Do bookmakers limit you if you are profitable? Or how to avoid being limited/restricted?
by
Zsoltfbo
April 19, 2025
in
Professional articles
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UwCyuVMIJU&t=4s
There are many sportsbooks on the market that can and should be used(!) Bet365 is just one of them, but still offers the largest range, unbeatable live betting and unrivalled customer care, but they do have one less likeable practice (not only them, this is true for all "soft" bookmakers, also known as "European" bookmakers): Winning players will be paid an average of around €1 500 - €3 000 in net winningsor, to put it another way: they limit it. But make no mistake, there is no sportsbook in Europe that does not follow this practice. Without wishing to be exhaustive, Unibet, WilliamHill, MalinaSport, Cbet and many others. Every sportsbook has a different practice, but Bet365 has an advantage in this respect, because in general other betting shops are less patient with profitable bettors and limit them well before they reach a profit of €1 500-€3 000.
1) Why do offices limit and what exactly does this look like in practice?
This is purely a business interest on their part, as explained in the previous blog, a practice that has been observed since the 2000s, which increasingly seeks to filter out profitable bettors. The formula is simple: betting shops benefit from being used by a multitude of bettors with no strategy and no concept, placing bets every day that will most certainly not be profitable in the long run and that the shop will make a clear profit from. And those bettors who are systemic, have an established sports betting model and follow full-time professional tipsters, are not banned - as the EU rules do not allow - but are banned under conditions that make it no longer worthwhile to bet with them. This is called limitation: or the multipliers offered are reduced for the limited player, so while everyone else is seeing odds of 2.00 on that particular bet, the limited player is seeing odds of 1.80. Or - and this is more common - they specify the maximum bets a limited player can place, so whereas before you could bet, say, 25 Euros on a sporting event, after the limitation you can't, only 1-2 Euros.
How ethical this practice is is debatable, depending on the perspective from which it is approached. However, since the FBO works in the interest of the entire betting community, there is no question that the interests of the sportsbooks are not the important thing for us, but those of the people in our own community. The current practices of sportsbooks mean that those who bet irregularly can lose any amount of money, and those who bet systematically and knowingly - like you reading this article - cannot gain any amount of money from their actions. This should either be regulated in such a way that it is not possible to lose as much as you like and not be able to win as much as you like, or there should be absolutely no limit and it is possible to profit as much as you like and lose as much as you like.
In the left picture you can see the template text that Bet365 sends after the limitation, and in the smaller picture on the right you can see that the player wanted to bet on the limited account and entered more than the limitation allowed. To be precise, he could only bet 2.08 Euros and he wanted to bet 20 Euros. By the way, this 2.08 Euros is not bad, most minor league matches are usually not allowed to bet that much after the limitation.
Is it possible to avoid limiting?
Even if you can't avoid it, you can extend the life of your betting account as much as possible, so you can get more profit out of your betting account. It makes no difference to you whether the limitation is reached in three months or in 1 year, or how much net profit you will make during that time. It is important to understand that the limitation is not an automated process that reaches everyone after a certain period of time, but in ALL CASES the time and amount of limitation depends on the bets placed and directly on the account usage! Just think, unsuccessful sports bettors will never be limited, even those who are around break-even, but only those who can make a profit from their activities. But it doesn't matter how you structure your activity, because with a little bit of attention and the right value analysis ("tipping") you can confuse the algorithms of Bet365 (or other "soft" ) sportsbooks to get you in the line of sight as late as possible.
How are profitable sports bettors filtered out?
To illustrate the important aspects that will result in the long-term usability of your Bet365 or other "soft" broker account, I must say a few words about the limitation process itself. This internal practice of Bet365 is closed to the public, so we don't have a specific insight into the algorithm that is responsible for filtering out profitable players, but we do know the main aspectswhich, if we pay attention, we are good at. It is also important to note that the actual decision making is done by live staff at most sites, specifically the risk management team at Bet365 (which is known as the "Trading" team, but in reality this is a job that is responsible for making things difficult for players who are not in favour of them). At first glance, this information may seem positive to us, as we can see from movies and various articles that processes outsourced by algorithms are much more efficient and harder to fool than those done by live staff. But in the case of Bet365, we not only have to be careful to avoid the 'attention' of a program, but also that of its live staff. And that is a somewhat difficult pitch.
What should you do to avoid your account being prematurely limited?
- The first and most important thing is to follow the tips of tipsters that are not followed by many people. Unfortunately, it is common practice for tipster sites to buy tips from the tipsters with the largest subscriber base. If you follow sports analytics that are followed by up to 10-15 000 other bettors worldwide at the same time as you, you can be identified in a very short time. Therefore, it does not matter which site you vote for, even if that provider makes a profit in the short term. Because it is useless to make a profit with such tips if your account is flat-lined after a few months. Unfortunately few sites pay attention to this aspect, they usually buy the tips of the most popular tipsters without thinking about what will happen to their followers. If you compare the offerings of many Hungarian tipster sites, you will see that there is a huge overlap, especially in the area of basketball tipsters, only the pricing is different, some are cheaper, some are more expensive, but the tips are the same. You can easily identify such picks by comparing the description of the tipster sites and, if you have the opportunity - unfortunately, usually not - by looking at the tipster history.
- It's important that you don't just bet on minor league sports matches! It is important that they are mixed with sports matches from medium and higher leagues. The reason for this is that you can pretty well delineate the camp of profitable sports bettors and gamblers based on which matches they bet on. It is a basic truth that unsuccessful or stagnant (break-even) bettors bet on the more up-and-coming/well-known sporting events, and profitable and profitable bettors bet on the less well-known ones that come from lower and mid-tier leagues. Fortunately, most of the factors that separate the profitable and unsuccessful bettors are sufficiently abstract and less tangible that they are difficult to feed into an automated process, say an algorithm, but the percentage of who bets on which leagues is unfortunately just that. Even though Bet365 has millions of players and they place tens of millions of individual bets every month, they can still 'easily' tabulate and keep statistics on them, and do so as users.
- Avoid betting on sporting events that are very small markets! What is a small market? - Those sports and betting options that are less popular and not among the more popular betting options. We would like to draw your attention to the dangers of table tennis, fifa and similar bets! Because even though there are bettors who can make a profit and specialise in these sports, they drastically reduce the lifespan of your betting account with these bets!
- If you have the chance, you can also bet live! If you don't just bet pre-match (PRE) tips, you can add a lot of colour to your betting portfolio.
- Contact their customer service only in justified cases! If you don't have to, don't write to the betting office support, because it is to be feared that during the customer handling the staff of the sportsbook will notice your profitable status and pass it on to their Trading team (presumably they also have some kind of commission system to motivate their staff in such cases)
- If you don't have to, don't transfer money until your account has been limited! And if you absolutely must withdraw money, it's important not to withdraw too much and not too often. You will still be able to withdraw the same amount of money after the limit has been set, so you are not taking any risk, but you are eliminating the chance that the bureau will limit your account because of your withdrawals.
If you follow the above, you will be able to use your accounts with Bet365 and other "soft" brokers for a long time, during which time you can make thousands of Euros in pure profit!
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