Nice article by Tony Calvin(on Bookie behaviour..)

https://medium.com/@tony_calvin/honesty-and-acceptance-between-bookmaker-and-punter-may-put-an-end-to-the-bad-feeling-e63a1bc1bf78

Honesty and acceptance between bookmaker and punter may put an end to the bad feeling

I don’t tend to get too worked up by bet restrictions and the likes these days. It’s an industry-wide issue with no exceptions. None. All bookmakers, it seems, are clamping down increasingly hard on both the winners and those with a profile that suggests they even have the potential to turn a profit, and as a punter you just have to shrug your shoulders and get on with it as best as you can, because it ain’t changing any time soon.

That may involve trying the betting shop cash route for some; accessing friends and family accounts for many, and indeed, even paying for that privilege; or simply using betting exchanges like Betfair near the off when the liquidity arrives. Personally, I am too lazy to go down the shop route, as it would entail identifying the bet, getting in the car, parking up and by then I imagine the price would have gone. If the odds are that wrong, they normally have a very limited shelf life and would have possibly disappeared by the time the coins are going in the meter. And, of course, you probably wouldn’t get that much on, anyway, unless you do the walk of shame down a busy High Street with a few wigs, and it is far too late in the day for me to slapping on a syrup for any reason, whatsoever.

The friends and family route is quite frankly a ball-ache, especially when you are as clueless as me on the IT front in these days of handy ISP blockers, or whatever they are called. As a result, I have been hunted down all a bit too easily by bookmakers, and I bet with such regularity every day that keeping a track on the P & L is a morning’s work in itself.

Oh, and I forgot the racecourse, sorry on-course bookmakers. So the fact of the matter is that I have the majority of my bets on Betfair — I think I would have to quit racing and betting if the exchange shut my account for whatever reason, so please don’t — and I haven’t placed a bet in my own name on a fixed-odds account for around three years, I guess. Not ideal but what do you do? Yes, I do have an avenue to some bookmakers’ prices, but certainly not all and not to my required or requested bet-size in many cases. But, as I said, you plough on as best you can and try and ignore the prices staring you in the face that you can’t access.

To that end, I wish Oddschecker would allow punters to personalise their service and give them the opportunity to delete bookmakers from the grids as and when they cease to become a personal punting option. It is soul destroying seeing a price, sitting there unharmed, that you can’t snaffle up. This isn’t a “look at me, I’m a billy big-bollocks winner” piece at all — I’ve been doing it in of late, anyway, and I am still working like a dog if you haven’t noticed (though this is a personal freebie) — and I suspect many punters secretly puff their chest out and regard it as a badge of honour when they get the dreaded email.
Providing they have earned it, of course. Quite literally. But there is increasing anecdotal evidence — and unfortunately it can only be that in the absence of hard facts from the bookmakers, and that ain’t coming — the situation has already gone beyond the shrug-your-shoulders stage for losers, let alone winners.

Only last week a well-known name in the racing game who likes walking — I haven’t asked for permission to use his name here, so I won’t, but he sounded farquharing angry I can tell you — went on Twitter and said he was your average £20-stakes losing punter who got shut down. What’s that all about? And the more people that you read on Social Media, or speak to when you are out and about, the more worrying and widespread this situation has become.
In fact, a friend told me today — and this is not bullshit — that their account was recently closed for sports punting after just two losing racing bets, though both shortened in price.

Plenty of losers are getting dragged in by the accountants in this increasing clampdown, it seems. A clampdown that could get a lot, lot worse if the FOBT decision in January is particularly brutal for the bookmakers. It seems it is not even about winning or losing anymore, or even looking like you know what you are doing. It is maybe becoming a matter of control, of control of what bookmakers want you to bet on.

I am not going down the FOBTs and casino only route here, or indeed naming names — like I said, all bookmakers are the same and perhaps rightly so, and don’t get me started on Laurence Robertson’s comments on RUK last Sunday — but it is very interesting to note that the aforementioned walker noted that his losing account was shut on the very day that he backed two Hugh Taylor tips, and not even at the soon-to-be-halved recommended price, too! It may well have been coincidence, but he was shut by the same firm (s) who recently pulled out of the Pricewise grids in the Racing Post. By the way, I don’t have any argument with that decision. Tipping at prices that were at least 12 hours out of date is ludicrous in these exchange-dominated days, though I did take exception to the comment piece in the paper that said the column was basically a free cheque written to arbers every time it appeared.

Now, don’t get me started on the arber line — I hate the lazy, often inaccurate phrase, and it didn’t seem a concern for the paper in the previous 30 years, either — or indeed the access to prices that some of the press have, especially with certain firms. But, if you did, I would say the Pricewise column itself was the biggest arber of all, knowingly tipping at prices that would be at least two points lower (and upwards of four on occasions), that even a glance at Betfair early evening the day before would confirm, come the guarantee windows of 8.30am the next day. The column didn’t help itself to survive. Bookmakers don’t want that trade, nor should they be expected to cater for it or provide an out-of-date service. Any Pricewise punter backing in that manner with that bookmaker on any other event would be shut in an instant, and rightly so.

So I do have a lot of sympathy for bookmakers in some areas — Kevin Blake raised them in a good article yesterday in fact, with the likes of each-way terms, so check that out, and the likes of Ben Keith and Geoff Banks on Twitter champion the layers’ cause, to varying success admittedly — but what I think this worsening situation is crying out for is honesty.
Simple honesty would put an end to a lot of the bad feeling, and occasional bleating, out there, I feel. If and when bookmakers shut someone, just tell them why, for god’s sake. I would say the vast majority of punters would take it on the chin and move on if they were told. Email a punter: “I can’t beat you, you are too good, we are shutting your account” and they would be showing their mates for the next year. You immediately turn a negative into a positive. And punters know when they have had a good run with a bookmaker, they aren’t stupid.

The problem is the abrupt correspondence punters get now is simply the “trading decision” line, and little else. That cannot be healthy or satisfactory. Of course, the press doesn’t help engender debate or shine a light on this matter — there is a fair amount of self-interest for all media organisations, though it is interesting that ITV racing have ditched the bookmaker rep interviews that at times were embarrassingly bad on C4 (especially mine) — but there really should be more communication between the layer and the player. In fact, I would go further and urge bookmakers to be pro-active and write to customers with a warning that if a certain practice continues — maybe consistently snaffling that Taylor, the best out there, morning recommended price — then we will shut you. Put the ball in the opposition’s court, if you were. It may not be what the punter with access to that particular cash-cow will want to hear but I reckon — if they were being honest to themselves — they would accept they have had a good run, smile at the bank balance, and begin to look elsewhere.

The honesty line was hammered home to me on Monday afternoon when I was sitting in the Kempton press room, reading the David Evans “Black Dave” case. I haven’t got the time to go into the detail here — and I will wait until the full transcript is available, anyway — but it seems that Ladbrokes gave the trainer inflated odds of 4/1, from 7/2, to a £6,000 stake and he then told them another of his horses in the same race wasn’t running. Now, I don’t have any particular issue with a bookmaker giving any “valued” punter they want over the odds or a chunky bet — I am assuming Evans is a losing punter, and therefore an extra half-a-point is neither here nor there in the grand scheme of things — but the revelation that the firm then cut his impending non-runner seems outrageous. I have lost count of the number of times bookmakers on Social Media have said that Rule 4 manipulation is pie in the sky and simply doesn’t go on, and then I read that. Which was followed the aforementioned Ben Keith chipping in on Twitter: “There isn’t a bookie alive who hasn’t shortened a horse if they know a Rule 4 is coming.” If that is true, then I think someone else should have been in the dock in that BHA case other than, or in addition to, Evans.

It is just another worrying addendum to the shambles that is occasionally our starting price system in this country, though obviously we are not going to get much transparency there any time soon. By the same token, when a bookmaker is positive and up front, then perhaps we have to give them the benefit of the doubt, too. For example, Coral guarantee to lay a bet to lose at least £5,000 or £2,000 in their shops, dependent on the quality of the race in question.
This can surely only be lauded as a positive move, and I dare say the vast majority of those trying to access this offer, if not all, are accommodated. That should be enough for anyone to ask for, or to expect. But you get plenty of people saying this is a PR stance or move that is often reneged upon in shops. And, indeed, when I asked someone on the Betfair forum about this — he has consistently claimed to a Coral betting shop manager down the years on there — he said punters are getting knocked back on this guarantee “every day of the week”.
Of course, it may be those pesky arbers out in force again — in which case you would have some sympathy with the firm, and the Forumite could also be full of it, for all I know (though he doesn’t sound it) — but should it matter who is taking the price and why?

A guarantee is either a guarantee, or it isn’t, though again it was interesting to read Colossus Bets’ CEO Bernard Marantelli claim that similar bet commitment in Australia hasn’t been the resounding success many have claimed and is often circumvented there by the bookmakers.
I acknowledge there are rights and wrongs on both sides of this perennial punting debate — albeit one often conducted in silence — and I have no answers but I will leave you with one wish ahead of ATR’s Sunday Betting special with Sean Boyce, Kevin Blake and Simon Clare.
And that is for all of the quartet to be straight up in a show format that promises to be enlightening if taken seriously. Fair play to Simon for going on, as he has dropped a few betting clangers down the years which will probably resurface at the weekend, but I really don’t want to hear any of this parasite and arber nonsense, and the “over 99 per cent of bets are accepted in full” line, that featured in a Racing Post feature in December 2014.
Because I don’t think that washes any more, and it didn’t even clean its face back then.

And I certainly don’t want to listen to we don’t shut accounts — in reality they are just set to accept pennies or just casino bets, so are effectively closed — or we lay the “faces”, ****-stylee, though I would definitely like to hear from Simon what percentage of his firm’s accounts are winning ones. And why they are kept and left open. That to me would be the most interesting question and answer of all. Nor do I want hear from the other trio of media men that bookmakers should continue have to lay winning punters — and those three may come in that bracket — and not have the rightful option to shut them down and conduct their businesses as they see fit in a very challenging time for bookmakers across the board.

Perhaps punters expect too much, too, but if they are sold the dream perhaps they have the right to buy it for longer than is currently the case.