Is the GIOL forum worth the risk (with poll)?

Thanatos

IMO the poll on this thread is a very shoddily designed poll with the intention of biasing the result to show more people have "made a loss" than not.

It is evident by the posts above that most people (in fact an overwhelming majority) have all made a small loss at some point, be it from their own mistake or a bookie pulling an offer etc.

However, the question the should be asked is have you made a profit/loss overall.

In my case, yes I have made a couple of silly mistakes, normally fixed via betfair at a cost of a couple of quid and have made one stupid mistake that cost me £25 because i didn't read the T&C properly.

Now, in response to the question "Have you ever lost money doing matched betting?", according to the poll I should be picking the option "Yes, up to £100 but I can live with that". but this leads to a wildly inaccurate picture of making it look like the majority of people have lost money due to matched betting.

Ok, so most of us reading this realise we are refferring to losing cash on the odd single bet whilst making an overall profit, but your average MSE forum reader will have no clue and will simply look at the results and think most peo;le lose money "gambling" on matched betting.

If you want to ask the community questions in a poll like this, I think it very important not to attempt to bias the results by structuring your questions in such a fashion. It smacks of a deliberate attempt to tarnish matched bettings reputation on the forum to me...

R00STER00

The point of the poll, and indeed the whole of the original post, was not to show how much money people make overall from matched betting (this happens at least once a month in habitual back slapping thread already). I really couldn't care less about other people's P&L accounts.

I was merely trying to highlight the downright hypocrosy of the forum regarding various types of offer. To imply that following a set of rules makes this risk free is misleading. I note that none of the points in my original post have been disputed, therefore how can one say this is a risk free activity?

power100

As others have stated I have lost money on mistakes with the greatest being £160 to MB, but mistakes that have gone in my favour have exceeded this. Also I would not have had that £160 to lose if it had been for matched betting and other forms of advantage gambling.

As for all other forms of advantage gambling being banned here then I agree with it for value betting and trading as the vast majority lose at these activities and are very risky if approached in the wrong manner, which would be the case for virtually all the noobs.

Casinos are different and some of the offers are low risk and matched betting does carry some risk. Some people have lost significant amounts of money when dodgy books have gone bankrupt. Also I would be far more comfortable doing the Lads casino offers than depositing a chunk into betsense to take advantage of their bonus. However I still think that casinos being banned here is acceptable as it is a lot easier for inexperienced people to lose money than on matched betting and there are other forums to discuss these offers. A good compromise would be to have links to other reputable forums, that discuss other forms of advantage gambling, in one of the sticky threads.

Human123

Havent bothered to read through the whole thread but i DO think that some casino offers SHOULD be allowed to stay on the board.

we are all adults here and we can all make up our own minds about whether to do certain offers or not since they ALL offer some risk whether we like it or not!

pfpf

this thread is not going to achieve anything other than to cause arguments. i'm out.

Pokebus

Fella wrote: »

Casino offers being discussed on MSE would be like Shroedingers Cat.

I can't imagine many casino offers that wouldn't be pulled/not honoured after being inundated by the traffic that a forum as popular as this would generate if we started preaching free money after xxx of low-risk wagering.

So ipso facto I think the line taken here is correct. Any moreorless risk-free casino offer discussed here would cease to be risk-free (if it ever was to begin with) & therefore should not be discussed here....

I'm with you on that Fella. I read about the Cyberslotz offer on here last year, scoured my house for any available stimulants, stayed up 'til 5am and made over £100. Sure enough, by the time I'd dragged myself to work, the offer had been pulled. Haven't played TT since.

innovate

power100 wrote: »

A good compromise would be to have links to other reputable forums, that discuss other forms of advantage gambling, in one of the sticky threads.

Agree with most of what you said in your post, but I am very much against posting links to "more dangerous" places. Not that it matters what I (or you, or other posters) think about the matter - the decision is Martin's and therefore there's little point in discussing it further. Quite apart from that, an influx of MSEers would more than likely have a detrimental effect on casino offers.

Anyhow, anyone with just a tiny tad of initiative will find what they want to find elsewhere.

Rosso

Seems to me that the OP has maybe recently made a mistake and lost money and is taking his 'frustration' out on the forum, "ban it, ban it!" :rolleyes:

parata

I made a mistake the other day an extra $50 USD for my troubles :rotfl:

Keeps the mind on track though, but I didn't notice it till I had already won so I wasn't even stressed

Stumper_2

When you discuss risk you have to recognise that it is not a single simple thing, there are different TYPES of risk. The risk in MB is that you make a mistake, this is fundamentally different to to casino risk, which is random and which you cannot effect. When people say that MB is risk free, what they mean is that it's free of random variation, of course there is the "!!!! up" risk, or the "conspiracy" risk (where someone deliberately acts against you- eg blue square) but those are different things- and are present in everything you do. The distinction between what risks are and are not acceptable for offers to be discussed on this forum are perfectlly clear and entirely reasonable. Get it? Got it? Good.