Baseball wager at Parx causes quite a headache

So a guy who requested only to be identified by his social media handle sent out a Tweet last Thursday morning that his winning baseball bets at Parx were not going to be honored. The teller, according to @FHMayor22, said that his bet was made on a “bad line.”

It wasn’t the line that was bad, it was that the line shouldn’t have been offered at all.

Here are the details.

Last Wednesday and Thursday (March 20-21), the Seattle Mariners and Oakland A’s played a two-game series in Tokyo to open the regular season. The games started at 5:30 a.m. Eastern.

Before the start of the series, Parx had offered a proposition wager on one team to win the series. But if each team won the same number of games, the bet would be void and the bettor would get back the money from his original wager. This is fine for a longer series or — for that matter — a hedge in case something wild happens during a 3-, 5- or 7-game series. Not a 2-gamer. But that’s only part of the issue.

The bigger problem is that the prop was still up until at least 2:30 in the morning on Thursday — long after Seattle had won the first game and three hours before Game 2.

So when FHMayor bet $777 on Seattle, the worst he could do was push his bet if Oakland won. When Seattle won the second game, he felt he was owed for the win. The line was Seattle -122, which meant FHMayor would have collected $636.

Matthew Cullen, senior vice president of interactive gaming and sports for Parx, said his people returned at least one bettors’ money, but it wasn’t FHMayor. He said he still has his tickets. He made two bets at the maximum of $277 and another at $223.

“We refunded [a bet] and we stand by it,” Cullen said. “We are very focused on fixing the problem [of the proposition being available]. It’s unacceptable that it was still up.”

The way FHMayor sees it, he was simply betting a line Parx had provided through its bookmaker, European supplier Kambi. The folks at Parx, acknowledge the mistake, but think it was a wager made in bad faith.

The Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board is aware of the conundrum and looking into it. “We are processing the patron complaint in the normal course, and will refer it for further investigation if needed,” the PGCB said in a statement.

A similar — but not exactly the same — problem occurred at the Meadowlands in New Jersey in September during an NFL game. FanDuel eventually resolved the matter in the customers’ favors to the tune of $82,000.

Last week, Parx’ turf club in South Philly paid $57,000 to a bettor who hit a 15-leg parlay. That was a relatively routine wager. This is not.

“It’s not a big deal. Just chaps my [butt],” said FHMayor. “If they do this now, who’s to say what they will or won’t do” in the future.