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161 bets. One game. Every price taken back.

bet365, February 2012: how a "correction" only ever works one way.

On Monday 6 February 2012, from 5:07 in the morning until 2:02 in the afternoon, a close friend's inbox filled up with emails from bet365. One hundred and sixty-one of them. All with the same subject, "Informing You Of Changes To Your Bet", and all about the same basketball game: Obras Sanitarias vs Pinheiros.

Every email said the same thing. Only the numbers changed:

"We have identified that this selection was placed at incorrect odds and as such, in accordance with our rules, will be settled at the revised odds of 1.36."

Thirty of them went further. Those bets weren't repriced at all. They were cancelled:

"…this selection has been made void as the correct odds were less than 1/1000."

What actually happened

First, to be clear about this one: these prices really were wrong, and my friend knew it.

For the first half of the game, bet365's live prices had the two teams the wrong way round. Whichever team was really ahead was priced as if it were behind. Early on Pinheiros led, so Pinheiros was the long price. Then Obras took over, and Obras was the long price. The bigger the lead, the bigger the odds on the team holding it: Obras at 17.00 to win a half they were already winning comfortably, Obras +15.5 on the half at 2.00, a double result at 41.00.

He spotted it and kept betting the real leader. 161 times. That was too many. A pattern like that gets noticed, and of course they investigated. Fourteen years ago, and still a lesson: if you find a mistake, don't hammer it. Mistakes like this are extremely rare today, and they get fixed in minutes.

Seven years later I found a different kind of mistake at the same bookmaker. Not a mechanical error, but its own judgement before the game: two Malaysian teams had swapped names, and bet365 priced them the wrong way round. A handful of bets, a hidden pick, not a word to anyone. bet365 paid every ticket. Over the years I've been paid on live mistakes like this one too, many times. Never with 161 bets. Odds of 101 on the wrong team →

But that isn't the point of this story.

Why a correction only works one way

bet365's rules allow it. When they decide a price was wrong, they can settle the bet at the price they say it should have been. It sounds fair. It isn't.

Think about a losing bet at the wrong price. The stake is gone, at 4.10 or at 1.36. Correcting it changes nothing for the bookmaker. Now think about a winning bet. Correcting it takes most of the win back, or all of it.

So the rule can only ever move money in one direction: from you to them. They take every bet you place at their mistake, keep the stakes that lose, and shrink the ones that win. Imagine you bet at 1.10, and after the game an email arrives: "Those odds were a mistake. You actually won at 4.00." In over 20 years I have seen a correction go the bettor's way maybe once or twice, and even then I couldn't know whether someone with a much bigger stake was on the other side of it.

And look at when the correction arrives. Rarely when you place the bet, while you could still say no and keep your money. Mostly after the game, once they already know which bets won. Everybody makes mistakes. You can't take your bet back after the result is in. They can.

The game, and when the emails came

This was the final of the FIBA Liga Sudamericana, Sunday 5 February 2012, 10 pm local time. Obras Sanitarias beat Pinheiros 88–73. By quarter: 26–22, 19–9, 25–25, 18–17.

It wasn't a stroll. It was a final, and many of these bets went in during the first quarter, some of them on the first half and the whole match, when nothing was decided yet. Of the 161 bets, 159 were on Obras, and every one of those won, the voided ones included. The two on Pinheiros, a first-quarter handicap and a race to 20 points, both lost.

The emails came the next morning, a few at a time, over nine hours. The two bets on Pinheiros, the only losers, were repriced first, at 5:07. The winners came after, the last of them at 2:02 in the afternoon, many hours after the final buzzer, when every result was already known.

All 161 bets

Fourteen years later

This was 2012. The software is faster now, the rules are longer, and the emails are shorter. The direction hasn't changed. When a bookmaker makes a mistake, you pay for it. When you find one, they take it back.

Don't even start.

And if you already bet, read the "obvious error" rule before you deposit. It's always there.