Pinnacle Sports Review 2024 – Is Pinnacle Bet Really Best for Sharp Punters?

Pinnacle Review – 2 Things You Should Know First

 

Pinnacle is said to be the best sharp sportsbook that accepts professional punters by offering the most competitive odds & the highest betting limit. We examine if all are true.

 

What’s Pinnacle Sports?

 

Pinnacle is a Sports Betting offshore bookmaker (formerly known as Pinnacle Sports) located in Curacao Netherlands Antilles and established in 1998.

Pinnacle Bet is famous for educating players with academic but practical betting analysis articles. I personally find them excellent because such education can convert your mindset namely from gambling to investment.

Sports betting is all about probability prediction based on statistics, of which the winning rate is fully influenced by human behaviour, and the Pinnacle Bet article is all about education for the bettors to beat the bookies. It sounds weird as a bookmaker, doesn’t it?

Because Pinnacle has a unique “Winners Welcome” policy based on their innovative business model, namely “high value (low margin) + low cost (no marketing promotion/bonus) operation”, which was the 1st attempt in the betting industry where most competitors fight using bonuses & sponsorship as their key tactics. Visit List of Sharp Sportsbooks for Professional Punters to see all the other Welcome Winners betting sites. 

Pinnacle’s quick-moving low-juice lines educated players on the value of line shopping (see Best 7 Reduced Juice Sportsbooks for other excellent reduced-juice sportsbooks). It has gained an excellent reputation among those who make a successful living from punting.

As said, we at GEM focus on Advantage Gambling including Value Sports Betting On Proven Systems. Therefore it’s our readers’ main interest to identify the Best Bookmaker For The Sharp Punters, and we believe reviewing Pinnacle Bet can meet such demand.

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Pinnacle Bet Legality

People often ask “Is Pinnacle Sports Legal?” “Is Pinnacle Sports Betting Legit?”.

Pinnacle Bet is licensed by MGA (Malta Gaming Authority) & Curacao eGaming. So, basically, they are remote from scum, fraud, or any wrongdoing.

However, too many winnings could cause a big headache for everybody such as Bet365 over £1m payout Megan McCann court battle, so Be Modest.

Well, this is what we usually say for most (soft) bookmakers, but as long as Pinnacle Sports Bet is concerned, you don’t need to worry about winnings due to its Sharp bookie business model as briefly explained above.

 

Pinnacle Sports Banned Countries

 

Unfortunately, Pinnacle Sports restrict many countries including the USA & UK, therefore we share Pinnacle Restricted countries first to save you time.

Since they don’t use geo-blocking, you may physically access the Pinnacle.com login from anywhere though, it doesn’t mean you can open a Pinnacle account.

If you reside in the countries listed below such as the United States, you can’t open Pinnacle Account directly. Pinnacle Terms & Conditions says;

If you reside in the above countries, go to the Solution – Bet Broker, where you will find the sites enabling you to access Pinnacle White Labels such as PS3838. 

In short, Pinnacle’s best white label is “Piwi247“, provided by Asian Connect, which includes Sportsbook (Pinnacle White-label), PIWIXchange (Betfair White-label with the lowest 2.5% commission) & Casino, and it’s supposed to be the best value product in this industry. 

Honestly speaking, Pinnacle Sports is one of the Worst Customer Support Response despite their claim of being Second To None (they neither offer live chat nor telephone contact, and email is the only method to communicate), therefore even those who are eligible to open an account may consider using the above white labels. 

As said, the Pinnacle site is usually not Geo-Blocked, thus some may think using VPN (Virtual Private Network) enables you to be anonymous, thus can have the Pinnacle account.

Wrong, strongly suggest you go through Best VPN for Betting with Caution – Sharp Must Carefully Protect Privacy. 

 

1. Introduction – Pinnacle Bet Reputation

 

Every sharp says Pinnacle Bet is the best bookmaker. Consequently, Pinnacle Bet has the highest achievable rating on many bookmaker review websites.

Let me quote Smart Betting Club’s (probably the most reputable tipster proofing & rating service) past survey (although it’s a bit old data looks like it still applies) as follows;

“I want to share with you the Top Eight Football Bookmakers you MUST use (And why!). These results (below table) are taken from our recent SBC members survey, in which we listed 27 of the best known bookies. And asked our members (many of whom are professional gamblers) to score each of them from 1 to 10 based on their own experiences. The results were fascinating and below you can find our top 8 football bookmakers”  Secret Betting Club past survey

 

What makes Professional Punters love Pinnacle Bet So Much?

 

Professional bettors demand The Best Value. Those are The Best Odds / High Betting Limits / No Account Discrimination. It means no matter how profitable punters become, they are treated the same & accept any price traders. Pinnacle Bet clearly declare the following 4 Commitments on their site;

This is obviously different from common bookmakers’ business models that target recreational betters. So, we would like to review if they truly do what they declare, how they do & how they can be sustainable in both quantitative & qualitative ways mainly through the interviews with Pinnacle Senior members I searched & collected on various online sites & Pinnacle CEO interview video. So, let’s review the above (I) – (IV) commitments respectively.

 

2. Verification of 4 Unique Attributes

 

I’m trying to verify each point by copying & pasting the interview comments of ex-Pinnacle Head of Online Acquisition, Ryan Henderson in the interview made by bettingexpert, Oddsportal & ZCode, and Pinnacle Senior Trader John T. made by SBR that was published as a video and a few other sources including public forums. 

 

(I) Welcome Professional / Sharp Punters

 

The Pinnacle page says;

Our Winners Welcome policy is very straight-forward. We do not limit, discriminate or close accounts of successful players, and here is why: – Our business model is focused solely on maximising volume irrespective of whether this is generated from profitable players – We need sharp players to help tighten our odds as we do not take positions – We have the confidence in our traders to focus on managing odds, not players

Quotes from the interviews/forums;

Why do Pinnacle Sports welcome winning customers?

RH (Ryan Henderson): The answer to this question is quite straightforward. Our model works on volume, not customer profiling. We need high volumes of balanced bets to enable us to offer such low margins, and are confident enough in our traders’ abilities to know that so long as volume is high enough, our business is viable. 

This model means that we seek volume without concern as to whether that comes from winning players or not, so it’s the perfect place for people who don’t want to be limited. As we say on our promotions page, winners really are welcome.

Is Pinnacle Sports’ ‘winners welcome’ policy absolute? Are there any circumstances where a winning customer may have their account restricted?

RH: There are no circumstances in which a legitimate winning customer will have their action limited. Issues only occur if they contravene any of our betting rules .

Some bookmakers choose to limit the accounts of their winning accounts or close them altogether. What are your thoughts on this business model? Is it sustainable?

RH: Clearly this isn’t something we aspire to. Any bookmaker that takes this route is faced with a constantly high churn-rate of players and the inevitable customer dissatisfaction.

As with many other online industries, peer review is becoming increasingly important to betting, underlined by the proliferation of odds comparisons and sites such as bettingexpert, which encourage bettor education. 

Any savvy bettor will shun a bookmaker that is restrictive in this way, as it is counter-intuitive to bet to win, but use a bookmaker that actively discourages that profitability.

Sounds like Pinnacle has a clear rationale for Pinnacle’s Business Model of Welcome Professional. Regarding the points of;

– We need sharp players to help tighten our odds as we do not take positions – We have the confidence in our traders to focus on managing odds, not players

See the comments in the next II Best Odds & Early Lines;

 

(II) Best Odds & Early Lines

 

Pinnacle also says;

Rated no.1 for payouts – Because Pinnacle offer the best odds online our bettors get the biggest payouts. Don’t just take our word for it, we are independently rated no.1 for payouts by one of the internet’s largest odds comparison sites against more than 50 other leading competitors.

Best value odds – smallest margins – Margins are expressed as a number above 100%, with 100% meaning that there is a market with no “edge” for the bookmaker or bettor. For major soccer markets like the EPL, our margins are 2% compared to an industry average of 6%.

Quotes from the interviews/forums;

On your site, you say that your approach “needs sharp players to shape markets”. How do winning customers help you to do this?

RH: Winning customers are often the first to bet into a market when the prices are what we might call ‘soft’. They will have their own ideas, from their own proprietary handicapping, about what the odds should be, so if our odds diverge from that, they will dive in.

This causes the market to quickly move. A good example of this was after the Champions League semi-final draw, when Bayern Munich began as slight underdogs at home to Barcelona for the 1st leg.

Almost instantaneous interest on Munich reversed the situation, and now those early bettors will be congratulating themselves on getting Munich at above the “shaped” market value, and congratulating Jupp Heynckes on a job well done (Munich won 4-0). 

Sharp players will also be very active close to start of events, when what we call ‘public money’ inflates the favourite’s odds, which sharper players might fade.

Your lines move much faster and much more precisely than any other book’s lines out there. How do the opening lines get set at Pinnacle? And is it true that you are not too concerned with having sharp opening lines since you move them so easily and so quickly?

JT (John T.): Well, first of all you have to break it down into what we call sports with high liquidity and sports that are not as liquid. There are lots of sports like futsal, badminton, handball.

These kinds of sports that we will throw up a line based on our best guess, whether other people in the market have it or whatever.Just our personal best guess. We’ll throw up a guess and let the public lead a way and teach us where the right price is and when we get to that right price we up limit a little bit and go from there. And public does a great job in teaching us and more often than not we might be losing in those kinds of situations.

But that’s part of the business. In regards to the more major sports, again it depends. Usually, there’s some good thought that goes into the opening line. There’s times when we put up an opener before the rest of the world and obviously we’ll be using our thought of where we think the line will end up in that calculation.

There are times when someone else might open before us but we might put a lean towards the number. Usually it’s an individual dealer, who’s in charge of that sport; he might consult one or two guys and we go with his opinion there. Sometimes you see a game as a dealer, sometimes you just inevitably think that you’re going to get a ton of money on one side or the other.

So you naturally try to encourage money on the other side as early possible. But we do not have a roomful of savants or computer wizards generating opening lines. The head dealer picks a line. And I think our model is really the magical thing here, not necessarily genius of some dealer behind the scenes. It’s amazing how quickly, if you just move your line, you get to a really solid number.

(Interview Video the below is the video of John T’s Interview conducted by SBR)

Bookmaker Margin Survey Results

The below table confirms how Pinnacle Customers are enjoying the best odds in the industry. I’m copying it from Australia Sports Betting which in principle may apply to many other countries (Pinnacle don´t selectively apply a low-margin policy to certain markets but to every market they post.

And unlike betting exchanges who advertise similar margins, don’t charge a commission on winning bets, which negates the value of their odds); Pinnacle remains in a league of its own, with margins that are often half that of its competitors. Pinnacle Sports’ claim as a low-margin bookmaker is validated.

 

(III) Highest Betting Limit

 

Pinnacle says;

No bookmaker accepts bigger bets Pinnacle Sports stands out from the competition by consistently offering the highest maximum bet limits online, earning us the reputation as the bookmaker of choice for serious bettors.

Quotes from the interviews/forums;

Not only are our limits the highest online, bettors can build positions with successive bets to increase their stake and therefore, potential winnings.

You can re-bet up to the maximum limit whether the price has changed or not , once a short period of time has elapsed. Pinnacle Sports operates this policy across all sports and bet types offered. 

Here’s what a forum user said about our 2012 Australian Open Final’s £40,000 limits: “You can bet that ￡40,000 over and over again, there is no true limit at Pinnacle, takes 3 seconds, no questions asked, and low juice most importantly, you could literally bet millions on this match. It’s crazy actually. Shows how sharp that line is.

Specific Limit

Football Leagues & North American sports by Pinnacle Bet are covered as shown below ($30,000 limit). And every popular bet type features a limit of $5,000 or over, which means it represents the absolute best high limit in almost every popular sport.

Crucially, players can bet at the maximum limit & wait just a few seconds, then re-bet for the same amount, to build almost unlimited positions. It made a big noise by accepting $1,000,000 bets on the World Cup final (see if you want). 

Other Reputable High Roller Bookies

Some other famous bookies that accept high stakes are;

Bookmaker.EU: Bookmaker.EU is another excellent option for high-limit betting. The site uses a $5,000 maximum limit on individual wagers made online. Bettors can also place wagers worth up to $20,000 over the phone and can always inquire about placing a larger bet with the approval of a manager. Bettors should expect to be capped at $10,000 for wagers on MLB and NBA games, while NFL games are set at a $20,000 limit. Having observed, when it comes to high-limit wagering, Pinnacle Sports seems to be no doubt one of the best.

Suggest you access the List of Sharp Sportsbooks for Professional Punters where you locate the world’s best betting sites for high rollers. 

 

(IV) Encourage Sports Arbitrage

 

Pinnacle Sports says;

We treat arbitragers like any other customer Pinnacle Sports is unique in welcoming arbitrage betting, and as we treat all players the same, arbitrage bettors will get the best odds and highest limits, just like everyone else.

Quotes from the interviews/forums;

Why does Pinnacle Sports welcome arbers? All bookmakers freeze the account of surebet players because, in the long term, they also lose money from these players. Why do you let them play? Are other bookmakers wrong? How can you operate and be profitable with such low margins? How is possible that you have such big betting limits?

RH: Our business model is based on taking a small percentage from a large amount of action. The owners of the company identified a long time ago that rather than offering bigger and bigger bonuses, a high volume, low margin business model would provide us with a unique position in the betting marketplace. 

Over the last 14 years we have refined this business model with greater and greater success. This, and the very smart people that work for us, is the reason why we are able to offer high limits and accept all types of bettors. From the smaller €10/bet customer seeking the best price on Sparta Prague, to the high roller or arbitrage bet, all are welcome.

Are other bookmakers wrong? Not necessarily, they just take a different approach and I’m happy they do as it allows us to accept all the action they turn away! 

Why is Pinnacle Sports so Popular with Arbitragers?

RH: Add to this our willingness to accept arbitrage bets and it is easy to understand why Pinnacle Sports has an unrivalled reputation among the growing arbitrage community, which is increasingly subject to restriction at the majority of other bookmakers.

In theory all bookmakers shouldn’t care about the motivation for placing a bet, but should simply look to balance the bet volume. Unfortunately, the reality is different, with many bookmakers taking a negative view of arbitrage.

This limiting of arbitrage players is a reflection of a bookmaker’s short-comings, such as posting ‘bad odds’, or an inability to move odds fast enough to avoid being the focus of arbitrage players. The confidence we have in our trading staff is one of the reasons why we do not fear arbitrage action.

Actually, Pinnacle Sports is not only discriminating against arbitrage players but also promoting an article explaining how to Arbitrage. (for those who are not familiar with Sports Arbitrage, Is Sports Arbitrage Really a 100% Risk-Free Sure Bet?

Bet Exchange Alternative (Better Odds Than Betfair Exchange)

The Pinnacle’s high stake limit supports the arbitrager to rake in meaningful profit. Besides, Pinnacle Sports offers Laying means if you live in a country where Exchange is not available, you can use Pinnacle Sports as an alternative because Pinnacle Odds is said to be better than Betfair exchange after considering its commission.

For this particular point, you may want to take a look at Pinnacle Arbitrage – Alternative to Laying on Exchanges. Pinnacle is proven to be right to claim “Pinnacle is the only bookmaker to welcome arbitrage betting. We won’t close accounts, or restrict their activity. We treat arbitrage bettors like any other offering them the best odds and highest limits.”

 

3. Key Drawbacks

 

Now, let me summarize possible drawbacks of Pinnacle Sports below (I also quote some from the above sources);

 

Customer Service

 

The service with Pinnacle is limited. You can only contact them through e-mail ( customerservice@pinnacle.com ). The FAQ, on the other hand, is very big and will answer a lot of your questions.

They don’t offer live chat or phone support to their users. As said previously, their response is quite slow, which we believe should be improved asap.

 

Pinnacle Bonus

 

Pinnacle doesn’t offer bonuses for new players.

RH: That is the only reason this bookmaker can have such high odds, as explained details in the above. In the long term, better odds are definitely more profitable than a one-time bonus, of which concept is defined as Permanent Bonus by Pinnacle.

Interview Quote;

Most bookmakers offer to sign-up bonuses. Pinnacle Sports doesn’t. Why?

 

Withdrawal Fee

 

If you withdraw funds more than once a month you will be charged, the first one free, and subsequent withdrawals charged at $25 a time.

Interview Quote;

Why is only one free Skrill withdrawal per month? Elsewhere is no limited free withdrawals.

 

Players Acceptance

 

Same as other bookies, Pinnacle doesn’t allow people from many countries including US & UK citizens due to legislative issues & their business interests.

Interview Quote;

The most common issue our clients are struggling with is finding a reliable US-friendly online bookmaker. Pinnacle made a tough choice not to accept them, do you see the rules and regulations changing anytime in the future? I heard new gambling laws are being passed in the US these days. Is there any hope?

 

4. Pinnacle CEO Paris Smith Interview

 

March 2015, Pinnacle Sports confirmed new majority ownership with a concerted drive into new global regulated markets, including Asia, along with significant up-scaling of IT infrastructure.

CEO Paris Smith was keen to stress the company is maintaining business as the usual focus – delivering the best value odds online by saying;

, which is good news.

We upload the interview video of Paris Smith which will give you better insight into Pinnacle’s background, strengths & future prospects, etc.

Part 1

Part 2

 

5. Pinnacle Bet – Conclusions & Action Plans

Claiming Advantages – Verified

 

Verification of 4 key unique advantages indicates that Pinnacle Sports is a no-frills serious bookmaker providing great odds together with the highest betting limits you are never likely to breach.

Its odds are always shown to three decimal places and its payouts are also as precise & the payout rate is the industry No.1 (see the below chart showing the EPL – England Premier League example).  It makes a point of not offering free bet lures or bonuses of any nature. Because its business model means it does not need to sweeten customers; the odds offered are incentive enough to do business with Pinnacle.

This bookmaker is known for being very solid and having plenty of liquidity to cover large wins – as mentioned before it is famous for (see “accept $1,000,000 bets on World Cup final (Jul 10, 2014)”) and will pay out within hours.

Another important factor is to make your arbitrage betting plan payout good money. Unlike many other bookmakers, you don’t need to worry about your betting patterns, deal with low limits, or other arb-unfriendly tactics.

 

How to Use Pinnacle Bet – Best Course of Actions

 

Sports Arbitrage

Take a look at practical instructions of  Sports Arbitrage – Cheat Sheet For Dummies To Be A Seasoned Arber Overnight.

Then, as suggested in the above document, start using the top-rated automated software of RabelBetting (see our review The Truth About World Best Sports Arbitrage Software) which suggests using Pinnacle.

Value Bet On Proven System

I quoted some of Pinnacle Bet’s articles. Then, start using the Top Rated Betting System such as; Z-Code.

ZCode suggested Pinnacle Bet as the main bookmaker and their quoted price is Pinnacle’s price.

You will find the full instruction on how to make money with ZCode & Pinnacle in ZCode Success Formula, which demonstrates $1,500 profits every month on the side. We include the Zcode 75% Permanent Discount Link in that guide, so check if it’s activated (if it’s you are lucky).

Esports

We shouldn’t forget to say that Pinnacle provides an excellent Esports betting opportunity, below is the extraction of Pinnacle from the World’s 10 Best Esports Betting Sites where you can locate objective comparisons of top Esports bookmakers;

Snapshot

 

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If you need any assistance from us, please Contact Us Anytime, we will get back to you as quickly as possible, usually within less than 24 hours.

 

Good Luck!!

 

Joshua Walker (bio)

Editor – Global Extra Money (GEM)