I know that “The House” doesn’t like to lose, and I was wondering if online gambling sites give consistent winners a hard time when they attempt to continue betting, collect on large wins or empty their accounts of substantial funds.
Any experiences or stories?
Thanks.
I know anti-cheating measures are strongly enforced these days, but I’ve never heard of actually removing funds from an account without just cause.
Of course, therein lies the debate of what “just cause” actually means.
I’d be more likely to believe they’d rig the system where the next win was impossible.
Or, to be more realistic–there’s no reason for the system to be so random as for that to happen. And if the place is set up right, the house isn’t losing just because you are winning–there’s enough other people losing that the house comes out ahead.
With poker, it is a non-issue since the house is making money on each hand played, they don’t care how well an individual player does as long as there is no cheating by said player.
With casino sites, it is different. A few years ago when internet poker was taking off in a big way, casino sites popped up all over the place. To entice you to play there, they would offer bonuses like giving you $200 on a $50 deposit if you played 2000 games (making up the example). Odds are after that many games, especially if you played slots or roulette, that all of the money would be gone. However many of these sites also not only allowed blackjack, but they permitted ‘auto-play’ blackjack so that you could set it to play your hands for you.
What happened is that while some players still lost their money, many others would leave with an amount over their initial $50, but still rarely enough to matter. When it happened en masse because of the sign up special being advertised on bonus forums, then the payouts would get slower, excuses made, and sometimes, players never got paid. What made it worse was that there was no real oversight of these casinos and while there were advocates of fair play/fair pay among some of the forums, they could not guarantee results and people were left screwed.
Since then, casinos got tougher in not allowing blackjack, and in some cases, permitting only slot machine play to claim their bonuses. To be honest, I have not checked in a long time and it is possible that they have all dried up when legislation banned banks from conducting services with gambling sites, making it hard for the casual player to enjoy a game.
The only remarkable story I have was, if I recall correctly, one website had a deposit $500, they match $500, and had to play 5000 hands. I set up the software to run and after a few hours returned to see I had $1300 in my account. The cash out was very slow and I recall them stalling by requesting I fax in my driver’s license and a utility bill. I did get the money after about 4 weeks though and never returned.
Thanks for the info, folks.
I had suspected that some sites would make it difficult for people to cash out.