EXPOSED: Sportsbook.com ᐈ Our Experts Give It 2 Thumbs Down!

Sportsbook.ag Deposit Options

Sportsbook.com, also known as Sportsbook.ag, is a long-running USA online sportsbook, casino, and poker site. With a history stretching back more than two decades and a short, memorable domain name, it certainly stands to reason that it appeals to members of the public looking to bet on sports online. Sportsbook.ag is part of the Merge Gaming Network along with its sister sites Carbon Poker and PlayersOnly.

As its moniker may imply, this is mainly a sports betting site, but the attached poker room on the Merge Gaming Network was once the largest open to U.S. residents. Therefore, some aspiring poker fanatics are eager to sign up and play against what they figure is bound to be a large pool of sportsbook fish.

We have explored all parts of the Sportsbook.ag internet gambling suite in order to give you an accurate picture of what to expect. Our gaming experts have examined the poker room, sportsbook, casino, and racebook with critical and objective eyes, and we are pleased to present a comprehensive review of Sportsbook.ag.

Sportsbook.ag Poker Review

The Sportsbook poker room is probably what you're interested in as a reader of ProfessionalRakeback. The software is excellent, and while the number of games running at any given time is low, you will probably be able to find a few that appeal to you.

Welcome Bonus

Upon making your first deposit of $50 or more at Sportsbook, you will receive a 100% up to $1,000 poker bonus along with an $11 tournament ticket. The bonus remains active for 60 days, and you will unlock the bonus funds $10 at a time whenever you collect 500 Player Points.

Every dollar in rake contributed or paid in tournament fees is worth 10 points. Therefore, you will have to rake $50 to gain 500 points and receive a $10 bonus segment: a rakeback rate of 20%.

This 20% bonus clearance rate is middle-of-the-road in comparison with other online poker welcome bonuses. However, the points you collect as you're working off the bonus do not have any other purpose. Most rooms have some kind of VIP system or points exchange, but neither of these elements is present at Sportsbook.ag.

Sportsbook.ag Poker Games

The poker selection at Sportsbook.ag encompasses the familiar trio of cash games, sit-n-goes, and multi-table tournaments. Some of the newer innovations in poker, like lottery SNGs and fast-fold ring games, are not present at this site.

Cash Games

The mainstay of the Sportsbook Poker cash game section is NL Texas Hold'em, which is spread at stakes between $0.05/$0.10 and $2/$5. Table sizes are 9-handed and 6-max. There are no heads-up games.

The next most popular poker variant is PL Omaha, which is offered at the same stakes as NLHE albeit only at tables with six seats; full-ring PLO is not present.

Note that PLO/8 is nowhere to be found in the Sportsbook.ag client. If you are looking to play split-pot four-card poker, then your only option is Limit Omaha/8, which is listed from $0.50/$1.00 to $15/$30. All LO8 tables are 6-handed.

Limit Hold'em is also on the menu from $0.10/$0.20 to $15/$30. Full-ring is offered only for $0.10/$0.20 while all the higher tables are 6-max.

In the past, the Merge Gaming Network used to be home to quite a few other game formats, like Badugi, 2-7 Triple Draw Low, and even non-poker action in Backgammon, Euchre, and several other games. Over time, however, these titles were excised from the software, leaving only four styles of cash poker available for customers to try. It's likely that traffic had declined to a point where there was no sense in continuing to host these seldomly populated games.

It is undoubtedly true that the player volume has decreased substantially from Sportsbook's peak many years ago. Throughout most of the day, you'd be hard pressed to find more than a couple of tables going at any particular blind level, and it's not uncommon to see fewer than a dozen ring games active across the entire site.

Rake

The rake in ring games depends on the betting structure of the game and the stakes.

Fixed Limit Tables: All Blinds

The rake in limit games is 5% up to $3 with a lower cap of $2 in three- and four-handed tables and $1 heads-up. This is bad compared to the other leading sites for LHE, which tend to have much lower caps both shorthanded and at full tables. Many moons ago, the Merge Gaming Network actually had among the best LHE rake to be found anywhere, but those days are long gone.

NL/PL Tables:$0.05/$0.10 - $1/$2

The rake caps in most big-bet games at Sportsbook.ag are a bit higher than industry averages. Moreover, the fact that a penny is dropped in $0.18 increments of the pot size rather than every $0.20 means that the rake percentage is 5.56% rather than the normal 5%. This combination makes the rake a tad excessive.

NL/PL Tables:$2/$5

At the highest blind level, the only change is an increase of the cap from $4 to $5 in hands with at least five players dealt in. We're stunned that the Merge head honchos bothered to set up a third rake formula solely for the purpose of taking an extra $1 from players at a single stake level.

Sit n' Gos

The Sit & Go lobby at Sportsbook.ag shows contests mostly denominated from $1.50 up to $60 though there are some heads-up matches available higher than this. The table sizes are 9, 6, and 2 along with 10-handed Double or Nothing games.

Almost all SNGs are NLHE though there are a few PLO Hi/Lo options, which is a bit unexpected given that this format is absent from the ring games. The standard regular-speed, turbo, and hyper-turbo speeds are here. No multi-table sit-n-goes are offered at Sportsbook Poker.

Tournaments

Sportsbook.ag features dozens of multi-table tournaments every day that you can join. Buyins start at $2.20 and go up to $109, apart from the weekly major, called the Sunday Big Ticket, which costs $150 + $12 to enter and guarantees $25,000. The main daily MTT is the $109 Nightly $5,000 Guaranteed, which kicks off every day, Monday – Saturday, at 7 p.m. ET.

Tournament Lobby at Sportsbook.ag

Many of the tournaments have guarantees, but in order to protect itself from losing the farm, the poker site has set a minimum number of entrants on these events. While modest overlays are common, it's just as likely for a prospective value play to be cancelled altogether when not enough individuals register for it.

Most of the tourney schedule consists of NL Texas Hold'em events. However, a single PLO tournament runs daily along with a couple of PLO hi-lo games. Interestingly, there's a smattering of HORSE and 7 Card Stud Hi/Lo on the roster too: a relic of a time when these variants proliferated before being almost entirely cut from the network.

Merge Gaming used to host tournament series every once in a while, but it has been years since one has been announced. In the past, there were disputes among network partners about how to handle the cross-site accounting related to overlays, and several prominent skins opted to sit out various tourney series. Perhaps the headaches related to these disagreements led the network to eschew series altogether.

Poker Software

The Poker software in use at Spotsbook.ag was developed by the Merge Gaming Network itself rather than being created by an outside firm. Because Merge and its predecessors have been in business since 2004, the programmers have had time to refine and update the poker client into a smoothly running package.

Lobby

The lobby contains four tabs for poker, sports, casino, and horses from left to right. Inside the poker tab, there are three sections: Quick Seat, Selectors, and Advanced Filter.

The Quick Seat function lets you choose the type of game you wish to play and the stakes, and the software will automatically seat you in an appropriate game. Quick Seat is available for ring games and Sit & Go, but in order to get into an MTT, you must choose it manually.

Use Quick Seat to Get Into a Game Fast

The Selectors are a series of groupings that begin with the main categories of poker on the left and drill down to more specific formats as you go toward the right.

The Selectors Are Probably the Best Way of Using the Poker Lobby

If you are really looking for something specific, then the Advanced Filter is for you. Here, you can include or exclude particular types of poker and filter by average pot size, players per flop, and other metrics.

Advanced Filters Allow You to Find EXACTLY the Game You Want

In either the Selectors or Advanced Filter view, you will see a list of tables/games toward the bottom of the window. You can sort them by various criteria by clicking on the column headers.

A neat feature is that you can click on the arrow to the left of any cash game to bring up a small display of the table showing everyone's stack size and position along with similar information in textual form.

You Can See a Preview of a Table Before Sitting Down

At the bottom of the lobby is a scrolling ticker with odds for the sportsbook, but you can disable this in the settings.

Lobby Menus

At the top of the lobby are several menus chock-full of various customization options. You can turn on four color deck, change your avatar, set your time zone, alter auto-buyin and auto-rebuy values, and adjust many other aspects of the Sportsbook Poker software.

From the Settings menu, you can open up the “Display Settings” to enable or disable avatars, choose if you want to see winnings percentages when all-in, fiddle with the way the chat box works, and generally tailor the graphical elements of the poker client to your liking.

Another useful window, also found within the main Settings menu, is the “Poker Settings” interface. You can configure the way the bet slider works, change your auto muck/auto post/wait for big blind preferences, and otherwise arrange things the way you want them.

Tables

The tables at Sportsbook.ag should appear pretty familiar to any online poker enthusiast. The chatbox is on the bottom-left with the action buttons to the right and the players and cards occupying most of the remaining space.

$0.05/$0.10 NL Texas Hold'em Cash Game

Each player is indicated by a nameplate with their screenname, stack size, avatar, and accolade shown. The accolades represent accomplishments that an individual has achieved, such as winning a freeroll or playing from a mobile device. You can disable showing your accolades at the tables if you want.

The chat can be moved to the side of the table, which makes it easier to read given its small size in the standard table layout. One interesting aspect of the chat is that there is a menu of emoticons that you can send.

Actually, there are more emoticons supported than just the few that are selectable from the chat menu. We've compiled a list of Merge Gaming Network chat emoticons for your amusement. Be aware that the list of emoticons is changing all the time, so there may be a few new ones that aren't on our list, and others may have since been discontinued.

From the top-right menu, marked “Window Options,” you can cascade or tile your tables, resize them, or open another table of the same type. It is here that you can select a table theme too with the “Personalize Tables” item. If you're in search of premade themes, then you will find them in the “Preset” tab, but you can also pick specific table colors, rail patterns, card backs, and other graphical aspects for finer control.

The “Personalize Tables” Window Lets You Change the Graphics to Your Liking

Multi-tabling is allowed, up to 10 cash games at a time. Yet, one of the tactics beloved by this network is restricting the number of simultaneous tables winning users can play so as to prevent money flowing from the fish to the sharks.

Solid grinders have seen the maximum number of games they're allowed to join cut down to four or two. Some have even been limited to a single table, and a few were even banned from poker altogether.

Hand History

The hand history browser can be opened by clicking on the previous hand number, displayed on the top-left of the table. You can review previous hands you have played in both text and graphical form although there's no way to play them back like a video.

Hand History Viewer at Sportsbook.ag

You can choose the table you want to see hands for with the browsing interface in the top-left. Below this, you will see a list of matching hands that you can scroll through. You can also step through the hands one at a time with the “Prev Hand” and “Next Hand” links at the top of the window.

By clicking on “Hand History Settings” at the top-right off the window, you can adjust where hand histories are saved on your hard drive and how long to keep them for.

Note Taking + Player Tagging

Double-clicking on a player's nameplate brings up a box where you can enter notes on that individual. The space available is pretty capacious compared with other cardrooms, and you can scroll up and down should you exceed this fairly generous allotment.

Taking Notes Is a Fine Way to Remember Opponent Tendencies

You can also tag other users with any of 16 icons, which will be shown on the nameplate for that player. You can even rename these tags with the “Tag Settings” option in the lobby's “Settings” menu.

This window also has a few miscellaneous options that affect the way you view and interact with a player. You can change the color of his or her playerbox, mute their chat, and hide their avatar. Adding someone to your friends list can be accomplished here too, which will let you know when that person is online and the tables they're at.

Account Overview

In addition to the wealth of features, options, and settings scattered throughout the poker lobby, you can also see and edit information about your account through the Account menu by selecting “My Details.” This will cause an account overview to appear in your web browser.

The “My Account” Page

Changing your password, viewing your cashier history, accessing the onsite messaging system, and uploading documents are a few of the functions contained on this page.

Sportsbook.ag Poker Mobile + Compatibility

In addition to desktop-based Windows and Mac software, Sportsbook also provides an Instant Play option that launches in your web browser. This works virtually flawlessly on Android, iOS, Blackberry, and other mobile operating systems. In addition, it serves as a way for users of Linux and other niche platforms to play poker.

Because of its web-based nature, there's no requirement to download any app or package in order to use Instant Play. As long as you go to the Sportsbook.ag website on any modern web browser, the system will automatically detect your screen size and serve you up poker tables of the appropriate dimensions and layout.

Multi-Tabling on an Asus Zenfone 2 Running Android 5.0

The entire menu of games from the desktop software is present for mobile. You can even multi-table, and your hole cards for each table will be shown near the top of your device. Click on a set of cards to be brought to the corresponding table.

HUDs and Tracking Software

As one of the longest-running USA online poker sites, the Merge Network in general and Sportsbook.ag in specific have been around for enough time to enable software makers to get a solid handle on how its hand histories are formatted. Therefore, it's no surprise that HUD (heads-up display) and tracker compatibility is rather high.

The two main tracking packages, PokerTracker and Hold'em Manager, work smoothly out of the box without any need for a hand grabber or other third-party programs. Holdem Indicator and iHoldem Indicator also support Sportsbook.ag.

But this isn't the whole story. Although you have your choice of quite a few trackers and HUDs on the Merge Gaming Network, it may not be wise to use any of them. If we take a look at Sportsbook.ag's Prohibited Software Policy, we see:

Analysis of Personal Hand Histories:

Programs that analyze a player’s hand history may be used in conjunction with a player’s personal hand history. These programs/services may not be used with shared hand history data.

This implies that trackers and HUDs are permitted as long as you don't data-mine hands you don't play in or acquire outside hand histories from third parties. However, several players have specifically inquired of support if tracking software is allowed, and they have received varying – and often contradictory – answers.

In any event, Merge is known to attempt to identify serious, winning players and then ban them. The use of a HUD certainly would tend to indicate that a particular customer is more knowledgeable about poker than the average user and so might attract the ban hammer.

Poker Promotions

Besides the 100% up to $1,000 initial deposit bonus, Sportsbook.ag also extends a few other promotional specials to its players.

Monthly Reload Bonus

Every month, there's a new redeposit bonus for poker fans typically in the form of a 100% match up to $1,000, but the amounts and percentages have varied a bit in the past. This bonus lasts 60 days and clears at 20% effective rakeback, which makes it identical to the standard first deposit bonus.

Each poker reload comes with a bonus code, which Sportsbook.ag instructs you to enter in the cashier when making your deposit. However, it's not uncommon for no bonus to be issued even if you type in the letters accurately. In this case, you ought to contact support, and they will (hopefully) add the appropriate bonus to your account.

Bad Beat Jackpot

Bad Beat Jackpots have become somewhat uncommon at U.S.-facing online poker sites, but Sportsbook.ag has one of the few left. Unfortunately, it's a bit on the small side rarely ever topping $100,000, but on the other hand, this jackpot is funded entire by the site, and there's no extra BBJ drop taken.

In order to trigger the jackpot, four of a kind or better must lose at showdown on a non-heads up Texas Hold'em cash game table. Both the winning and losing hand must use both hole cards, and the hand must go to showdown. A minimum of three individuals must be dealt into the qualifying hand.

If all these conditions are met, then the Bad Beat Jackpot pays out according to the following formula:

• 38% to the losing hand
• 20.5% to the winning hand
• 20.5% to others dealt into the hand
• 21% to fund a new jackpot pool

$100 Daily Freeroll

Each day, there's a free poker tournament at Sportsbook.ag that's open to all and has a $100 prize pool. There are unlimited $0.25 rebuys and a single $0.25 add-on, and these additional funds add on top of the $100 minimum.

Sportsbook.ag Rakeback

The question of Sportsbook.ag rakeback is an academic one because there are no legitimate rakeback offers for this site. Though fellow Merge rooms Carbon and PlayersOnly used to offer rakeback until 2013, Sportsbook.ag was never a rakeback-friendly site.

Even under-the-table deals, provided without the blessing of site management, are basically impossible because there is no longer any affiliate program for the site. Because nobody receives commissions for referring players to Sportsbook, there's no revenue stream out of which rakeback payments can be made.

Neither is there any kind of pseudo-rakeback in the form of a VIP system, points exchange, or leaderboards. Sportsbook.ag used to feature all of these types of player rewards, but they have all been discontinued one by one.

If you are really looking to score a sweet rakeback arrangement, then you will have to look somewhere else. Check out this list of reputable rakeback poker rooms to get started.

Sportsbook.ag Shady?

Before proceeding any further with our review, we must tackle a subject that troubles the minds of many online poker fans. This is the question: Is Sportsbook.ag legit? Sadly, we cannot give an authoritative “yes” response to this query.

Although this site conducts honest gameplay and generally pays winners fairly, there are exceptions. Management loves recreational bettors and poker players, and it gives them a fair gaming experience, but the site takes a dim view of poker sharks, skilled sports bettors, and those considered bonus abusers. Sometimes, they even make up weird accusations to justify confiscating the balances of players whom they dislike.

Implausible Chip Dumping Accusation

Sportsbook.ag Used Flimsy Justifications to Confiscate a User's Winnings

One example of this came in 2017 when a poker player on Sportsbook.ag using the screenname “JJ9917” was fortunate enough to find a truly terrible opponent at a $15/$30 Limit Hold'em table and was able to relieve this fish of about $4,000. Imagine “JJ9917's” surprise when Merge's fraud team accused him of participating in chip dumping and returned his winnings back to the other user!

Merge provided as “proof” of chip dumping that this individual folded K-high in a three-bet pot during the middle of the session. Sportsbook.ag requested an explanation of this play from “JJ9917.” Despite explaining that he was employing the exploitative strategy of folding air and extracting maximum value with his made hands, the network didn't buy it and refused to return his money.

Sports Betting Sharps Harassed

Sportsbook.ag and its predecessor Sportsbook.com have long had a reputation in the betting industry for making life hard for winning sports bettors. It doesn't just ban them and inform them to go elsewhere, but the firm actually subjects them to many petty annoyances and hassles.

Some customers who amassed significant sports profits have reported that their payout requests were canceled after being pending for a lengthy time, ostensibly due to the need for additional proof of identity documentation, forcing them to begin the withdrawal procedure again and wait longer for their cash. Why Sportsbook.ag hadn't realized it needed those documents earlier is not clear.

Other tactics beloved by Sportsbook.ag include prohibiting individuals from betting anymore after they have made just a couple of wagers, invoking seldom-used clauses of the terms and conditions against bettors whom they perceive as professionals, and accusing users of bonus abuse merely for accepting too many bonuses even if those customers faithfully followed all the rules connected with said bonuses. It actions like these that have earned this site a position on the blacklist at respected industry resource SportsbookReview.com.

Sportsbook.ag's stance on successful sports bettors doesn't really affect poker players directly, but it is an indication of the mindset of those running the site. Suffice it to say that this philosophy definitely transfers over to the poker side of things to the detriment of winning players.

Deposits

Sportsbook.ag promotes Bitcoin as the preferred deposit method for its customers, and this is one point on which we're in full agreement with this company. Bitcoin enables low-fee transactions with reasonable speed and a high degree of anonymity. If you're uncertain about how you can use Bitcoin to facilitate your online poker play, then read this guide to Bitcoin online poker for all the info you need to get started.

Selected customers may have additional deposit methods, like credit cards, available to them, but by default, Sportsbook accepts only BTC for funding accounts. To make a deposit, click on the yellow “Cashier” button in the poker client. This will bring up the Bitcoin deposit form in your web browser:

Select the amount you wish to deposit from one of the values shown, or type your deposit size into the field indicated for it. You can load between $5 and $10,000 into your account at one time, but in order to claim any bonuses, you have to deposit at least $50.

Type in your Promotion Code if you have one to redeem the bonus attached to it. Even if you don't wish to claim any specific promo code, you may still benefit from certain bonuses that are automatically applied.

Press “Next” at the bottom of the page to continue. Now you will see an address along with the number of bitcoins you must send to it:

Now go into your Bitcoin wallet and send the appropriate sum of BTC to the address displayed. Upon blockchain confirmation, the funds will be credited to your real money balance.

Withdrawals

As a security measure, Sportsbook.ag randomly generates a four-digit PIN for every customer and sends it to them by email. You need to enter this PIN in when requesting any withdrawal. In case you should forget or misplace it, it's possible to have another one created.

Sportsbook.ag advertises payouts via the following channels:

• Bitcoin: $50 - $2,500
• Check: $250 - $2,500
• Wire Transfer: $300 - $5,000

Some accounts are limited to only BTC cashouts, but on the other hand, a few extra payment channels are listed for certain users. This is probably determined by geographic region as well as the history of the account.

Sportsbook.ag provides only one free payment per year. Any additional withdrawals incur a fee of 3%. This includes Bitcoin transactions, which are almost always fee-free at every other trustworthy online gaming site.

Making matters worse is the lengthy timeframe that it takes to send crypto payouts. According to Sportsbook's website: “We are processing Bitcoin payment to customers in 2 to 3 weeks.” This isn't just a case of under-promising and over-delivering. Plenty of users have reported that these multi-week processing windows are, in fact, commonplace.

The long waiting period, relatively low maximum withdrawal amount, and fees mean that it might take you a while to receive all your winnings from Sportsbook.ag, and the total amount you get may be quite a bit lower than what you actually won. You can avoid these hassles by instead playing at online gaming sites with reliable, low-fee payments.

Payout Timeframes Going in Wrong Direction

Customers of the Merge Gaming Network have had to wait a long time for their money in the past with payments sometimes taking months to arrive. When the Bitcoin withdrawal option was debuted in late 2015, it still sometimes took weeks for cashouts to arrive, but this was much faster than checks were taking back then.

BTC payout windows then improved considerably. By late 2016, many users were reporting same-day and next-day payouts.

However, in early 2017, there were slowdowns, and the stated timeframe from the network for Bitcoin withdrawals was 24 to 96 hours. Four days is a bit of an extended wait to receive bitcoins compared with other gaming organizations, but overall, it's not too bad.

Then in mid-2018, this 96-hour maximum changed to 5 – 7 business days. This became 5 – 9 business days in 2019, and as of June 2020, the quoted payout timeframe is 2 to 3 weeks.

There's absolutely no reason why it should take up to three weeks for customers to receive crypto payouts. Also worrying is the fact that the time it takes to send withdrawals to users has been steadily increasing over the past few years. This could be an indication that Sportsbook.ag no longer has the financial resources to discharge its payout obligations in a timely way, which is a worrying sign for the future.

Account Verification

Before your first withdrawal is processed, you will have to go through the account verification procedure. Should you neglect to do so, your payout will be cancelled and the money returned back to your account.

To successfully complete account verification, you must do the following:

• Upload a color copy of your driver's license or passport
• Upload a utility bill showing your mailing address
• Upload a copy of a void check or bank statement (only for bank wire withdrawals)
• Verify your email address

Sportsbook.ag History

In order to understand where an organization now stands, it's useful to examine its history. Therefore, we have composed below a short synopsis of Sportsbook.ag and the crucial events that have shaped it until the present day.

Early Years

The original direct progenitor of the current Sportsbook.ag gambling portal was called Sportsbook.com. As you would expect with such a premium URL, there was a ton of wrangling, negotiations, and big plans surrounding the ownership of the Sportsbook.com domain name during the infancy of the internet gaming industry..

After a tumultuous and confusing period, Sportsbook.com wound up in the hands of Patrick Callahan, a pioneer in the offshore sportsbook world and the owner of bookmaking website PlayersOnly.com. The Sportsbook.com gambling site opened for business in November 1998.

1998 Version of Sportsbook.com, Courtesy of Internet Archive

The initial Sportsbook site had only sports betting and casino with poker and horses being conspicuously absent. Despite its limited product offering, the operation grew quickly, aided by its ability to process credit card deposits with a higher rate of success than most competitors.

SportingBet and Jazette

In 2001, Sportsbook.com and its partner sites PlayersOnly.com and WallStreet.com were sold to SportingBet, a major, publicly traded gambling corporation. With the acquisition of Paradise Poker in 2004, SportingBet was able to add poker to the list of betting diversions available on Sportsbook.com.

The unfortunate passage of the UIGEA in 2006 spelled trouble for every publicly traded online wagering company, and SportingBet was no exception. It sold its US-facing brands, like Sportsbook.com, to Jazette Enterprises for the paltry sum of $1. Jazette was an entity that had been hitherto unknown, leading to speculation that it was really the creation of SportingBet management itself.

The Cake Years

With Paradise Poker also departing the U.S. market and for mostly the same reasons as SportingBet, Sportsbook.com needed to find a new cardroom partner, which they did in the form of the Cake Poker Network.

Cake was known as a great place for rakeback chasers, bonus hunters, and multi-tabling grinders, and the action bettors who inhabited Sportsbook.com tended to lose quite a bit to members of the other network skins. This raised concerns among Jazette management who tried such tactics as launching special tables that only their players could access in order to prevent them from losing their balances to sharks from other sites on the network.

The Move to Merge

By 2010, Jazette was fed up with the Cake Network and opted to move to the Merge Gaming Network in April of that same year. Instantly, the size of the Merge Network ballooned dramatically as the large player bases of Sportsbook and PlayersOnly were added. However, what at first appeared as an unmitigated blessing for Merge soon proved to be quite the contrary.

Everything seemed good for more than a year, and even the disruptive events of Black Friday in 2011 redounded to the benefit of the Merge Network as it became the largest USA online poker destination overnight when competitors PokerStars and Full Tilt were forced to leave the market. One consequence of these events, though, was that Sportsbook, fearing the confiscation of its .com domain, transitioned over to the Sportsbook.ag domain.

Despite benefitting from tremendous growth of its poker room, mismanagement of the business threatened to scupper the fortunes of Merge once and for all. A proliferation of new network sites meant that a few shady operators slipped through the cracks.

Lock Poker started rewarding players handsomely, in an unsustainable way, seriously reducing revenue (before going totally rogue), and some other skins began poaching each other's customers by offering lucrative (for the players) rakeback percentages and breaking the network's rules in the process.

Jazette Takes Over the Merge Network

All of this caused bit hits to Merge's bottom line, and Jazette (the owner of Sportsbook.ag) was persuaded to provide much-needed capital. From this point onward, Jazette began to take increasing control over the Merge Gaming Network's decision-making process.

Sadly for poker players, Jazette was primarily a sportsbook enterprise with poker tacked on as a barely profitable sideline. Once it began to run the show, it made its views on poker crystal clear with a series of moves designed to dissuade successful players from continuing to hit the felt.

The reason for this is that winning poker practitioners take money from the losers who then have less available to bet on sports and casino games. Jazette would rather have this money directed instead toward its other product verticals instead of going into the pockets of poker pros and then withdrawn from the site.

Player Rewards Cut

In early 2013, Sportsbook.ag discontinued its “Ace High” VIP program, which allowed the highest-volume grinders to trade in 60,000 points per month to get $2,700 in cash credits: a 45% rate of return. Under the new system, dubbed “The Players' Club,” these elite pokerists were restricted to exchanging 90,000 points for $1,200 every month: a mere 13% kickback.

Soon, however, even this 13% boost appeared good in retrospect because in July 2014, Merge removed the possibility of redeeming VIP points altogether. With the termination of the Players' Club, Sportsbook.ag had no mechanism to reward its faithful poker players, which is a situation that remains the same today.

In 2016, Sportsbook.ag took the bizarre step of discontinuing its affiliate program, called CommissionAccount. Not only did it decide not to pay affiliates for any new referred customers, but in a shocking show of bad faith, it also halted payments for rake generated by existing players.

Of all the questionable actions taken by the Jazette group (which has since renamed itself Domain Holdings), it was probably the termination of the affiliate program that has had the largest negative impact on the poker room. From an average of 260 cash game players simultaneously active at the tables in early 2016, traffic has declined to just 40 concurrently playing users today. And the figure of 260 in 2016 was itself a precipitous drop from the 1,700 recorded in May 2011.

Sportsbook.ag Sports Betting Review

Sportsbook.ag lets you wager on a pretty wide selection of sporting events. Though the focus is on American sports, international athletics is fairly well-represented too.

In addition, there are several categories of bets you can make on events that aren't really connected with the world of sports. For instance, you can try to predict the outcome of the next presidential election or guess the winner of the next Nathan's hot dog eating contest. eSports is gaining a lot of traction among bookmakers, and Sportsbook lets you bet on these video gaming events with matches for CS:GO, Dota 2, League of Legends, and many other titles listed.

In 2020, sims betting appeared on the menu at Sportsbook. This refers to simulated sporting matches with the results determined by the engines of popular video games, like NBA2K and FIFA20. So as to ensure that there's nothing funny going on, these simulated games are streamed on Twitch.tv, allowing bettors to watch the ersatz action unfold live.

Simulated NHL20 Match (Maple Leafs @ Blue Jackets)

Bets Available

Most of the standard types of wagers that you would expect to find are present here, including moneylines, spreads, totals, teasers, if bets, and parlays. Of particular note are the props, which are extensive when compared to the standard at other internet sportsbooks. Unlike at most competitors, you can string props together into parlays.

The min bet is $1. Wagering maximums don't appear to be listed on any single page at Sportsbook.ag, but they are generally around $5,000 for most major sports. Niche leagues and props cap out at a lower value of just a few hundred dollars whereas NFL sides often permit you to put more than $5K down.

The Sports Betting Website

Remember, though, that while you can win many thousands of dollars at once, the largest possible Bitcoin withdrawal is just $2,500, and you will have to wait at least a couple of weeks to receive it. If you do decide to bet on sports here, it's probably wise for you to restrict your wagers to no more than a few hundred dollars or perhaps $1,000 apiece.

As a book that targets “square” or casual bettors, Sportsbook.ag's lines don't appeal as a whole to savvy handicappers. Nevertheless, the very cluelessness of its user base means that the odds are sometimes out of whack, and so you will encounter profitable opportunities from time to time especially on underdog prices. The proposition markets also sometimes contain weaknesses that can be exploited if you know what you're doing.

Remember not to win too much at one time though. Otherwise, you might find yourself subjected to stalling tactics when you attempt to withdraw, and you might even be banned outright. Perhaps you would do well to instead find a sports betting home from a list of the top USA-friendly online sportsbooks.

Advanced Sports Betting Features

Sportsbook.ag boasts a few non-standard elements in its betting platform that help to differentiate it from the crowd.

Live Betting

You aren't restricted to just placing your bets pregame and then watching helplessly as the teams or individuals you've picked ply their trade on the field. With the Live Betting section of Sportsbook.ag, you can make additional wagers even after contests have already begun.

Not all contests are available for Live Betting, but there is a schedule on the website that shows you current and upcoming Live Betting markets. The odds in these matches constantly change depending on who's up or down. Therefore, even if your initial bets fail to pan out, you still have the chance to walk away a winner.

Cash Out

The Cash Out features allows you to redeem your pending wager for a stated sum before it resolves. This is useful if your longshot looks like it might have a good possibility of winning but you want to guarantee yourself a payout now. It's also a way to cut your losses if your bet appears to be destined for failure.

Cash Out is supported for all appropriate moneyline bets as well as totals and spreads where the initial line hasn't changed. Also, your parlays and futures wagers can be cashed out too.

To take advantage of Cash Out, look for your pending wagers in the “My Bets” area of the website. Find the wager you wish to Cash Out, and press the corresponding “Cash Out” button. Next, observe the amount you stand to receive and click “Confirm” when ready. The stated sum will be credited to your balance, and your bet will no longer be active.

Contests

Contests are a way for you to compete against other bettors rather than the traditional bettor-versus-bookie model represented by normal sports wagers. These contests includes squares pools, March Madness brackets, and other similar competitions where you pick teams, players, or other entities and then attempt achieve the best results for a big cash prize.

Sportsbook Promotions

There are no permanent promos for the sports wagering product, which is a bit odd when we consider that the sportsbook is the bread-and-butter of this site. There are, however, regular reload bonus opportunities as well as account-specific email offers.

Should you accept a non-poker bonus, you can clear it in the sportsbook by rolling it over 20 times. This isn't very appealing unless you can take advantage, while you clear the bonus, of unusually favorable odds that you have identified. For most users, clearing bonuses in the sportsbook is not a particularly rewarding pastime.

Sportsbook.ag Racebook Review

The Sportsbook.ag horse racing section contains events from more than 250 tracks. Most are located in the United States, but there's also a very healthy collection of venues from other countries, like the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, and Sweden. The two main forms of racing you can bet on here are thoroughbred and harness races.

Make Your Racing Picks Here

The normal straight wagers – Win, Place, and Show – are present along with a number of exotic bets, like the Exacta, Quinella, Superfecta, and Daily Double. As is generally true regarding pari-mutuel wagering, the odds shown in the racebook at the time you place your bet are just estimates. The final odds are determined by the total action put on each type of wager and are calculated by the racetrack once the betting ends.

Sportsbook.ag has divided the listed tracks into five categories, from A to E. There are different maximums in place for bet size, the amount you can win from an event, and highest payout odds on a single wager. Check out this information in the table below:

Racebook Promotions

There are a few ways to increase your earn in the Sportsbook.ag racebook by capitalizing on various promotions.

New Player Match Bet

Upon making your first-ever wager in the racebook, you will be entitled to 100% matching bonus funds. In order to qualify, your initial bet must be for an amount between $1 and $50.

An amount of money equal to your bet will be credited as bonus funds. You can use it in the racebook (5x rollover), sportsbook (20x), or casino (35x).

Racebook Rebate

Every bettor at Sportsbook.ag gets a cash back rebate on his or her racing bets without any minimum volume requirements or cap on the value of the refund. The refund is calculated based upon the total amount you bet regardless of whether you win or lose. This deal applies only to races at tracks in categories A, B, and C.

The base rebate amount is 3% of your total racing handle. However, exotic bets at Category B tracks earn a 5% rebate while exotics at Category A facilities reward the bettor with 8% cash back. Straight wagers that pay $2.20 to $2 or less do not count for rebate purposes.

Racebook Bonuses

Bonuses at Sportsbook.ag, apart from those specifically for poker, can generally be used in the racebook. They require a 5x rollover on the ponies. This is much easier to achieve than the 20x demanded in the sportsbook, so racetrack bets may be preferable to sports for earning bonus funds.

You may receive occasional racing bonus offers in your email, the site's messaging system, or on the promotions webpage, and they can be beneficial opportunities with only a 5x wagering requirement. Still, you must take into account the “hold” retained by racetrack management, which generally varies from about 15% to 30% depending on the track and the type of bet. Overall, racebook bonuses at Sportsbook.ag are not anything special.

Sportsbook.ag Casino Review

The Sportsbook.ag casino opens up in your browser; there's no need to download or install any software. While it doesn't exactly boast the largest variety of titles, all the major bases are covered, and the games are all technically solid without many glitches or irritations during gameplay.

When you launch any game, it will appear on the right side of the screen with the casino menu to the left. However, you can open a game in its own browser window or full-screen if you prefer.

One cool feature is that there's a Play for Fun section where you can practice the games without risking any real money. Another advantage of this casino is that its bonuses have among the most fair and reasonable terms we've ever seen.

Games

The gaming software in use at Sportsbook.ag contains 100+ slots from renowned developer Betsoft. Unlike many online gaming operators, Sportsbook has not diversified its casino portfolio by contracting with multiple providers to broaden its menu of titles. Apart from slots, you will find that the casino lobby contains video poker, blackjack, table games, and a few other categories to sample.

Slots

The slot machines encompass a wide variety of themes. Many of them utilize Betsoft's proprietary Slots3 engine to deliver smooth animations and realistic game characters rendered three-dimensionally. Most of the slot games have five reels and more than 10 paylines, but there are a few classic-style three-reel machines too.

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There are about two dozen games that have jackpots attached to them. Some of them climb into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which gives you a way to score a massive win if fortune is on your side.

Table Games

The table games most frequently encountered in physical casinos are present at Sportsbook too, including roulette, craps, and seven varieties of blackjack. Maximum bets range mostly from $200 to $500 although the limit for High Stakes Blackjack is $2,000 per hand.

The standard Blackjack rules here call for a six-deck shoe, dealer stands on soft 17, no resplitting, and doubling allowed on any two cards. With the proper basic strategy, this ruleset delivers a house advantage of just 0.46%.

Video Poker

The video poker formats offered can be broadly categorized into three divisions: regular single-hand VP, multi-hand forms of the game, and Pyramid Poker. In Pyramid Poker, your final hand is broken down into two sub-hands (left three cards, right three cards), which have their own payout schedules in addition to the wins generated from the main hand.

The Jacks or Better game follows the 9/6 payout model, and it has a house advantage of 0.46% as long as you play five coins at a time and use optimal strategy. The other VP machines are a mixed bag with some having atrocious odds and others that are much better than is usual at other online casinos.

Other Games

There are a couple of games that don't fit into any other category: Keno Jackpot and Virtual Derby. The former is just like any other keno game but with the possibility of winning a progressive jackpot. The latter is a kind of simulated racing where you make win, place, show, and exotic bets on artificial horses and then watch the computer-generated race in the hopes of scoring a prize.

Casino Promotions

There are a handful of recurring promotions to whet your appetite at the Sportsbook.ag casino. We advise playing only when one of these special events is running so that you can maximize your probability of walking away a winner.

Blackjack Tournament

Every Wednesday, there's a blackjack tournament that costs nothing to enter and pays out $1,000 in bonuses. It's active from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PST. There's a minimum of 100 rounds played and $500 wagered to qualify. You can play any blackjack variant listed in the lobby.

The top prize is $300, and a total of 35 winners will get at least $10 apiece. The winners are those who achieve the highest payout percentages.

All tournament winnings come in the form of bonuses with a 35x rollover that must be used in the casino. Bonuses must be cleared within 14 days of being credited.

Spin to Win

Slot aficionados can compete in the Friday Spin to Win tournament. In order to participate, you must make 50 spins and bet at least $50 from 12:01 a.m. to 11:59 p.m. PST on any Friday. There's no buyin to pay or opt-in required.

There's $500 up for grabs, spread across the top 40 entrants. Prizes range in value from $5 to $50. Curiously, the way to win is to record the lowest payout percentage, so this tournament is a kind of lossback or insurance on your play.

Prizes are in the form of bonuses with 35x playthough in the casino only and 14-day expiration.

Casino Bonuses

One of the ways that Sportsbook.ag attempts to get customers to return to the casino is by featuring certain bonus offers on its promotions page and extending others through email to specific customers. If you have the chance to claim one of them, then it's certainly worth thinking about.

The standard casino rollover is 35x, and this applies both to casino-specific bonuses as well as those that are valid for more than one gambling product. If you have the choice of releasing a bonus in the sportsbook, the racebook, or the casino, then the casino is by far the best option.

Even though the 35x wagering requirement is more than the sportsbook's 20x or the racebook's 5x, this doesn't take into consideration that there are many casino titles that have absurdly small house edges. For example, Blackjack and Jacks or Better video poker both return 99.54% of the money wagered to the player over the long term (assuming the correct playing strategies are employed). Therefore, if you play your bonus through 35 times on either of these games, you should expect to lose, on average, just over 16% of the bonus amount and retain as profit 84% of your bonus.

Despite the small gaming library and relative lack of deposit and withdrawal options, the Sportsbook.ag casino is worthwhile for bonus hunting alone. When you've finished collecting your reload bonuses and withdrawn your winnings, you can always select a better place to play casino games on the internet.

Customer Support

If you need to get in touch with support staff, you can fire off an email to support[at]sportsbook.ag. Alternately, you can fill out a contact form by clicking on the Help menu in the poker lobby and selecting “Contact Support.” A page will open in your web browser from which you must click the appropriate button to open the support webform.

There's a mechanism for launching a Live Chat session, but it's pretty well hidden. To access it, click on the Cashier in the poker client, which will open up a deposit form in your browser. Fill in any amount and then click “Next.” On the second page of the deposit interface, you will see a blue Chat button, near the bottom-left of the page, which you can use to begin a chat session with a support representative.

Starting a Live Chat Session

If you want to leave a comment or suggestion that doesn't necessarily require a response, you can do so inside the poker software. Go to the Help menu at the top of the lobby, and choose “Feedback.” Type your message and then click “Send Feedback.”

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Players' Thoughts

Before rendering our final verdict on any online gaming provider, we like to take a look around the internet to see what other players have to say. In the case of Sportsbook.ag, there are customers who appreciate certain aspects of this poker room, but they are outweighed by individuals who are frustrated by the overall experience of playing at Sportsbook.ag.

Below is a selection of comments composed by actual users of the site:

Conclusion

There are several reasons why Sportsbook.ag's network was once the leading choice for USA-based internet poker players. It had superb software, bustling lobbies, a diverse roster of games, and remunerative promotions. However, most of the elements that made Sportsbook a great place for poker are gone. The software is still solid, but traffic is now tiny, only a couple of poker formats get much action, and almost all promos have been discontinued.

It's not just blind luck that has produced these negative changes either. Rather, the decisions made by the site's leaders have been largely responsible for its decline. They don't care much about the game of poker or people who like to play poker, and it shows.

Rather than dealing with a third-tier room and operators who, frankly, don't give a damn about your satisfaction, we encourage you to explore your other options. We have put together a guide to USA online poker, which you can read to identify the best places for you to play.

Frequently Asked Questions

If you have unresolved questions about the Sportsbook.ag poker room, then check out our FAQ where we've collected some of the most asked-for information about this organization.