Rumour Two current AFL stars have lost $1 million each on the punt

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I posted something similar in another thread about the same problem.. and want to put this out there for the "the house always wins, you can't win betting rah rah ban it all" crew. This problem is bigger than the AFL but problem gambling is over represented in the AFL vs average community due to reasons I've listed below - the problem is exacerbated by their high salaries.

I don't find betting to be enjoyable anymore, but it's become my main source of income so I see it more as my job. Winning punters go through the issue of having accounts banned/limited etc. by bookmakers and are told "your business is uneconomical" or "you are not a recreational punter so we will no longer accept your business". They've gone as far as closing my accounts that weren't losing at a fast enough rate in the past. At these same bookmakers, losing punters are encouraged to bet bigger, bet more often & even given account managers to encourage them to bet with a specific bookmaker, load them up with deposit match bonus bets, tickets to marquees at races & corporate boxes at other sporting events. How often do you see groups of players at these events in VIP sections? It's not club sponsors giving them tickets and they haven't bought them, though I suppose they've paid for them in a roundabout way, they're tickets courtesy of Beteasy, Sportsbet or Ladbrokes. Young men with heaps of free time, plenty of disposable income & their own personal scumbag on their shoulder telling them to bet, what a recipe. It's criminal, if you're taking the bookmaker's money they close your accounts, if you're making them money they'll clean you out until you have nothing left. There is no amount you can lose that is enough for them, they'll always take more.

I've put thousands of hours in to collecting data & building models to predict outcomes & collate true odds to find spots that are profitable. These players don't do any research, they get a tip from their friend, they look at the odds and say "that looks juicy" and they put way too much money on it with nowhere near enough thought. To get bets on, I need to open numerous accounts under various names, use different devices with different IP addresses as these companies go as far as tracking this information, to link you back to you original account & close these accounts down too. There are only a couple of bookmakers in Australia where you can actually get set to win a decent amount of money when you're a winning punter. I see my mate's Sportsbet account and on the same event, he - a big losing punter, can bet to win $10,000 where I am only able to win $50.

The industry needs heavier regulation, minimum bet laws for winners & better management/support for problem punters. If bookies were forced to display a figure of your net position after betting with them (your account profit & loss basically) a lot of punters would notice their problem earlier & possibly seek counselling or set deposit limits on their own accounts. I track every bet I place in a spreadsheet so I know my exact position but 99.99% of punters wouldn't have a clue where they're at. If you ask anyone at the end of a day on the punt how they're going, how often do they say "yeah broke even"? It's rubbish. Plenty of people out there think that they're winning or that they haven't lost too much but they genuinely have no idea what they've bet across the years & what they've lost. There should be a stake limit you have set so you don't bet more than x amount on an individual bet & a daily bet limit with every bookmaker so you can't bet more than that. To increase these limits you must request to do so in writing & have 30 days before it's approved. I know there is something in place with this at the moment but it's not enforced/promoted enough IMO. None of this will happen unless it's forced upon them by regulators. If you self exclude from any bookmaker, you should be put in a registry with all bookmakers across Australia so that you cannot open an account at a new bookmaker when you feel like having a bet & if you wish to overturn this ban, it should be extremely difficult and have plenty of red tape. It's honestly a joke how bookmakers are allowed to run with these tactics and have free run at the moment to do as they please.

I thought PointsBet were one of the good ones? Who are the good ones then?
 
It's not the comprehension of making money off sports betting, its the e-brag after the event that provides lols. Anyone can come on the internet and say they won.

I only bet 1 day a year now, AFL GF day.

I put $200 into my TAB account and then place between 10 and 20 bets, all the same type, winner / NS medal doubles.

Since 2007 when I backed Geelong / Steve Johnson, I'm 1,000s in front. It makes the best day of the year even better.

Having said that I hate all the sports betting advertising, ban the whole lot of it.
 
I thought PointsBet were one of the good ones? Who are the good ones then?
No they're horror. One of the worst.

TopSport the main good one, owned by a family on the Gold Coast, will take big bets & have higher limits again on game day. Happy to take anyone on. They're good at what they do and back their traders to be better than the punters they're taking on. They're no frills really, no odds boosts and until recently didn't offer bonuses. Now have a system with rewards based on turnover, bets placed on different events & deposit rewards etc. which is actually quite competitive.

Betfair is great where the liquidity is available - Betfair is punter vs punter so they're taking on no risk & you will never be limited there. TAB is ok, though they still reject plenty of bets then reduce odds.

Bet$3.65, ladbrokes group (neds, lads, betstar, bookmaker.com.au), beteasy, sportsbet, palmerbet, unibet & all the other little ones like madbookie, classicbet, topbetta etc. are all rubbish. Win anything and you're out and as I said, sometimes even lose too slowly and you're out. Some of these are worse than others but they'll all boot you eventually.
 

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Interesting debate.

I like being an adult with choices knowing that I alone am accountable for my actions.

If I wanted to put my life savings on the outcome of a certain event then that’s my choice - whilst I wouldn’t do that I still like that I have a choice to do so if I want.

What I don’t like is other people telling me what I can and cannot do with my money.

If you don’t want to gamble that’s easily addressed - don’t gamble. But in the process don’t go around telling other people what to do based on your own opinions and biases.

You can make money out of gambling, you can make money out of trading and you can make money out of all kinds of speculative positioning. Here’s the rub - it takes an incredible amount of hard work to do it consistently. Like anything in life you might get lucky here and there but in order to create sustained positive results you’ve got to do the hard yards.
 
Most of the Australian companies use an off the shelf system called Openbet. Having worked at one of these companies, you can get the lifetime balance of an account through Openbet. Try talking to customer service if you want to know the balance.
 
Yep, Pointsbet, Ladbrokes and BetStar are easily the worst at this imo. They will class you as a professional punter and that is there justification.
By 'professional' they mean successful - scumbags. Yet I highly doubt they will cut off an unsuccessful punter at the same rate or identify problem gamblers.



You can't comprehend someone making money off sports betting? I'm guessing the fact you see it as beyond the realms of possibility means you've lost a lot of money betting.
I lived with a bloke in Adelaide who just gambled on the horses everyday through sportsbet. Used to start with $100 and work his way up into the thousands each day. That was his only source of income. Wouldn't give a tip either.
 
Most of the Australian companies use an off the shelf system called Openbet. Having worked at one of these companies, you can get the lifetime balance of an account through Openbet. Try talking to customer service if you want to know the balance.
Yeah I was aware that it is possible to retrieve it but I think that this should be more easily accessible, i.e. written below your account balance so it's always in your face.
 
I lived with a bloke in Adelaide who just gambled on the horses everyday through sportsbet. Used to start with $100 and work his way up into the thousands each day. That was his only source of income. Wouldn't give a tip either.

a) No one can start with $100 and get into the thousands literally everyday; not saying he wasn't a winning punter but no one wins every single day like that and b) even if that were true they would have banned him within a week.
 
Maybe the AFL can get some sponsorship from drug dealers.

They could sponsor a show called druggies corner run by Cousins and Yarran discussing the best way to cook ice!! Special guest on the first week will be Bomber Thompson who will discuss marketing.


I cannot believe the AFL take gambling dollars thereby endorsing this insidious pastime. They normalise the behaviour by accepting the sponsorships.

“This half time break is brought to you by ScoreEasy, official substance partner of the AFl...”
Then they roll in big Mummy for the values picks, etc.
“And always remember: partake responsibly!”
 
I lived with a bloke in Adelaide who just gambled on the horses everyday through sportsbet. Used to start with $100 and work his way up into the thousands each day. That was his only source of income. Wouldn't give a tip either.


no you didnt
 

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They are a private company - they can restrict their service to whoever they like as long as they are not being discriminatory.

This is the issue - they are not 'bookmakers' & shouldn't be licensed as such. A traditional bookmaker could not refuse bets up to a certain amount dependant on where they were operating & could not 'ban' a punter because he was too successful.

These companies are simply parasites that will continue to operate in a no risk environment as long as they are able. Personally I see them as a new age type of big tobacco & they will continue to peddle their poison until they are regulated out of existence.
 
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I thought PointsBet were one of the good ones? Who are the good ones then?

Nope definitely one of the worst.
Promo-banned me instantly (faster than anyone else) and shut me and my wife's (aka my second account) after a while also.


It's not the comprehension of making money off sports betting, its the e-brag after the event that provides lols. Anyone can come on the internet and say they won.

Your suspicions says more about you than it does me.
Btw 10k over 6 months isn't even that much, I would hardly call it an 'e-brag', being a footy forum I'm pretty sure there are forumers on here who have made a lot more than that.
Call me old (30s), but I haven't even encountered the term e-brag before (kudos though if you just made the term up here and now).
 
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Must be super shrewd if you don't know ladbrokes & betstar are the same mob

You'd have to be blind not to - they pretty much have the same site and app design besides swapping red for blue - but they still handled their promo-banning and banning separately (as in even though I had the same name, address etc they didn't ban me from one just because I was banned from the other).
 
You'd have to be blind not to - they pretty much have the same site and app design besides swapping red for blue - but they still handled their promo-banning and banning separately (as in even though I had the same name, address etc they didn't ban me from one just because I was banned from the other).
You must've got lucky then, usually onto sign ups for both and only allow promos on one account
 
Interesting debate.

I like being an adult with choices knowing that I alone am accountable for my actions.

If I wanted to put my life savings on the outcome of a certain event then that’s my choice - whilst I wouldn’t do that I still like that I have a choice to do so if I want.

What I don’t like is other people telling me what I can and cannot do with my money.
This is the correct take on this 'issue'. Stop being outraged for other people, they are adults and made a decision which has consequences like any other.

I will never understand people getting upset at sports betting. There is actual skill involved in winning at that long term. Where is the outrage against Powerball for example?

FWIW I could do without the constant advertising but if clubs lost that revenue who knows if they can pick it up elsewhere. Better to have that money in the game than not...
 
This is the correct take on this 'issue'. Stop being outraged for other people, they are adults and made a decision which has consequences like any other.

I will never understand people getting upset at sports betting. There is actual skill involved in winning at that long term. Where is the outrage against Powerball for example?

FWIW I could do without the constant advertising but if clubs lost that revenue who knows if they can pick it up elsewhere. Better to have that money in the game than not...

Powerball isn't trying to pass itself off as something it is not & we all know going in it's going to take a miracle of sorts to win.

Take a lotto company on & have a win, what happens? Nothing other than you get rich. Take a sports betting company on & win, what happens? You can't bet with them the next week.
 
Powerball isn't trying to pass itself off as something it is not & we all know going in it's going to take a miracle of sorts to win.

Take a lotto company on & have a win, what happens? Nothing other than you get rich. Take a sports betting company on & win, what happens? You can't bet with them the next week.
That isn't what people are whinging about with sports betting though. They're making out like the act itself is evil and needs to be banned because some people are morons and lose a house.

I agree they shouldn't be able to easily ban winning players if they are a 'bookie' but that isn't the topic of most people's complaining here...
 
Nope definitely one of the worst.
Promo-banned me instantly (faster than anyone else) and shut me and my wife's (aka my second account) after a while also.




Your suspicions says more about you than it does me.
Btw 10k over 6 months isn't even that much, I would hardly call it an 'e-brag', being a footy forum I'm pretty sure there are forumers on here who have made a lot more than that.
Call me old (30s), but I haven't even encountered the term e-brag before (kudos though if you just made the term up here and now).
I don't care whether its true or made up but talking about any type of win after the event is lolworthy. If I'm with a mate at the TAB and he doesn't indicate he has had a bet or even give an opinion on the race and then after the event he starts gloating and shows the ticket as proof it is still lolworthy. Don't care whether its $10, $10K or $10mill its all still just as lolworthy.

Term ebrag has been around over a decade.
 
That isn't what people are whinging about with sports betting though. They're making out like the act itself is evil and needs to be banned because some people are morons and lose a house.

I agree they shouldn't be able to easily ban winning players if they are a 'bookie' but that isn't the topic of most people's complaining here...

They actively target & accumulate a client portfolio of gamblers who eternally lose. That is a kind of evil.
 
They actively target & accumulate a client portfolio of gamblers who eternally lose. That is a kind of evil.

The gamblers aren't even the biggest losers - it's their families and support networks who cop the brunt of it.

The two players alleged here to have lost huge amounts of money both have a partner and a child who suffer every day. This was never their choice.
 
They actively target & accumulate a client portfolio of gamblers who eternally lose. That is a kind of evil.
I agree there should be a regulation on banning winners (so they can't have a client base of just losers) but people will lose forever and a day. Without the bookies they've found a way to lose, without betting with bikies they'd have lost on shares, lotto tickets, pokies, scratchies...
 
At the outset I have no idea who they are. That said, and using my intuition, I have no problem accepting Beams. But Gibbs?
So assuming the correctness of the allegations against Beams and Gibbs let me say this.
Beams is an obvious Bogan who came from a culture where betting was de riguer.
Gibbs, not so.
So with Gibbs we have to ask what is the cause or what are the causes of his addiction?
An addiction to gambling is normally cultural (assume Beams) or psychological, which includes psycho- sexual, (assume Gibbs).
It’s never a Black and White issue.
I'll share some rare, valuable information with you that is top secret.

Addiction can affect anyone. That includes all walks of life:drunk:
 

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Rumour Two current AFL stars have lost $1 million each on the punt

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