Chicago man wins big in sports bet, only to have it all canceled $389k

[1dollarboxcar]

maybe Todd can help this guy out too via twitter... the more pressure the better...

[Dan Druff]

I didn't support the other guy (who got paid any way for PR reasons) and I don't support this dude.

I couldn't see all 6 legs of this guy's parlay but I saw the following:

Matas Buzelis over 12.5 points
Obi Toppin under 9.5 points
Obi Toppin under 1.5 assists

These look like evenish-money props. On March 2, reserve Buzelis was expected to play a lot of minutes (he ended up with 30), and that's why his points were inflated over his season average. So 12.5 was a reasonable over/under. Obi Toppin is averaging 10.3 points and 1.6 assists, so obviously the 9.5/1.5 bets were again, likely to be even money type props.

I'm guessing the other three legs were, as well.

A typical 6-leg parlay on even-money (meaning same line on both sides) legs will pay 45-to-1, known as +4500.

Mark Aiello's bet was paying 350-to-1, almost 8x the correct odds.

There is no legal threshold for what denotes an "obvious error", and while this one is close, I have to side with the casino that a reasonable person could not conclude that +35000 was a reasonable payout for a normal 6-leg parlay.

The fact that Aiello slammed four different $500 bets on this (probably slightly changing the parlay on each to lower variance) means that it's likely he knew he was getting insane value here. He didn't just place the bets for fun.

I don't fault the guy for trying. Taking advantage of erroneously posted lines is a form of advantage play, and I don't begrudge anyone who tries. However, at the same time, the player cannot cry foul when the casino catches it, and voids the bet before the game.


In fact, the voided bet pretty much proves it was posted in error. It's not like something happened to these players, or something about the game changed significantly before the bet went off. They just realized they were giving these insane payouts through some kind of error, and killed the bets.

Aiello's 8x advantage isn't quite as egregious as the orders-of-magnitude one of the other guy featured in the story, but it's enough to where I would rule that it was indeed an obvious error, if I were on the Illinois Gaming Commission.

I would be on his side if the game had already started, and they voided it anyway. That could be a case of freerolling by the casino. This clearly wasn't.

Nice try on his part, but he doesn't deserve the $389k. He's smart to go to the news media, though, as that might get him paid. It worked for the other guy, If he does, more power to him.

[CarolinaGambler]

I just saw this on YouTube for the first time, props to the media for their usual BS, “oh look at the military veteran who is a new father getting screwed by the big bad sports book”. Give me a break. None of that crap is relevant to the story but gets people to pile on sports books

I didn't support the other guy (who got paid any way for PR reasons) and I don't support this dude.

I couldn't see all 6 legs of this guy's parlay but I saw the following:

Matas Buzelis over 12.5 points
Obi Toppin under 9.5 points
Obi Toppin under 1.5 assists

These look like evenish-money props. On March 2, reserve Buzelis was expected to play a lot of minutes (he ended up with 30), and that's why his points were inflated over his season average. So 12.5 was a reasonable over/under. Obi Toppin is averaging 10.3 points and 1.6 assists, so obviously the 9.5/1.5 bets were again, likely to be even money type props.

I'm guessing the other three legs were, as well.

A typical 6-leg parlay on even-money (meaning same line on both sides) legs will pay 45-to-1, known as +4500.

Mark Aiello's bet was paying 350-to-1, almost 8x the correct odds.

There is no legal threshold for what denotes an "obvious error", and while this one is close, I have to side with the casino that a reasonable person could not conclude that +35000 was a reasonable payout for a normal 6-leg parlay.

The fact that Aiello slammed four different $500 bets on this (probably slightly changing the parlay on each to lower variance) means that it's likely he knew he was getting insane value here. He didn't just place the bets for fun.

I don't fault the guy for trying. Taking advantage of erroneously posted lines is a form of advantage play, and I don't begrudge anyone who tries. However, at the same time, the player cannot cry foul when the casino catches it, and voids the bet before the game.


In fact, the voided bet pretty much proves it was posted in error. It's not like something happened to these players, or something about the game changed significantly before the bet went off. They just realized they were giving these insane payouts through some kind of error, and killed the bets.

Aiello's 8x advantage isn't quite as egregious as the orders-of-magnitude one of the other guy featured in the story, but it's enough to where I would rule that it was indeed an obvious error, if I were on the Illinois Gaming Commission.

I would be on his side if the game had already started, and they voided it anyway. That could be a case of freerolling by the casino. This clearly wasn't.

Nice try on his part, but he doesn't deserve the $389k. He's smart to go to the news media, though, as that might get him paid. It worked for the other guy, If he does, more power to him.

[Sidewinder]

They cancelled before the game started what seem to be data entry errors.

Sportsbook is justified completely, not even close, if these are the facts.

All this nonsense was debated and solved offshore like 30 years ago.