So I have spent a good while placing bets on Tennis Matches with my all time favorite site being William Hill, now this is mainly because of the site having the best of running long Multiples or Parlay bets with the least restrictions. I have noticed a few new restrictions coming into play of late and never sure if this is due to past winnings but wanted to discuss this for a moment. Tennis Bets are a great means of playing however with restrictions happening on my William Hill account I believe it would be soon time to find another better bookie to make such bets on. Never understood bookies placing limits on players accounts however have had this in the past and very surprised William Hill have decided to go down this route with my largest ever win having been a few grand. But it seems like William Hill is going down that route and think its a terrible business model to work with. So I noticed in the last couple of months that though I am not limited in the multiple play slip size but I am limited in the size of the bet I am allowed to run on William Hill, and this is a measly 20 Euro. Its incredible such a big bookie would place such a restriction on my account but it seems like this is a trend among many bookies in Europe which in all fairness kills customer loyalty in the long run and not only that means that if a player does take a big win from a bookie like William Hill on Tennis they are far less likely or even have the ability to lose the money. I get the bookies get scared and their risk departments try their best to give the bookie to edge but this just doesn't make loyalty of business sense, if a player wins big that player should be allowed to bet bigger so the company or sportsbook doesn't have to wait years to win the money back and probability would state if hes just had a big win hes even more likely to win again. In any fairness after a big win with extra bankroll most players would more than likely up their stakes and increase the speed at with the bookie would make money so the whole process in limiting a players bet size doesn't make any sense to begin with. Who knows they may be losing more bets of late and want to cover costs.

Bwin restricts bets!

So my first experience with a bookie doing such bet restrictions was actually Bwin way back when I opened my first sports betting account with them I think around 2008. I was actually quite shocked as I had just had my first big win and if I recall correctly I ran a 800/1 bet on 12 football matches with the last of the matches being a dodgy 2 division New Zealand league without me even being able to pronounce the name of the teams matching up n the final match (no offence intended) However I recall that after having won this bet with just a 5 Euro stake I had my first experience of KYC (Know your customer) which to be fair at the time wasn't that bad and was more of a case of holding a payout or withdrawal than actually anything relating to money laundering or fake accounts. So once I had cleared the KYC process and got my winning paid out about a week later I went back to my Bwin account and tried to place a similar wager, little did I know Bwin had restricted my account and my max bet stake was set at an incredible 50c Euro which to be honest hurt, though looking back at it now I think their Risk team must have been super green as they then created a scenario where the bookie had no way of getting me to lose that on their site, how many 50c bets would I need to place to return circa 4k back to them? The model just didn't work, nowadays the casinos (and some bookies) have very different ways of making it work and actually contact you to open up your betting limits hoping you lose the money which in all fairness is far more customer friendly but hey each bookie has their own model.

Betting Odds vs Stake

So from the above and over many years of playing I did determine my favorite types of bets and still today make a ton of bets with low stake values to target lottery size wins. William hill still offers this on football even though they have limited my max stake when playing on larger odds or bigger multiples up to around 25 games sometimes the low stake doesn't matter that much. If you are playing odds of 100000/1 and place 20 or 25 Euro the difference though in monetary terms is large but compared to the stake really isn't and I believe still has the same risk for a bookie. Though luck has been on my side for some time I think its only a matter of time till these companies outright block good gamblers which I get they have the right to do but in all fairness certainly isn't the right ethical move and players should talk about this. My next post will be putting together a list of all bookies who restricted accounts based on a player's winnings. Wil start that on Reddit and go from there.

In the meantime my advice for all players is find a bookie you trust as many sportsbooks out there will go through lengths to stop a player withdrawing and if you do win big remember to hold till the KYC process is done, I have had many casinos and sportsbooks alike delay that as long as possible or even put withdrawal sums back into my wallet while I wait for KYC knowing I may be tempted to spend those funds before withdrawing them. 

Here is a shot of my most recent win on William Hill which looks like it got my account restricted and it's not even a major win!