Sports betting expert and LVASportsboards co-moderator Fezzik responds:
I honestly don’t know what happened in this case. I’ve been betting for years and have never seen this at Cantor. Something likely happened internally that caused them to pull the game down early. But whatever it was, it's not typical.
While this situation at a Cantor book caused you some inconvenience, there appears to be more significant problems at William Hill – problems that I’ve experienced both first-hand and have heard about from other players. For example, last weekend the William Hill book at Ellis Island simply wouldn’t take any action from anyone trying to get the "good" numbers on its parlay cards. Typically, some parlay-card lines get "stale" as it gets closer to game time – e.g., the Carolina Panthers were +1.5 on the card this week and they closed -2.5 on the board -- and savvy bettors may have an edge playing them (note, Carolina lost 36-7!). However, beating the books in any way is easier said than done, and when the Hill books were Cal Neva and Lucky's, they always took at least some decent action from all comers on these. When I later called to complain, the sports book rep I talked to said, "This ain’t Cal Neva no more," and hung up on me. Further, I’ve been told by several "sharp" bettors that their William Hill phone-account privileges have been taken away for making too many good plays.
It's shocking that a company that spent $20+ million to acquire so many books while proclaiming how much exotic betting it was going to promote now appears to be waffling about taking any action from sharper players, or really anyone that it thinks might win. It's the equivalent of a casino dealing good blackjack rules, but shuffling up every time a big bet is made. While some of the grizzled veteran books (who openly don't cater to sharps) might be able to get away with this, I think it’s a suicide move by Hill. Folks are already upset that Hill erased three separate "outs" for betting. Get a reputation for kicking out your winners and you’ll surely see a flood of non-winning players leaving you too.
To be fair, I later played some parlay cards at WH books and had no problems … the bets were accepted without issue. But even the inconsistency in policy is a problem. A good compromise is to give every player who they know to be betting for himself a set amount of action that will be accepted on cards, and let him bet on his phone application the same as he would be allowed at the betting window. (I’m impressed with the William Hill phone app. It’s a great product and I use it regularly.)
It’s too early to say definitively that William Hill books are going to be total grind/burn joints, but there’s no way we can endorse them right now. Hopefully they’ll start listening to their director, Nick Bogdanovich, a guy who understands this industry and what it takes to succeed. Under Nick B, Cal Neva never sweat players who tried to get the best of it and built up a huge volume of profitable business similar to the way the Horseshoe did 30 years ago in blackjack. They let people gamble, a few won, but most lost. We will watch this situation closely.
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