort their lines out or control their risk more effectively with adequate limits. If I had thought the thread in question (Betjoint vs Heroes) was "wrong" or a problem then I would not have allowed it, OR I could even have made it private and available to certain members only which would take about 30 seconds to do. Although there were perhaps some warning signs that winning accounts were not wanted: ArmyVet account closure overall there was very little to indicate what was about to happen.
At TGT we only promote sites where we think they are of benefit for forum members to know about and join. For example although there is a thread on the forum about BetOT and we were offered $75 for each new registration we could bring them we did not take them up on it and never joined the affiliate scheme or promoted it. We viewed it as dangerous and likely to end in tears, so we didnt promote it and it looks like that was quite an accurate prediction. We do take what we say seriously and would only promote places that we thought were genuinely legitimate sites. We have been saying stay away from GoldVictory for years which was probably another good call, but we also decided to stay away from Zedbet and actually it turns out they are in fact quite good, so we do make mistakes. Nobody is psychic and we would always err on the side of caution, but at this point all experience of playing at BetJoint had always been very good...
On the 11th of Febuary a large number of accounts were closed, because they were linked to coming from TheGamblersUnderground. It was approximately 120 accounts and there is a copy of the E-mail that was sent here: TGU account closure E-mail
Why were the accounts closed?
The BetJoint E-mail claims it was because of sharp plays on the same lines/collusion, and generally that sort of thing. Well if they say so, but there was much more to it than that with the main part being multiple accounts all run as part of a "Gmoming" operation. A lot of the trouble was that BetJoint were not checking who they were giving the bonuses to and had inadequate risk controls. It was a very very good bonus, certain other forums (some public and some private) realised that they could just sign up to BetJoint, deposit some $s, say they joined from TGU and the forum name was (XYZ = They just took a name of an active poster, it was not really them) and they got the bonus, there was no check whether that person really was forum member XYZ. A LOT of those accounts were fake accounts anyway, Gnoming and what have you, hence the shared IP addresses etc etc. There were A LOT of people getting the bonuses and I would not have said more than 30 of them "should" have had the bonus in the first place.
When BetJoint eventually looked at it and threw their toys out of the pram they lumped everyone in together, the "genuine" TGT forum members who the bonus was designed for and also half of Lisbon who had just jumped on the bandwagon. From BetJoint's point of view it was not obvious, in fact it was impossible, for them alone to differentiate each players account from who was genuine and who was not. I also believe the number of people taking part was very large and allowed to grow as BetJoint had been trying to raise their European player numbers to make the company more attractive in any possible sale. BetJoint believed these players would still be profitable to them or at least not a big loss because the rollover was still fairly high for most casual players and “Over that kind of wagering we will be able to beat them, they wont make it ” (Mark Roberts, CEO of BetJoint). However they got ahead of themselves and were not prepared for the level of sign ups or how aggressively they would play, the affiliate statistics for Kidpoker's account for just European players was around $130k in the red. I have not seen the exact figures myself but I was told by the BetJoint CEO that the whole thing was a six-figure loss to them.
Whose account was closed:
When the accounts first began to get shut down there was a massive amount of speculation on TGU as to what was going on, who was effected and why. The thread can be viewed here: TGU/BetJoint accounts closed forum thread
Any speculation was and always is in these situations pointless and unconstructive. It is however the only thing people can tangibly do at the time so it's done to give a sense of purpose, “deckchairs on the Titanic” anyone? It is still not clear exactly what made some accounts get closed and others remain open. Some accounts which used Kidpoker's link were closed, and some who did not were closed, some who were a Net winner closed, some a Net loser were closed, some who bet on the BetJoint vs Heroes thread on TGU were closed as were some who did not, it did not matter if you joined recently or joined ages ago nor did it matter if you just deposited and bet with the bonus and minimum wagers or bet well over the wagering. To this day I am not entirely sure exactly what criteria was being used and much like having an account limited at Bet365 there was no consistency to it at all. When i enquired why certain accounts had been closed and my account was still open i was told by the CEO: "My risk manager decided you were not a threat "*. I am not sure if that was a compliment or an insult!
What BetJoint should have done in my opinion is contact myself or Kidpoker and explain the situation RE Multiple accounts, the "Dutching with Heroes" thread on the forum not being acceptable, and the fact that a lot of the accounts were from people not associated with TGU. We could have stopped offering the bonus to new deposits which would have stopped the problem escalating any further, instead the bonus was available up until the very day before the accounts were all shut! The existing accounts of genuine TGU players should have been allowed to finish any wagering they had because the roll over was 10x and whilst that went on a number of accounts may well have bust out the balances anyway. Whilst that went on we could go through the details of “Suspect” accounts and actually cross reference who was part of TGU and who was not. If anyone had claimed to be part of TGU falsely to get the bonus and said “Hello I am the username JoeBloggs” when they in fact were not, I would have said send them back the deposit and that ONLY. Also if they had just claimed to be from TGU but had no posts to their name, again I would have said don't pay them anything over the deposited amount.
To summarise my position on it all: Genuine people, who should have had the bonus and were correct to claim it and met all the other BetJoint T&Cs, should have been allowed to withdraw in their own time and with no fees. Anyone who claimed to be part of TGU and were not, sometimes even stealing other Usernames, or had signed up more than one account, should have got their deposits back. This is what I would have done and my opinion only. When I brought this up I was accused of making "Monday morning quarterback " suggestions, but in my defence it is a bit hard to do otherwise unless you are consulted BEFORE Monday morning!
What happened instead was BetJoint just wanted rid of the whole situation, and just said "take your money and go", they could not see the benefit of going through the hassle of proving the multiple sign ups, and then arguing what is/isn't active on TGU, and so decided it was better in the long run to just clear the decks, pay up and move on. Whether people liked it or not they started receiving the balances back in lots of $2500 back to either Neteller or Moneybookers, usually the way of the first ever deposit but players were not given a choice. They did not allow free payouts to the accounts having the funds reinbursed and were covering the cost by charging $50 per withdrawal of $2500. On $2500 that is only 2% so it is not extortionate or profiteering, they were just covering their costs. A lot of genuine TGU members felt this was unfair treatment and complained about it. It struck BetJoint as incredible that some people were complaining about it and that they were not just grateful to get the $s back. A side effect of the BetJoint actions was that bizarrely some players benefited from it all as they no longer had to complete a large rollover amount which may have cost them over $50 and a lot of time to do anyway, this was not lost on BetJoint either and added to their consternation that people were complaining.
It took BetJoint longer than first claimed to pay everyone the balances, some people received everything within 24hrs if it was under $2.5k and others had several $2.5k tranches within 48hrs. Everyone had $2.5k minimum within a few days but some people with larger balances were left waiting for several weeks. They have made the valid point that they had to transfer large amounts of $s into their Neteller and Moneybookers accounts because they were now receiving no more deposits into them from clients (since 96% of the accounts were US and could not use those methods at all).
“IT WAS SIMPLY A MATTER OF MOVING MONEY INTO THE PROPER PROCESSORS IN ORDER TO FACILITATE THE PAYOUTS. WHILE STILL KEEPING BETJOINT UNDER THE RADAR ON HUGE MONEY TRANSFERS. ANYONE IN THIS BUSINESS CAN VERIFY THAT THIS IS TRUE AND TO TRY AND MOVE OVER $100,000 AT ONCE IS JUST NOT A SMART MOVE. BOTTOM LINE, EVERYONE** GOT PAID!! ” (Mark Roberts)
During the period of refunding the balances there was much anger about the $50 fees that were being charged. A lot of this was coming from people who had not really had much experience of wagering at high deposit, “US facing” sites and I dont think they realised how lucky they were and how easily they could have had nothing. It is fair to say that anyone with some background knowledge of how other bookmakers can behave when they feel that they are being scammed would say BetJoint did not behave in a rogue way. They just paid the money back. They did NOT confiscate the winnings of anybody, they did NOT confiscate a % of winnings depending on the % of playthrough achieved so far, or any combination of that. They did NOT slow pay for months on end or offer partial settlements, they just said to everybody take your money and go, and go now. I have seen some of the E-mails received by BetJoint complaing about the whole affair and at times it was embarrassing that I was being tagged to/linked with some of them. I was asked at one point “Are these guys 13 year old closet fags or grown men?? ” (Mark Roberts) and to be honest I did wonder.
Overall I would blame the initial problem on a breakdown in communication between BetJoint, KidPoker, and myself, over who should have been getting the bonus and also what is an acceptable “recreational” player. If I thought the “arb thread” was a problem I would have removed it, simple. As it was although I knew the problem thread and the whole BetJoint offer existed I was not actually involved, it had very little to do with me until after the accounts were all shut, but it was my forum and I probably should have been more involved so I am not ducking that part of it. The situation was made worse by BetJoint identifying a problem but assuming all accounts were in on it and not differentiating between them but seeing everyone in the same light. There were a lot of Portugese players and a certain internet forum poster “Skilos” (who is a Cretin) which caused a lot of trouble and if I had been aware of what was happening sooner things would have been very different. At the end of the day though BetJoint, and Mark Roberts paid up more than they had to and more than I would have. I spoke to Mark Roberts a few days into the thing and after he stopped shouting at me I decided that although I don't understand the logic of some of his actions I would still play at a Sportsbook he ran. He felt TGU ripped him off, I think “some people” tried to rip him off. Some might have been from TGU but I don't believe all or even most were.
BetJoint gambled that they could get the player numbers up without taking too much of a hit overall but the focused betting on weaker lines skewed the liability and when results went against them it did not take much to cause the large defecit to build. They then saw the multiple accounts coupled with the focused plays on certain lines and decided enough was enough and they would cut their losses as quickly as possible with the least hassle to them, paying up and kicking out.
Written by: Andrew Heaford (TheGamblingTimes.com) April 2009
* A "misquote" apparantly but i can remember him saying it. It's neither here nor there really but my account did stay open and i was offered the full balance without paying fees anytime i wanted.
** That's not quite true because not 'everyone' with a closed account got the balance back to Neteller or Moneybookers. Since the end of the affair, and with less than half a dozen accounts connected to TGU still having balances, BetJoint and the entire client list and existing accounts were sold to Bookmaker.com, and all balances were transferred with a 3x wagering attached. It is ironic that for quite a few players they were better off having their account closed and paid off rather than being left open.
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