Cash Out Horror Stories: For Punters & Bookies
If you’ve ever been a part of an online sportsbook, then you may be familiar with the possibility of cashing out. This is a function that can be used after you have placed a bet and before the result is finalised. Through it, you can cash out the bet before the game you have wagered on is over. This way, you can ensure that you obtain profit, or reduce potential loses, before something potentially goes wrong in the event to negate that by the end. Or perhaps you can see that the result of the game isn’t turning out in the way that you expected it to when placing your wager, so, you simply cut your losses early and regain some of your wager through cashing out.
It has become a popular mechanic of online bookies for bettors to use, and doubtless, some people have managed to obtain a certain level of profit or minimise their losses significantly through it. But what about those times when gamblers have chosen to cash out and it has been a huge mistake to make? For example, they cash out early and then see that if they’d left their bet alone, it would have made much more profit. Or they cash out because they strongly believe their team won’t win and then there is a reversal in fortunes that sees them go on to be the victors. Or perhaps a cash out has been fantastic for a set of players but bad news for the sportsbook itself.
Crafty Cash Outs See Bookies Losing Out
We think it would be ideal to start out with a story about the bookies suffering at the hands of players. After all, more often than not, it tends to be the other way around! But in 2019, this was not the case at all. Gamblers were capitalising on unrealistic odds for Scottish football teams in order to scoop windfalls, and this was occurring before the games had even kicked off!
It was discovered, and reported by The Scottish Sun, that online accounts were being used by punters to place large bets at generous prices, and this activity would occur over one week prior to the games taking place. Prices would frequently shorten as the matchday neared though, and this led to some savvy customers taking advantage of the cash back offer being calculated on the latest odds in order to make profit, before a ball had even been kicked.
Brands such as SkyBet, Bet365 and BetVictor had all been victims of the scheming players, and all three (as well as various others) took action, suspending accounts or ridding themselves of the cash out option. That led to the players who had been exploiting it making complaints over the bookies’ actions.
One bettor made mention of how he had won more than £5,000 in less than six months, and this was without a ball being kicked in the games he’d wagered on. He said that odds allocated to the lower league clubs are usually quite overpriced, so, this led to him sticking a couple of hundred pounds on one specific team that stood out as being underestimated. “There’s nothing wrong with taking advantage of their pricing mistakes”, he said.
The sad part about it for the players is that if they had kept quite about it all instead of sharing their wins on social media and shouting about how they did it, then potentially they would still be able to take advantage of such even now.
Brazil & Costa Rica Leave It Until Last Minute
While very few newspaper or media reports have been created surrounding bad experiences with cashing out, this hasn’t stopped punters from sharing details about the times that they have suffered after using it. One player posting online back in 2015 noted his feeling of idiocy when betting on a game and then cashing out, only to find it ended up not being the right thing to do.
The bettor, going by the username of CityFan at the Pie and Bovril forum, said that he had placed his final £5 of the weekend on a treble. This was for Cartagines and Germio to win their matches and a draw to occur in the Chapecoense versus Figueirense game. This, he said, would have landed him a payout of £44 in total.
As things stood for him, Gremio were winning 4-0 and Chapecoense were 2-0 up against Figueirense. Meanwhile, Cartagines were losing their game against Belen 0-1. The two Brazilian games featuring Gremio and Chapecoense had very little time left on them, and it had reached half time in the Costa Rican Cartagines game. With little looking like it was going his way, CityFan opted to use the cash out function, resulting in him getting 31p. His reasoning behind this was that his treble looked pretty much dead, and he wanted to go for a long shot on the NYRB versus NYC game instead.
In the end, Figueirense scored two late goals to equalise with Chapecoense, meaning that his draw prediction would have been correct. Meanwhile, Cartagines came back in the second half to win their game against Belen, meaning that that would have been a winning wager, too. Of course, Gremio were well up 4-0 with little time left, pretty much meaning that that was a secured victory for the team. Yet in a treble, all three bets need to be winning wagers for a payout to be received.
CityFan noted that he would usually allow such a bet to run to the end, but this time opted not to do so! Needless to say, he would have been on the receiving end of much more than 31p if he had allowed the treble to run to the end!
Just One Second More…
Another avid sports bettor posted on Reddit about his experience with cashing out. Going by the username of Calabunga, the player commented on placing a £2 four-fold bet on a Both Teams to Score/Result which would have returned £600 to him. His four-fold bet had Scotland to beat Cyprus, Croatia to be victorious over Slovakia, Belgium to gain the win over Russia and Poland to be successful in their game against Israel.
He was successful with his bet on Scotland to defeat Cyprus, and during their respective games, Slovakia and Poland were both 1-0 up over their opponents. Calabunga didn’t like how it looked and so took a cash out to obtain £50 from the four-fold rather than wait. One second after his decision to cash out, Croatia proceeded to score in their game against Slovakia, and afterwards, went on to get another goal to win their games.
And while the punter still believed he had beaten out the bookies, considering he had two other games involved in the four-fold, Israel managed to score a goal in the 86th minute of their game against Poland. And Poland ended up winning that game 2-1. That was one game in Euro 2020 that was marred with various issues, including a spectator running onto the pitch and a security guard chasing after him, only to collide with a Polish player in the process! Gone was the gambler’s possibility of obtaining £600 though. And, according to him, he has very rarely used the cash out mechanic since that time!
£250,000 Win From £5 Stake Disaster For Sportsbook
Here is another instance of the player getting the better of the sportsbook by cashing out at exactly the right time. In 2021, the Cheltenham Festival was getting ready to begin. Gambler Paul Dean had witnessed two legs of his five-leg accumulator be successful. The first two occurred in June of 2020 when he wagered on Golden Horde to win the Commonwealth Cup at Ascot, and Hello Youmzain to be the victor of the Diamond Jubilee Stakes. At the same time, he had wagered on three horses running at Prestbury Park.
One of those legs was wagered on Shishkin crossing the line first in the Arkle Chase, while the other was on Bob Olinger being successful in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle. Those two were winning races for Paul in the end. His final leg relied on Envoi Allen winning the Marsh Novices’ Chase. If that were to be successful, he would have been on the receiving end of £511,255 from his £5 wager.
Many people had it in mind that Envoi Allen would be the winner of the race, and perhaps this is why Betfair offered Dean the chance to cash out for a £250,000 reward. He was offered that amount if Envoi Allen failed to win or £322,000 should the horse win the race. The gambler accepted the cash out offer, and as it happens, Envoi Allen fell early on in that race, meaning that £250,000 went directly to Paul. Had he let it ride, he wouldn’t have been the winner of anything!
A Leicester City Cash Out Leaves Player High and Dry
Another story regarding a bad cash out for a player takes us back to the 2015-16 football season in the UK. The previous year, Leicester City finished the league just six points above the relegation zone, so why anyone believed it would be a good idea to bet on them winning the league in the following season is quite the mystery. Yet clearly some people decided to do it, and the team had odds of around 5,000/1 at the start of the 2015-16 season.
One Ladbrokes customer did exactly that, seeming to believe that Leicester would make it through to the end and be at the top of the rankings that year. The customer opted to place a 50p wager on the team – not the biggest bet, of course. Yet despite Leicester City winning their opening game 4-2 over Sunderland, with two goals from Riyad Mahrez, that same customer chose to cash out their wager for a total of 45p. That cash out was declared to be the worst decision in the history of sports betting, according to a spokesperson for Ladbrokes.
Had he continued on with that bet, the player would have been the recipient of £2,500 by the end of the season, as Leicester City did indeed go on to win the league. It wasn’t all doom and gloom for the gambler though, as Ladbrokes reached out to him and offered them an alternate reward. An all-expenses paid trip to a match of their choice in the following football season, as well as a free wager on the title winner for the 2016-17 campaign, were both provided to them.
£40,000 Slips Through a Player’s Hands
Imagine losing out on receiving £40,000 from a sports bet. That’s exactly what happened to one player when they opted to wager a double on Liverpool defeating Crystal Palace 7-0 and Manchester United being victorious over Leeds United 6-2. Those games were due to take place on the same weekend, and the gambler wagered £2 on the double. The first score had odds of 200/1 while the latter had 100/1, and the double was valued at 20,300/1.
Strangely enough, Liverpool came through with that 7-0 win over Crystal Palace. And Manchester United then ended up being 4-1 up against Leeds at the 43-minute mark. The 6-2 score was definitely still a possibility, but the bettor was offered the opportunity to cash out for a total of £3,457.79 by the bookmaker. That had dropped to £2,279.56 by minute 62, and the score remained 4-1.
The bettor decided that cashing out would be a better option at this point. Yet, the Manchester team proceeded to go on and score two more goals, taking their total up to 6, and Leeds also managed to get another one in the net. That 6-2 outcome was achieved, but the punter only got his £2.2K instead of a massive £40,602 payout. Devastating doesn’t even begin to describe this sort of situation!
Cashing Out On Newcastle In 2017
A personal example of a cash out fail for me came in 2017 when Newcastle United were in the race to win the Championship with Brighton. I had a bet on Newcastle to win the Championship from the start of the season priced at 5/1 with a £25 stake and with three games to go Brighton were 7 points clear at the top.
Having no money in my account at the time and seeing no hope for this bet I cashed it in for less than £1 to place an accumulator, which then lost. What happened next? Newcastle went on to win their 3 remaining games and Brigton lost two and drew one meaning NUFC won the league by a single point. Had I not cashed out I would have made a profit of £125 on that bet but instead got less than £1, which I subsequently lost.
That was the last time I cashed out a bet. Generally cash out is a bad idea overall as you are giving the bookie a margin when you place a bet and a second margin in factored in when you cash out. That doesn’t mean it is a useless tool but it should only be used sparingly.
