Off Shore Gaming Association

One of the best parts about March Madness is the Cinderella story that is sure to emerge. It’s been big conference, big name schools (see Villanova in the 1980’s), schools many people have never really heard of (see George Mason just a few years back) and sometimes it’s a team that just gets on a run when they were kind of questionable for getting in to the Tournament in the first place. Think you know a lot about the glass slipper? Then try this quiz on for size…

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Wagering on awards shows is generally not very profitable unless you bet the favorites. Since 1997 when offshore sportsbooks started posting odds on the Oscars, the best picture favorite won all but 4 times, and in 3 of those instances the 2nd choice won. Only Crash, a 20/1 longshot, was an upset winner. For best actor and best actress, the favorites win even more often.  That said, there are value bets available, since so many top online sportsbooks now list odds on all categories. It’s hard to get excited about an award for best art direction but any value is worth a wager.

First, the following are sure things. If one has no problem betting 1/20 odds these are guaranteed winners. As one bettor once pointed out to me “a 5% return for a short term investment is a pretty good return and some bets are even more secure than a t-bill.” He could be right but I find it difficult to lay those types of odds for any bet. Colin Firth will win best actor, Natalie Portman will win best actress. As well Toy Story 3 will win best animated film, The Social Network will win best adapted screenplay and Inception will win best special effects. After that, there are no sure things.

For Best Supporting Actor Christian Bale is listed as low as 1/7 given the numerous awards won so far. He was nominated for his role as Dicky Eklund in The Fighter in 37 different critics and film society awards and won all but 6 of them. Unfortunately for Bale, two of those losses were quite prestigious including the BAFTA awards who gave the Oscar to Geoffrey Rush. Rush was outstanding as Colin Firth’s speech therapist in The King’s Speech and in many respects stole the show. If, as expected, the King’s Speech dominates the awards on Sunday, there’s really no reason not to give him a fair chance at pulling the upset. Over 500 members of the Academy are also members of BAFTA so if they voted for him in Britain, they very well may vote for him in the U.S. as well. At 4/1 odds Geoffrey Rush represents a great value bet.

For Best Supporting Actress, Melissa Leo is the logical choice for her role as Alice Ward in the Fighter. She was nominated for 29 critics and film society awards so far and won 16 of them, but Leo is vulnerable. Looking over the last several winners for the award, it’s clear that the Academy prefers to give this Oscar to an up and coming star and also a younger one. The category produces upsets all the time. Tilda Swinton was a prime example of where the academy chose to give it to a young, pretty up and comer over the heavily favored Cate Blanchett who was starting to become too recognized a name. At 50 Melissa Leo may be just too old to win the award.  Hailee Steinfeld is the prime example of a girl who may be ready to win the Oscar. At 14 years of age, Steinfeld stood out for her role as Mattie Ross in True Grit and was loved by critics. She has been nominated for 28 critic’s awards and won half of them. Most of the losses were to Leo but again the Academy Awards doesn’t usually give the supporting actress award to older actresses. Helena Bonham-Carter can’t be totally ignored for her role in the King’s speech either but the truth is, the King’s Speech was all about Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush so here role will likely be seen as insignificant. At odds of around 11/4 Steinfeld is a great upset bet.

For Best Director, the wrong person is favored. David Fincher won almost every early award and became a massive favorite. He lost the Director’s Guild Award on February 1, however to Tom Hooper and became the underdog. He regained favorite status when Fincher won the BAFTA despite the King’s Speech sweeping the other awards. To understand why the wrong person is favored one only needs look at the history of best director winners at the Oscars and the DGA. In its history only 8 directors didn’t win both awards and the last Oscar winner that didn’t win the DGA was in 2002 when Roman Polanski won the Oscar while Rob Marshall won the DGA. Prior to that, the last DGA award winners to lose the Oscars were in 2000, 1995, 1985 and 1972. So in the last 40 years only 5 DGA award winners didn’t win the Oscar and the only DGA winner that lost the director award when his film won best picture was Rob Marshall in 2002.  In that year, however, many voters admitted that their vote for Polanski was more of a protest vote to show that they believed he was unjustly barred from the country after raping a teenager. It’s almost certain that if the circumstances were different, Marshall would have won the best director that year. Odds have Tom Hooper as high as 7/5 to win the award. He is a steal at the price and is the best value bet on the board.

For Best Picture, it’s hard to dispute the King’s Speech. The movie was spectacular and despite being the original longshot when it lost the Golden Globe to the Social Network, the truth is that the King’s Speech is just a better all around movie. And like Shakespeare in Love, the English Patient, Out of Africa and other similar movies that won the Oscar, the King’s Speech is the feel good movie that the Academy loves and should win the award. At 1/4 odds it’s hard to justify betting, however, especially since the Social Network has a small chance at the Oscar.

Assuming the King’s Speech does dominate, it should win most of the minor awards too. One fact from recent Oscars is that when a movie does well, it tends to sweep the other awards too. For that reason the following are great value bets on the King’s Speech as well.

Best Art Direction at 6/5
Best Original Score at 9/5
Best Costume at 11/10
Best Cinematography at 6/1

The last one is more of a hunch given the odds, but True Grit and Inception which are favored for cinematography have lost a lot of support of late and no doubt numerous voters will just check The King’s Speech for everything without even considering the category.

The one category it’s hard to see the King’s Speech winning for is Film Editing which should give a token award for the Social Network.

The King’s Speech should also win best Original Screenplay but 1/5 odds are hard to justify and the Academy has been known to give the screenplay award to a secondary film when it gives the Oscar to the favorite.

The last categories are toss ups. Best Foreign Film never seems to go to the favorite and the Academy seems to like films from Europe in that category. That could hurt the favorite Biutiful.  Incendies seems to be the movie generating the most attention of late at 3/1 odds. Best song should go to the Disney movie’s song We Belong Together considering Disney movies usually win that category but at 1/2 odds it’s hard to bet on or against. And for best documentary feature, the winner is almost always a movie about war or poverty and is generally a longshot. For that reason Wasteland at 8/1 is a great value bet to upset The Inside Job and Exit through the Gift Shop.

The best value bets, in order, therefore are as follows:

Tom Hooper for Best Director
Hailee Steinfeld for Best Supporting Actress
Geoffrey Rush for Best Supporting Actor
The King’s Speech for the minor categories.

To see the latest odds for the Academy Awards go to the following link:
http://www.osga.com/Academy-Awards-Betting-Odds.html

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Do you feel March Madness when it’s August? Do you remember when there were only 32 teams in the Tournament? Can you run off the last five years’ Final Four teams without breaking a sweat? With so many teams playing each other in so many different combinations each year, who can remember who won what when. Oh, you think you can? Try your luck on this History of March Madness Quiz, which is tougher than being a #16 seed.

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The post season complaint rush is one that makes the Super Bowl a mixed bag of emotions here for us at OSGA. The end of the season and all of the work that football brings to us is finally coming to an end. But unfortunately, not before we get dozens of complaints and players’ anger rises with terse customer service agents at offshore sportsbooks and long waits for payouts to arrive.

We have found that many players are making payout requests for only their first or second time this year. They do not understand the difficulty that sportsbooks outside of the U.S. have in getting money back to players in the States. And as one book told us, “Superbowl always increases the processes volume for the entire industry, causing delays.” And that is the unfortunate truth. Players who have not gotten a payout in some time are outraged that their payments may take up to two weeks. This may be longer than they are used to, but for this time of year it is within what we consider ‘normal’ time frames for a payout via check or wire. However, industry giant Sportsbook.com, who has processed tens of thousands of payouts, is telling players is may take a month or longer to get a payout. In spite of everything, we have heard shorter time frames from most Sportsbook customers.

But, the volume of checks going out has caused a problem at Sportsbook.com and a few other places. Sportsbook had a batch of bad checks go out and one customer who was outraged contacted us. He had requested a check mid-January. The check arrived in about 7 days (not bad) and he deposited it. Six days later, he got the word from his bank that the checks was no good. After sending in the required documentation he was told that his new check would take 4-6 weeks!

We contacted Sportsbook almost immediately for this OSGA member. They acknowledged that bad check run and noted that several affected players checks had already gone out. After our email, the player who had been told 4-6 weeks, was told that his check would be going out in 24-48 hours. We expect that he will be paid by the end of the month.

YouWager had an issue related directly to volume too. They have actually adjusted their payout times because of the end of the season rush. Normally one of the fastest paying outfits out there, YouWager is now telling customers 3-5 business days, which is still faster than most online sportsbooks. One customer asked for a payout via check recently and was told about the payout time-frame change. However, at day 5 he still did not have his payout and really needed the dough for the upcoming long holiday weekend. After contacting YouWager we found that his check and several others were stuck at the processor and thus his check would not be arriving until mid-week next week. Through our involvement and were able ensure that his funds did go out today. YouWager is known for fast payouts and felt bad for this player. They gave a large Free Play to compensate the player for his inconvenience.

Though we have been able to help some players, the angst and rage that players are showing does not seem to fit the situation. It may be because players feel like when a problem arises, they are getting the run around. And many times, these feelings are 100% accurate. It is because these offshore outfits all have to use third-party processing company to write checks, handle wires and issue money transfers. More often that you would expect, the clerk on the other end of the line has about as much idea where a check is as the customer does. Nonetheless, the rage from some players is in the category of ‘makes-me-embarrassed-to-be-an-American’. Terrorizing clerks, threatening retaliation, demanding things that are unreasonable and insinuating a charge back may occur do nothing to help the cause in getting a payout. In fact, in most cases, it works in the opposite fashion.

One player who threatened a charge back at OddsMaker had his account closed, deposit refunded and winnings confiscated. For the threat of a chargeback! Outrageous, maybe, but the amount of fraud personnel at most books is also outrageous. “Due to the issues we face with processors due to high charge backs. We had no choice but to immediately refund his deposit,” we were told by OddsMaker. “We have to take every threat seriously.”

We feel that every incident should be taken on a case-by-case basis and perhaps this player was just venting and Oddsmaker stepped out-of-bounds here. After all, he thought he was not going to get his funds. But, online gaming companies also are doing what they feel is necessary to protect them. Once this player was refunded his original deposit, there was not much we could do to convince OddsMaker to reverse their decision. Sadly, the menacing threat and aggressive tone of this player, coupled with the fear and heavy-handed approach at OddsMaker, cost him $1900.

OddsMaker is currently leading the pack in number of complaints registered. So far, three different players have contacted us with the same complaint . Their accounts at OddsMaker have been frozen and they are not being paid their winnings. OddsMaker is claiming they are “professional gamblers”. This means that according to their rules, they have the right to close the “professional’s” account and seize their funds. We are still working with OddsMaker regarding the confiscation of player funds, but see little light at the end of the tunnel for these players. We will report more on this story in the coming days and weeks and hope that a resolution can be achieved.

Follow our breaking news and complaint information feed at http://twitter.com/offshoregaming.

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One of the biggest props for every Super Bowl is who is going to be Most Valuable Player. Naturally the board is filled with every marquee name playing in the game, and logically, the quarterbacks for both teams are the lowest odds. But as you can see in the chart below, there are varying odds for the QB’s and widely different numbers on other marquee players, players who provide great value in what may be a big-play game on Sunday.

In fact, checking odds for just about every prop, you can see huge differences in price and number. Rashard Mendenhall’s Total Rushing Yards range from 77.5 yards at Bodog to 78.5 at 5Dimes and all the way up to 82.5 at BetUS. Every book has a prop for whether or not a punt will be blocked and in this play the odds are what matters. It may displayed differently at different books but betting on ‘No’ could range anywhere from -1100 up to -1300, depending on where you play. There is one prop that has been around since these were invented and the bookmakers have caught on that more often than not a score is made by one of teams at the end of the half.

There are even a varying number on the National Anthem. Like the coin flip, this one can be a winner (or loser) before the game even starts.

This year there are also a couple of very unique props that may not be duplicated anytime soon such as “Will C Aguilera wear a cowboy hat while singing?” (yes +250), “How Many Times will FOX mention “Brett Favre” on TV during the Game?” (over/under 2.5), “What will Fergie be wearing for her 1st appearance (tight bodysuit +100), and only in Cowyboy’s stadium, “Will a punt hit the scoreboard during the game?” (various odds)

Since all of these props were introduced, sportsbooks offshore have vied to see who has the most, or the craziest props. This has made prop betting evolve into a great marketplace both for price and selection as these wagers and their odds are all posted at the whim of the sportsbooks, prop managers and lines makers. For players, this is an opportunity to shop till you drop. If you really like a prop wager, checking at various online sportsbooks may bring you an extra reward on Sunday.

Give us your favorite prop bets below!

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