Guessing the outcomes of sporting events seems easy enough for most, and it is something that virtually everyone enjoys. Betting on game results with cash is a whole different story, as the stress factor gets boosted when the potential of losing/winning money looms. For those unfamiliar with this pastime, wagering on sports can seem intimidating, even nowadays, with the proliferation of online sportsbook sites that do their best to make this process as simple as possible.
Learning how to read odds is something people can do quickly, thanks to the vast number of articles on this topic that live on the internet. While meeting this elementary condition for betting fun is easy, the US market has many pitfalls that are not as apparent to newbies. It is vital to note that internet sports wagering only recently became widely available in the United States. Pre-2018, only Nevada allowed commercial retail sportsbooks. Today, more than thirty states have legalized this pastime. So, it stands to reason that many newcomers to this sphere will not be familiar with the many rules they must abide by when gambling online.
Sportsbooks are legitimate businesses that must follow specific sector practices and legal guidelines while implementing standards designed to keep everything fair and customers happy. Five sportsbook conditions are explained below, ones that are super common but are unlikely to be apparent to a person that has never before used a betting site.
The Social Security Number Requirement
Gambling at online casinos without providing your SSN is only an option at non-US platforms, such as those regulated in Costa Rica, Curacao, and Panama. Such gambling sites get licensed and overseen by government-established bodies in the territories from which they operate. Examples of these include Antillephone and Panama’s Gaming Control Board.
US-based sites must follow America’s federal laws, one of which is that businesses that allow clients to perform transactions of $600 and above must report these transfers to the Internal Revenue Service for taxation. That means US online gambling operators must ask for at least four digits of a gambler’s social security number before they allow him to use their services.
Bet Events Must Happen on the Scheduled Day
Event odds usually get compiled using a mix of expert opinion and high-end software that creates them utilizing advanced math formulas that draw on a wealth of statistics and factors to estimate game outcomes. That said, the lines that sportsbooks put up also dramatically get impacted by the action markets see. If heavy wagering is present in one direction, that will influence significantly the odds an operator lists, which are ever-changing leading up to the start of an event.
If a match gets rescheduled because of weather or any other reason, a sportsbook will have to recalculate their offered odds because new factors have come into play that can affect who wins. The previous operator outcome projection no longer stands.
Gamblers Must Bet Using Only Their Funds
This stipulation is valid for US-based and the best sportsbooks that do not require SSNs operating from a foreign land. Gamblers can only wager using their funds. It is not a responsible gambling feature aimed to limit exposure to people with impulse control issues, stopping them from betting more than they can afford to lose. No. It has gotten designed to restrict individuals from wagering with stolen credit/debit cards or using other payment options that are not theirs.
If an operator spots that a bettor has attached a money transaction method in someone else’s name and not in the one a gambling account lists, that is a red flag that will likely cause the platform’s staff to suspend such a transfer.
Concerning US-Based Sportsbooks, Only State Ones Get Allowed
US citizens can only use US sportsbooks regulated by their state’s sanctioning body. For instance, New Jersians can only gamble at sportsbook hubs licensed by the state’s Division of Gaming Enforcement. They cannot play at ones based in Pennsylvania or any other US territory.
Each state has laws concerning gambling activities, and gaming/betting businesses in each must adhere to these, meaning they can only accept users that their state licensor tells them they can. Americans can play at offshore ones without fear of prosecution, as no federal law outright bans this as long as they report their winnings to the IRS.
VPN Use Can Lead to Account Closure
Virtual Private Networks have become all the rage in the past few years, hailed as a protector of privacy and software that provides high-end security for all internet users. For the uninformed, this technology masks a person’s designated IP address by funneling his traffic through third-party servers.
As VPN services can get used to disguise users’ actual locations and identities, allowing them to circumvent a sportsbook’s terms, the discovery of their utilization often results in account closure and sometimes a confiscation of user funds.
This article was written in collaboration with Sportbook review experts.
