'Consultation over the Gambling Introductory Offer Loopholes board' blog discussion

PatrickPower

I'm relatively new to the GIOL forum, having only joined last year. I'm lucky if I post more than a couple of times a week and seldom use any other part of the MSE forums. I do use the main site and receive the weekly e-mail.

What has struck me about GIOL is that amongst many of the regular posters there is a real sense of community spirit.

How many other parts of the forum would have produced something like this: http://www.justgiving.com/GIOL

Maybe Martin could let us know?

chompie

really...

I've some bookies who i have never used for anything other than freebets for 4-5 years and they still seem to offer them to me, and as long as they do I'll take them.

After reading some of the dross on here maybe it's best to pack off and set up camp at R-points, and we can leave the trolls, the do gooders and the incompetent behind.

darloscot

The responses on the Facebook part of the blog show just how the board is percieved, and what the problem is for Martin. People see it as a gambling board. They have never taken the time to try and grasp the simple concept, and as a result will be a few thousand poorer than those who do!

The more I think about this the more I beleive this is a house cleaning excercise. Give us 4 weeks to set ourselves up elsewhere, but the people of MSE will never see an opportunity to make risk free cash like this again!!!

Yet it is OK to deliberately buy mispriced Tesco items. The mind boggles!

Mariner13

When i stumbled up on GIOL 5 years ago the forum was very different to how it is now.

Firstly there were 3 board guides, all of which were active on the forum and matched bet themselves, so they could quickly detect and then lock / delete any inapropriate threads. When it came to "risk free" they were pretty strict. JM does a great job but it's too much for just her. MK is a board guide in name only, hardly ever posts, and by her own admission is no longer a MBer.

Threads about arbing and posting arbs never used to be allowed, yet now a thread about shop arbing is!

Threads regarding offers on FGS bets are allowed, when you need an arb to make them "risk free" and without any warning of the possible risks involved if the scorer of the first goal is disputed. People place the bets without knowing the rules - "My player is on the bench - will my bets be void?"

People are spoonfed information, without any encouragement to actually understand what they're doing. They're just told to put the numbers in the SS and place the bet. When there's a problem, they don't have a clue how to fix it.

If GIOL does continue, it should have at least 3 active board guides, and should only allow discussion of "risk free" offers made by large, well established bookmakers. People that wish to discuss riskier things should do so elsewhere. That was how it used to be!

jobbingmusician

I am passionate about MSE. I think it’s a great site which helps a lot of people.

And I think it would be unbelievably stupid and short-sighted to stop people making money from match betting – or to deny them free access to the information on how to do so, by closing this board. It makes me cry, almost, to read some of the posts on DFW and think that some of these posters’ immediate problems would be changed quite significantly by simply signing up to Betfair and extracting £65 on the signup offer.

Which is why I wrote this post. I wanted to encourage people to start match betting in the most risk free way possible, for the smallest stakes. Even if all they did was to sign up to Betfair.

Martin – how can there not be room on this board for explaining to people how to do offers like this? If it’s because of the word ‘gambling’ in the title, that problem has already been addressed by other posters.

Assuming I have taken you with me in the argument so far, I would argue that the sign up offers of the main ‘British’ bookies are still simple and risk free. There are no complexities in signing up to Ladbrokes, Coral, William Hill or Paddy Power, and there are still a wealth of smaller, well reviewed bookies out there where all you have to do is to place a bet to get a free bet. No wager requirement, and no risk if you follow the instructions.

Some posters here increase the risk of their match betting by simply not reading the T & C. I am very bored with telling people to wait 48 hours for their Betfair bonus. People who haven’t read this very simple offer probably cannot be trusted to do signups with a wager requirement – but neither can they be trusted to take out insurance, in their day to day life. And at least there are plenty of people here who a) encourage newbies to ask questions and b) actively discourage risky behaviour.

Perhaps one solution might be to cut this open board right back to these very basic offers, and in addition have a locked board which could only be used by people who can demonstrate that they understand what they are doing, and that the advice there is not endorsed by MSE? Your suggestion of a board which is open only to registered users doesn’t solve any of the problems you have identified (the risk of incorrect advice etc.) and would mean that no-one would ever stumble upon this way of making risk free money.

I am the one – or rather, one of two - at the sharp end, often, trying to decide what is risk free and what isn’t. Betfair changed their horse multiple offer this weekend and it crossed a line for me – the thread is now locked. But in the past, people have devised beautiful, elegant spreadsheets to turn what appear to be horribly risky offers into risk free certainties for making money. The debate, intellect and reasoning on this forum deserve to be celebrated! PLEASE, whatever you do, ensure that the wisdom of this board is retained in some form somewhere.

Your problems appear to me to boil down to the following

• the forum team struggle with knowing what is risk free. (So do I, and I give this board more hours than I care to acknowledge)
• people post wrong advice (in common with every other board on MSE )
• because of this, you are worried about promoting risky gambling.

Problem 1 would be solved by limiting the open board to very mainstream signups only, and having a ‘private’ board for those wanting to progress further.

Problem 2 appears to be a problem only in that it produces problem 3. If the main board is ONLY for beginners doing their first few signups, this is also solved. (And, just to remind you, we are not gambling!!!!)

Somerset

rosepetal37 wrote: »

• Offers have become more complex yes. Look at multiples for example. Now BF has changed the banker to this booster, yet people were still convinced they could make money from it. Even the banker was probably only going to make £10-£20 if you were lucky and doing it risk free, but the number of times I've read on TGT about the number of cockups is amazing

Agreed. That was why I didn't touch it. In fact I didn't do the banker offer's either. I stopped when they killed the normal 'if one horse lets you down' because I couldn't 'get' the revised offer's.

• People seem to think No goal scorer / 0-0 is the same market. Just like "to win both halves" is the same as HT/FT. Not sure if the recent NGS/0-0 thread was a wind up or not?

Exactly. Ignorence to be blunt. People doing stupid things in relation to offer's they don't understand. No different to '' I was a rent guarantor and now the landlord's coming after me'' ... or '' I took a joint loan with my ex who stopped paying and they seem to think I should pay''. Is there a drug to eradicate stupidity ? If you don't understand something .... don't do it.

• The board does need more policing. miskool is a BG, but it seems like JM does most the work herself. Threads that go off topic or that discuss gambling need locking sooner (i.e. with the extra BG's)

Misskool is totally mia. JM is great but can't live here 24/7. More (actually active) mods needed.

• Discussion about +EV should be banned. I hate it and I don't know what it means and it doesn't sound risk free to me

Agreed. They're interesting but not on here - they can be discussed on other forums.

If the forum will only be allowed to survive if it only deals with risk free offer's and the MSE team genuinely can't differentiate ... two options :
- Get one of your team to learn about/how to MB.
- Get more mods on board who can kill/lock inappropriate threads. No discussion. No argument.

Either solution would work.

chompie

I think Mariner has hit it on the head (the nail that is)

Spoon feeding has led to people taking little/no time to actually understand what they are doing.

How many times do we see threads popping up (not in questions) with things like

"right i've just got a £20 free bet, what do i put it on?"

not sure if that's an MSE problem or just society in general but that's another topic for another time...

And i'm sure we've all experienced the reaction of some less than knowledgeable people when you try to explain MB'ing to them, i suppose MSE is trying to find a way to do this (or not as the case seems to be) en Mass.

woodcroft

The word GAMBLING must be taken out of the title. Even now there are people here and on the blog who obviously choose to ignore the LOOPHOLES bit. This is also why I skipped by GIOL between 2005 and 2011.

I like JMs sensible suggestions. Change the name, reduce the unrestricted view to simple Subs and have an invite-only closed area for the more experienced.

A couple more board guides to assist JM and to vet if one has the knowledge to progress to the closed area :cool:

chompie

True.

Too great a stigma attached to that word no matter the context.

woodcroft

Yes, a locked invite-only section for non-subs would keep the trolls out an' all