I posted this over at EOG.

As of October 7, Parlaymakers will no longer be an advertiser at EOG. We made this decision based on our overall marketing strategy and where we thought best served us. We have been advertising at EOG for one year now and have enjoyed the experience and got to know quite a few interesting characters.

From our beginning working with Matchbook to our transition to an independent stand alone sportsbook we have grown and experienced a lot with our time at EOG. From our early free giveaways to our new contest software we have made a few blunders, made some friends and learned a lot about what our clients want and expect from us.

I do think that the Shrink is sorely missed in these forums and his energy and vitality, no matter what other views you may have had of the man, brought a lot to EOG. I am sure the new team and their strategy will in time have the same energy and success.

So what will Parlaymakers be doing, well for one we are going to take the advertising dollars from EOG and put that money towards more freeplays and free contests for our existing customer base. For those of you who have not played with Parlaymakers yet we encourage you to use our fun $2.99 freeplay to try us out. For the $2.99 freeplay you can use the bonus code EOGFREE . That freeplay will be ongoing for new customers so feel free to give to anyone you like.

2nd, we will be introducing our Parlaymakers loyalty program in the next few weeks which will give up to $7.50 cash back for every $1000 wagered (lesser of risk or to win), also in addition to cash back we will be offering some other perks like VIP phone support, special contests for certain loyalty levels and in the not too distant future some merchandise and other unique rewards.  These cash back rewards will be on our low juice lines making them an even better value.

3rd, as some of you may have noticed we will no longer be offering our bonus lines and we will be focusing on our low juice offerings and loyalty program. We think by focusing on the low juice side of things we will offer the best value available and be able to put all of our attention on making Parlaymakers the best value in the North American market.

Finally, we will be offering some special incentives for our Parlaymakers exchange members who place offers on Parlaymakers, so if you haven’t already become an exchange member eligible to place offers at Parlaymakers  please do so and take advantage of those special offers that will be coming in the next few weeks.

A special thanks to all the staff here at EOG who have always made us feel welcome. Thank you to all of you have commented and given us your feedback on how to make Parlaymakers better. Of course, thank you to all of you have wagered at Parlaymakers and we hope you continue to enjoy our sportsbook and play for many years to come.

Although this thread started with goodbye we know it is really not, and I will come back here from time to time and keep in touch on this forum and we will be communicating with many of you via email with our new promotions and offers. Good luck to everyone here at EOG.

There has been a lot of fuss about ParlayMakers at the SBR forums, and it’s both exciting and frustrating. On the one hand we’re finally getting discussed and a lot of U.S. players are coming to see that they can bet Pinnacle’s menu at Pinnacle’s prices plus a two percent transaction fee on winnings. It’s indisputably a good comparative deal for US-based bettors, and based on forum discussions a lot of them are starting to realize it.

On the other hand we’re getting pounded on the fact that we give the current Pinnacle price even after the customer has confirmed a bet at next to last Pinnacle price. In worst case scenarios that means our customers might confirm a bet at -104, only to have the ticket written at -106. Most lines most of the time aren’t in a volatile state, so it doesn’t happen often. But it does happen, and perhaps we haven’t done a good enough job of explaining why.

The whole idea behind ParlayMakers is to offer the same lines as Pinnacle to U.S. customers. Keep in mind that we are not affiliated with Pinnacle but we do copy their lines. Pinnacle makes this possible by putting their lines out on a real time basis through an XML feed for anyone who wants to to use it.  That XML feed is what our software is built around. So the lines that you see are Pinnacle’s lines, as we get them with a slight delay. So when a customer confirms a bet, our software double checks to make sure that it’s still the same line as Pinnacle—and if it’s not, the software gives him the most current updated line.

This drives a lot of customers, especially those who have never played with us and don’t realize how seldom it happens, crazy. SBR poster Hareeba! states their point of view:

No, my complaint is simply that you can substitute without warning a different price to the offer you put up and which a player accepts.

No other bookie I’ve ever come across does that and all the punters of my acquaintance would regard that as totally unacceptable.

Why, other reasonable posters ask, can’t you give us a chance to confirm the new price? It seems weird to agree to one price, and then get another no matter how rarely it happens. The answer is that in the time it would take to “confirm” a bet the Pinnacle line could change again. So a shot-taker could make a bet, refresh the Pinnacle line in another tab, and then “Confirm” the bet if and only if it was to his advantage. There’s an infinite regress problem here. A “Confirm” is always going to take a few seconds plus however many seconds a customer takes to click it—and in that time the Pinnacle line can change.

It seems the greatest fear that bettors have is that ParlayMakers will take shots at them. SBR stalwart Dark Horse puts this fear succinctly:

PM can get any middles they want. No questions asked. And assurances that they won’t cash in on the advantage, instead of clearing up the process that is critized here, border on ludicrous.

Dark Horse is not a customer, and so it’s a little frustrating to have to explain to him that it’s not in our interest to take shots at players—after all, he’s not going to believe us or give us a chance to earn his trust. So we seem to be stuck repeating over and over, “but you’re getting the latest Pinnacle line!” All we’ll add here to our existing customers is that if you get a line other than the one you agreed to and you have Pinnacle open in another tab, refresh the line there and you will see that we have given you the latest Pinnacle line. That’s our product. It’s also our promise, but you don’t have to believe us because you can check up on us by checking to make sure the line you got from us is the current Pinnacle line.

Poster Hareeba! writes, “No other bookie I’ve ever come across does that”—and he’s right. But no other sportsbook has ever been built explicitly to help bettors whose politicians have cut them off from playing at the best sportsbook in the world.

Last week saw the end of our first ever heads-up contest. The contest was designed to select the Parlaymakers Handicapping Team and to test out the new contest software. We did find a few bugs which we are working on fixing.

Overall, it was lot of fun with BigDaddy from EOG coming out the winner. We eventually selected 4 people from the contest as members of Team Parlaymakers. We have just embarked on our second heads-up contest with bounties on all Team Parlaymakers members which should be interesting.

I did not do that well in the first contest going down to BigDaddy in the first round but I am hoping for a better showing in this next match. I will keep you posted…….

Over the last few weeks we have been working on a new type of contest here at Parlaymakers. The new contest is a heads-up handicapping contest format much like March Madness, with each winner advancing on to play the winner from the other bracket.

We have added a hypothetical winning amount field for the contests. This hypothetical winning amount is the amount your wager would have won if you had made a $100 wager. The contest results will be based on this hypothetical win amount. Whoever has the highest winning amount at the end of each round will move on to the next round until we have one winner.

These contests will sometimes be free but will at times also have entry fees which will include a small fee to Parlaymakers for operating the contest. The entry fees will be pooled to make a prize pool and payouts will be listed for each contest.

As we move forward with increasing our wagering limits we wanted to make sure that we keep adding new features to the site that will encourage both recreational and professional players. These new types of contests should be a lot of fun. The contests will allow people to put up a relatively small amount of money and then have the chance to play for a while with the chance of a big payoff at the end.

It should also make for a lot to talk about among our users and on forums.

I am sure there will be a few kinks to work out but look for contests to start this week.

When we founded ParlayMakers a lot of people told us it was a dumb idea to start a sportsbook. They said that in a hostile legal climate where many had failed we would too. As we surveyed the business terrain, though, it seemed to us that there was a better mouse trap to be built and that is what we’ve focused on doing.

Today I’d like to announce our next innovation. It’s called “The ParlayMakers Panda” program. It’s a way to create a presence for ourselves in online forums. Basically what we’re going to do is pay people to post at forums while using our URL in their signature, our logo as their avatar, and our global username. What’s innovative about our idea is that our ParlayMakers Pandas (as we call them, sort of like the Geico Gecko) are not being tasked with pushing ParlayMakers—we’re not going to have them announce our contests, bonuses, etc. Instead we just want them to be good community members sharing knowledge about whatever topic the forum is centered around.

So if you post on a high traffic forum and would be interested in doing so while being sponsored by ParlayMakers drop me a line to tell me which forum. I’ll ask to see some of your posting work, and try to get permission for the site owner, and we’ll go from there. I’ll say up front that these are not highly paid gigs, we’re thinking of a $100 freeplay every month, so we’re really looking for guys who already post for fun and would like to become Pandas for kicks and some beer money and the chance to play around in this new world of social media marketing.

When we first started I knew that often the very first people to try any new site that somehow deals with money are always looking to find ways to take advantage of any existing system and exploit it for their own financial gain. This is sometimes done legally and sometimes done by trying to hack into the system or look for software loopholes. At any rate the early adopters often times are great sources for testing the flaws in your existing system.

For example, when we were still working with Matchbook the first Teaser users were almost all looking for Wong style teasers that crossed the 7 or 3 barrier. Nothing wrong with that but it illustrates the point that weaknesses were being probed. The first Parlay users were looking for correlations, and errors in the software that might allow normally prohibited correlations like large football spreads and totals in some circumstances.

We have looked on these people as very valuable guides on how to improve our systems.

So whenever we see one of these types make a wager our first assumption is that we are doing something wrong. Sometimes that is the case but sometimes it appears to be more like a sharp player who maybe is working for a syndicate or knows what the syndicate plays will be. Sometimes, it is just our wild imagination.

A recent example is the number of wagers we are receiving on cycling matchups. Almost every wager has had the line move in their favor after they placed the wager. So they wagered at -145 and the line is now -180 for instance. Either, they are psychic, the world’s greatest cycling handicappers, they know where the action is going or our imagination is acting up again. Don’t worry, we don’t penalize people for being smart.

We will continue to keep our eyes open and keep learning.

The distance on the internet gives people confidence that they would not ordinarily have in person to be rude or combative in a way you would not generally find in personal dealings. The challenge for us is to create an environment that is friendly and open and to find effective ways to deal with the people that will be anti-Parlaymakers for whatever reason. As someone recently said to me there is a tendency when dealing on the internet for the business to get tired of dealing with the negativity and simply give up the dialogue because it becomes more like combat than discussion. I notice that several of our competitors that were historically very vocal on the internet have now because of hostility basically stopped any real dialogue. Sometimes this hostility is legitimate and is because of some action the company has done or failed to do but so often the all the oxygen is sucked out by the internet hostility that there is no space for any discussion and so the communication eventually just ends.

We are currently working on some new marketing initiatives that we hope will continue to expose and build our brand and will help us create a dialogue within the internet world and minimize the conflict.

EOG poster Big Daddy was our first baseball contest winner, and proved to be knowledgeable about the consumer end of the offshore world.

The contest simply required the player to hit 61% of a hundred baseball bets, and the menu included runlines. “You were giving money away,” Big Daddy rightly told me. Every day included several plays at minus 200 or better, so it wasn’t much of a trick to pick these and have a mathematical chance of hitting just under 66%. Which is exactly what Big Daddy did—as he told me, “I spent about two minutes on it every day.”

Big Daddy’s critique of ParlayMakers as a  new entry in the sportsbook market place was succinct and pointed. “Right now I’m just a contest player. If your site is around in a year or two I would consider it for the reduced juice and huge menu, but I’ve got three books that give me reduced juice and have been around for a long time.” He also offered this, though, “I might take a chance if there were contests that offered the player value where you had to have an active account to play—but it would have to be a damn good contest. “ We are thinking along the lines Big Daddy suggests as our developers are currently at work on some contest software that will offer a zero-take contest for funded accounts.

Signed

The Man on the Street

Effective today Moneybookers is now an option for deposit and withdrawal at Parlaymakers. It took a little longer than expected but we have arrived. The withdrawals are currently being handled manually but the automated withdrawal feature will be available by June 15th. It works a little different than if you are funding with Gold-Pay. You will have to select Moneybookers under preferences if you are depositing by Moneybookers and then once you deposit, it functions more like a traditional sportsbook with your balance at Parlaymakers going up or down based on your wagers and then withdrawing back to Moneybookers when you are ready. There will be one withdraw permitted every 7 days up to your available balance that you have on Parlaymakers.

Important note: Even though you are using Moneybookers you will still have to create a Gold-Pay account in order to log-in. Once you have logged in you can select preferences and select Moneybookers as your e-wallet. You will know you are using the Moneybookers side because the logo will appear in your account status section.

Best of luck to all of you.

Recently, I had read about the troubles of a particular book, Bet911 on EOG and in other forums and they were and are looking for a buyer. Apparently, the problems at Bet911 are a result of lack of liquidity and the book no longer has funds to pay its’ existing customer accounts.

I do not know how they arrived at that point or what business decisions or mistakes were made. If reading the internet forums provides any guidance it would be that perhaps they offered too high of bonuses and were being used by bonus whores more than anything else.

I contacted Robert at Bet911 and asked about possibly assisting or purchasing Bet911 and dealing with the customer balances. Robert responded and was very cordial and provided some financial information about players balances and some suggestions about what sort of terms might work.

I spent several hours reviewing the financial information and trying to devise some way that would be mutually beneficial for both Parlaymakers and the customers of Bet911. The main issue is how do you devise a mechanism that gives the players a chance to at least receive part or all of their balances at Bet911 and still have the proposition be profitable for Parlaymakers. One key question is what is the likelihood that any customer coming over from Bet911 will continue playing at Parlaymakers after they have completed their rollover?

Reviewing the financials and player information gave us some insight into what to expect. First, I reasoned that most European players are not going to stick around as they have more options and are more likely to be with Bet911 only for the bonuses they were offering.  Second, I looked for small recreational players that would fit well within Parlaymakers. While Bet911 does have some recreational players it is a fairly small percentage.

Finally, what is the public relations benefit of becoming involved and assisting in this type of situation? At first glance it might seem the positive PR upside should be a significant factor. However, taking all of the players from a financial stand point didn’t make sense and any other offer would have to be sufficiently tough enough on the remaining players that we quite likely might be accused of trying to take advantage of the situation and that our offer was insufficient.

In conclusion you have an uncertain positive return while running the real risk of being portrayed as the vulture or worse on the internet forums. In the end the negatives and potential negatives outweighed any of the uncertain positives for us.

I contacted Robert and told him that I couldn’t find a solution that I thought would be mutually beneficial and wished him and his players the best of luck. Perhaps some other sportsbook owner will see the situation differently and find a way to make it work.

Next week…some exciting new types of contests for our June Baseball Contest……