Topic: #1 RATINGS and REVIEWS of SPORTS BOOKS thread. Poster input appreciated. - page 42. (Read 89535 times)

The point is that according to Peeps Place criteria, the odds are not a factor for determining the sportsbook rating. The rating has nothing to do with who offers the best odds.

To prove my point, try to compare the odds offered by the sportsbook that received the highest A rating in Peeps Place list, which is the only sportsbook that received that A rating by the way, and you will see that on average, they offer lower odds, yet still they have the highest rating.

DirectBet -  "We respond to customers enquiries quickly and in a professional manner."

DirectBet's cs is not immediate, but I do rate it as excellent, and better than almost every other btc book's cs that I have dealt with to date.

Not having to deposit and getting winnings returned within an hour after the event ends is excellent and serves as a revolutionary model for all btc sportsbooks.



"We offer higher limits than the Bitcoin sportbooks that you rated A. You can net profit up to 7.75 BTC from each bet..."

I didn't realize that you have a set limit on all bets of 7.75 btc profit.
This is much better than most btc books.
I'm surprised you don't have this posted on site, as one of my complaints about all sportsbooks is not having limits displayed and low limits in general for the btc  books.



Unfortunately, the lines are often horrible, as others have stated.

Your VIP program does not pay many if not most people who play there, as a minimum amount has to be bet each month to qualify, so I don't see this as a valid excuse for the odds you offer although you mention this every time your poor odds are pointed out.

Offer playable odds and do away with the VIP program.


You also offer only (poor) moneylines and no spreads on many events, at least when you first offer the event, even though most other books are offering both at the time.


Also, things like the following sometimes occur:

Gogo ppp - "Why did your site take down Connecticut and Wisconsin for "NCAA BB 2013/2014" "Outright Winner", and only leave up odds on Florida and Kentucky?

This was done with more than 30 minutes before the start of the Connecticut game, according to your own site."

DirectBet - "Most likely these options were taken down temporarily as we did not have reliable odds."

You also mention sometimes not having "reliable odds" in your FAQ.

It's fairly safe  to say that 35 minutes before some of the biggest NCAA Basketball games of the year (the Final Four playoffs) , every sportsbook in the world except yours had prices for all 4 teams for the 2 games.
I can't understand how you could not get "reliable odds" in a situation like that.

It also doesn't make sense to me that you could offer a price on one of the 2 teams in both matchups (you were able to come up with "reliable odds"), but not the other team.

Even heavily taxed French operators offer better lines 

Only books rated B- and higher where compared

bitcoinlivebets 1.61 2.08 

1. Our odds, on average, are not lower than the only Bitcoin sportsbook that you rated A.

2. Nowhere in your criteria do you tie higher odds for higher rating, so it's not a factor anyhow.

3. Those who bet frequently on our website get much better odds. When comparing our odds, please note of the following :

http://www.directbet.eu/FAQ.cshtml#Odds

4. You can't compare apples to oranges. Those who offer higher odds, limit the max bet size to micro stakes, so you can't compare odds that are only available at micro stakes to odds that are available for higher stakes. It's not the same thing.

I'm new to sports betting (currently in the research phase) and I came to the same conclusion after manually comparing the lines on all these Bitcoin sportsbooks. I love every thing about DirectBet, if only the odds were a little more in line with say Nitrogen then it would be the only sportsbook I'd need.

There are a lot of good things about DirectBet. I think your biggest advantage is keeping live lines up at all times, not just during commercial breaks. I think that your biggest downfall is that your odds aren't competitive compared to other books. I'm talking full game just prior to the game starting. Also, your advantage of keeping live lines up at all times diminishes with a huge hold. This includes the 1% affiliate reduction. At a site such as Peepsplace where posters are familiar with each other, the 1% is just a buddy bonus. I give you 1%, you give me 1%. If your book has a hold of 8% the reduction does make it 7% with a buddy bonus or legitimate affiliate arrangement. That is considered.

It's going to take a little bit longer to get the new ratings up for the books.  I can address all your points at that time since comparisons can be made. Most books will get lower ratings. There have been too many books that have gone under. A common denominator is a small staff. It seems all the one and two man operations go under. Blockbet, Bit365, Stakebet and Bitbook all small operations.

The ratings are not an exact science. If all books were opened 3 years with the same amount of clients and volume, then it would be very easy to rate all books. The criteria above would be followed 100%. Since that is far from the case, individual aspects of a book must be considered.

If a book is paying 2 hours instead of immediately, it has to be determined why a book is taking longer. Speed of payment is the most important aspect of identical books. As mentioned in a post above, if a book takes a high volume of action, along with a large withdrawal amount, an exception has to be made.

Hi Peeps Place,

Can you please explain why we are rated B ?

According to your criteria, we are as good or better than the Bitcoin sportbooks that you rated A.

I'll prove it one by one :


We offer higher limits than the Bitcoin sportbooks that you rated A. You can net profit up to 7.75 BTC from each bet, so for example, if the bet odds is 1.5 decimal, you can bet up to 15.5 BTC while other Bitcoin sportbooks typically limit it to 1-2 BTC max. Furthermore, unlike other sportbooks, we never limit winning players.


We offer comprehensive sports betting coverage, 17 different sports to bet on including unique betting such as on Horse Racing 24/7 from around the globe and Eurovision 2014. From time to time we offer special bets, for example we accepted bets on The Oscars 2014 even during the ceremony and up until the announcement time.


You can bet from mobile devices. We thoroughly tested that our website is compatible with them.


We offer comprehensive live coverage. That's our specialty. You can bet continuously while watching the game. Unlike others, we do not limit live betting to just break times.

One of the Bitcoin sportsbook that you rated A doesn't even offer live betting.


We respond to customers enquiries quickly and in a professional manner.

There hasn't been any complaint on our customer service to date. Our thread here can be served as a proof :

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/directbet-live-sportsbook-racebook-now-accepting-ether-393147


That's a matter of taste but we believe our website is very quick, simple and easy to use.


We do not take deposits as mentioned above.

Hi,

As we have stated in previous posts, Anonibet will carry on to process all withdraws manually. We will not process withdraws automatically for marketing purposes.

Anonibet does not apply any handling fee to withdraws. We have a %5 handling fee stated in our T&C, for people depositing their BTC to Anonibet and not playing a single bet. We have this policy in order to stop people to use Anonibet as a safe box. So far we have not applied this %5 to anyone, we have just warned them to withdraw their BTC if they did not want to place bets.

We operate from 8:00 to 22:00 GMT, this should not be interpreted as a lacking of staff. Our customer service does not operate at nights, only our Bookmakers and IT staff have night shifts.

I am impressed that someone has analysed so closely Anonibet, I am expecting them to do the same job for other Bitcoin bookmakers and post here their critics. That sounds a bit biased to write down a long post about Anonibet and ask for a down grade. I would like to know which bookie they would like to up grade, and check in few months about these bookies.

Regards,
Michael

Perhaps they could specify an amount for instant withdraws that could be much smaller than 500 BTC, but still more than probably the majority of their clients have on deposit.
And for the larger amounts (X amount)  post that "Withdrawal requests  of more than X BTC  between 08:00 – 22:00 GMT may take 1-2 hours to be processed. Withdrawal requests of X BTC made after 22:00 GMT will be processed the next day after 08:00 GMT.."

Books- You are free to enter the thread with comments on your book such as limits, offerings, deposit time or any other information that you would like to share. In fact, it would be great if you did so since this is a comprehensive thread.

 It would be appreciated if you stayed away from discrediting another book in this thread here. Book vs. book war is just clutter. The players can discredit the books when problems occur.

Anonibet does not have instant withdraws, thus they really don't have a hot wallet. They probably keep most funds in cold storage and if a 500 BTC withdraw were to come in they would move the funds then.

It does get a little tricky with Anonibet. They can't be directly compared to the other books. They have the highest limit for withdrawals at 500 BTC. Leaving that amount of money in a hot wallet is dangerous for both book and player. The maximum withdrawal amount has to be taken into consideration along with the amount of clients. Anonibet far exceeds the other books.

 Anonibet's marketing is  world wide while some of the books are still limited to the bitcoin forum here. Anonibet does have a 2 to 3 year head start on the other books so all of this is understandable. The other books are playing catch up in a market that is becoming more and more saturated. That's why I believe that Anonibet should be the top rated book.

Gogo, alabamafan and others - When you are posting about positives and the negatives, feel free to mention the individual book. General comments are appreciated but if you mention the book, it really helps with my research. If you don't like low limits in baseball at a particular book, state the book and limits. Everything helps. Thanks

"6. Sports and options offered. Uniqueness of lines and betting options is a positive."

A few comments:


Sportsbooks - This is 2014, not 2004.

Bettors all over the world are familiar with handicaps, whether they call them pointspreads or Asian handicaps.
For that matter, some of the books like SBOBet and IBC don't even offer moneylines, they only offer Asian hc's.

I come across so many sports at btc books where they'll have up a moneyline but no pointspread/Asian hc.

If it's offered with a handicap at some other books, then why not offer it with a handicap at your book?




 Motorsports is a horribly underrepresented category.

How about F1, and be sure to include props -  Podium Finish, Top 6 Finish, Points Finish, Fastest Lap - at minimum.

And Nascar is barely existent in btc sportsbook land, even though a great deal of the people in this forum appear to be USA based.
A huge market that is being overlooked needlessly.


I'm finding that about half of the "A" and "B" rated books aren't offering overnight lines - another huge failing.

Limits of books are awful now. Used to be able to wager 10-20 BTC when BTC was $150 with no problem. Now sites don't offer live betting for more than $150 or so worth, and max bets are like 2 BTC. It truly sucks. If someone were to become a bigdog and offer large limits like 5k USD worth for major sports, they would become the new bitbook easily.

"5. Limits. In general, the higher the limits, the deeper the bankroll of the sportsbook. If a bitcoin book takes high limits and pays out quickly, it shows its strength."

I find limits disappointing in general in btc books.

I realize that books are wary of smaller market sports, but countering that with limits like 0.05 btc (about $22.50 USD) or 0.10 btc (about $45 USD) is pretty silly.

But even with the major sports I'm finding  limits like "to win 1.00 btc" or "risking 1.00 btc" (at the minute about $453 USD).


It's a tricky situation though - one doesn't want books to overextend their br's, but I'm not alone in wanting to bet more than $45, or, more than one btc on a major sport.

"9. Customer service. The better the customer service, the more professional the book."

Not only that, but those books with a way of getting a 24/7 instant response - a toll free phone number, live chat, or at least VERY speedy Pinnacle like email response - should get a lot of extra credit.
I realize this falls under "better...customer service", but staying in touch with the customers and their concerns is extremely important in this environment.

I see too many threads in this forum where customers (including myself) have concerns because they cannot get in touch, withdrawals are taking too long, non-response for 24 hours or more from a book, deposits received but not appearing,  bets not graded after a long time has passed, etc.

And too many books stating things like "If you have concerns email us and we'll try to respond within 24 hours".