Sportsbook.ag Review and Bonus

Sportsbook.ag is one of the oldest names in the industry. Opened in 1997 as an offshore sportsbook, the site soon added casino games and eventually a poker room and racebook. One of the first big "all-in-one" sites, Sportsbook.ag is partnered with PlayersOnly, another big name in the all-in-one gambling industry.

Sportsbook.ag is now run by Jazette Enterprises, Ltd., a group that operates a long list of sportsbook and other gambling properties. This was not always the case – before the 2006 SAFE Ports Act and its UIGEA bill wrecked the US gambling market, the site was called Sportsbook.com, and was run by Sportingbet. Wanting rid of its potentially litigious dealings with US customers, Sportingbet famously sold the site for $1 to Jazette.

How do I feel about Sportsbook.ag? I'll start with some positive features – reasons to consider opening an account with the site:

(Most) American customers can open accounts at Sportsbook.ag. This is a big deal, because American customers have a short list of places that will even accept their deposits. I can't find a complete list of US states that are restricted at the site, but I know that residents of Kentucky are restricted.

Sportsbook.ag partnered with Betsoft to produce their casino library. Betsoft is producing some of the best games in the industry, so I'm always excited to review a site with a Betsoft-powered casino. I cover the site's games and various bets in greater detail below.

Now for the bad news – a few features that may make you want to reconsider a membership:

The casino library is small and boring. Look, just because Betsoft is my favorite casino game design firm doesn't mean I automatically love every site that plops a Betsoft slot or two on their game library. Hosting a total of 132 games in this day and age is a strong choice – the world's best-reviewed gambling sites tend to host hundreds of titles produced by a variety of designers. I talk in more detail about my complaints with the casino library below.

Sportsbook.ag and PlayersOnly are pretty much identical sites. In other words, I'm bored by them. Look, I review twenty sportsbooks a month, and I visit a few more than that. Repetition in this industry strikes me as laziness or downright disregard for your customers. I know that's probably not the case – that this is a business decision more than anything – but I can't help the way it makes me feel.

The site's bonus, banking, and customer service options are severely lacking. I've not seen such a weak promotional lineup in about fifteen years, mostly because promotions pages are one of the main ways online gambling businesses market their services. I have to believe that the lame collection of promos is due to me being an American – but since this site depends heavily on American business, I'm not sure they get off that easy. Throw in the tiny collection of deposit and withdrawal options and the equally-anemic customer service options covered below, and the site just looks lazy.

Reading through the bonus terms and conditions pages at Sportsbook.ag, I got a bit confused. The site maintains at several different points that they operate using "a standard rollover requirement" in order to clear bonuses. For casino bonuses, the site indicates that the standard rollover is 35x bonus-plus-deposit. Unfortunately, other details are not as easy to find. Sportsbook bonuses aren't even given a specific rollover requirement, and I say that having scoured the site for half an hour.

I'd like to point out, too, that in the T&C pages, the site makes it clear that bets on the following casino games do not count toward clearing any rollover requirement:

• American Roulette
• European Roulette
• Mini Roulette
• Craps

It makes sense that they'd make exceptions for these games – they happen to have the best odds of all the site's casino games. This is a bit of a disappointment, because other casino sites still honor wagers on low-odds games, just at a reduced rate. If you're a casino gambler and want to clear bonus cash, make sure you know that only long-odds games will count towards clearing your money.

Here's an outline of the promotions available at Sportsbook.ag, valid as of the time I wrote and posted this review. You'll want to check the site's promotions page to see what offers are available at the time of your visit.

• Refer-a-Friend Bonus - Customers who refer a friend can earn a free wager worth 100% of their first deposit of $50 or more, though the offer is capped at $50. The site goes out of its way to point out that you can re-trigger this bonus an unlimited number of times. The free bet offer expires if it goes unused for thirty calendar days, and it also requires the site's infamous "standard rollover."
• 20% Weekly Reload Bonus (Casino) - Casino customers that opt in to this bonus will receive a unique bonus code every week that makes them eligible for a 20% reload bonus, worth up to $100 per bonus. A standard rollover and other T&Cs apply.
• Bet Match Bonus (Casino) - New customers to the casino are eligible for one free bet in the amount of their first qualifying deposit. Eligible customers deposit between $1 and $100, and earn a free wager matching the exact size of their deposit. Standard rollover requirements apply.
• Cash-Back Happy Hour (Casino) - Casino customers that play between the hours of 7 and 10 PM EST every Tuesday can earn 25% cash back on the site's entire list of instant and mobile games, restricted games listed above not included. The site will pay back 25% of your losses, provided you were an overall loser for the day. Of course, standard rollover requirements apply.
• Welcome Bonus (Poker) - This is Sportsbook.ag's only traditional casino bonus currently available - aimed at the site's poker=playing crowd, the bonus gives first-time depositors a deposit match bonus worth up $1,000 matched at a rate of 100%.
• 8% Daily Cash Back (Racebook) - It's nice to see a site making overtures to racebook customers, but this one may be too little, too late for some bettors. A rebate of between 3% and 8% is available for all bets in the racebook of $2.20 or more. These rebates are paid out daily – check the site's promos page linked above for specifics on this deal.

Sportsbook.ag currently offers just two deposit methods:

• VISA – Use any VISA-branded credit, debit, or gift card to make deposits of up to $1,000.
• Western Union – You can transfer up to $999 via Western Union, for a fee.

The site has just one withdrawal method listed – customers can choose either a cashier's check or a gift card, which the site will send via snail mail. This requires a sliding fee and a waiting period of as much as fifty days.

Sportsbook.ag, like the URL implies, is primarily a sportsbook. Most of its business comes from its sports and racebook categories – this is pretty common for the Web's biggest all-in-one gambling sites.

The list of markets available for wagers at the site is a big feather in their cap. I like long lists of games, markets, and wagers, because I prize variety over almost anything else.

Here's the list of all available sportsbook markets, at the time of my review:

• Auto Racing
• Baseball
• Basketball
• Boxing
• Cycling
• Entertainment
• Football
• Golf
• Hockey
• Live Betting
• MMA
• NCAA Sports
• Politics
• Racebook
• Rugby Union
• Soccer
• Street League Skateboarding
• Tennis
• Women's Basketball
• eSports

Most of these categories expand to include a variety of leagues. For example, if you click on Soccer, you'll see a long list of world leagues, some amateur, most professional. The same is true for football, which also includes bets for Aussie rules games when in season.

Just like PlayersOnly, Sportsbook.ag currently offers Squares betting. I think this is a really neat addition to their sportsbook, and it's a feature I hope to see at more books in the future. If you've ever bet on the Super Bowl or any other sporting event at the office, you're familiar with Squares. It's usually a casual game played between friends and family, but Sportsbook.ag has it available as a casino-style wager.

Sportsbook.ag is home to 132 Betsoft-designed casino titles. The site's mobile options are even more limited – I counted just 30 titles available to casino gamblers on the site's mobile platform. Both of these numbers are below the industry average.

Another odd feature of the game library at Sportsbook.ag's casino – the ridiculous number of available game categories. Some of them contain one, two, or three different games – a sure sign that the site should reorganize their layout and maybe condense some of these categories into larger ones.

If it sounds like I'm really down on Sportsbook.ag's casino, I am – but not entirely. I'm a huge fan of Betsoft. Betsoft titles tend to look fresh, with crisp graphics and professional-grade audio and video effects to keep gameplay interesting. Sportsbook.ag simply doesn't give me enough of Betsoft's great titles, and that's a disappointment.

Here's a breakdown of each of the site's nine categories of casino games:

Blackjack Games

• Blackjack – played according to traditional rules
• Classic Blackjack – a single-deck version
• High Stakes Blackjack – the standard game but with a max wager of $2,500
• Blackjack 7's – one of many Betsoft blackjack variants with a fun side bet
• Blackjack Switch – allows the player to switch their cards for new ones
• Blackjack 52 – a two-deck game
• Spanish Blackjack – a European variant with slightly different rules for the player and dealer
• Table Games
• Three Card Poker – a poker game that includes one round of raises
• Caribbean Stud – casino-style five-card stud with a progressive jackpot
• Casino Hold'em – casino-style classic Texas Hold'em play
• Pai Gow – a poker game based loosely on an ancient Chinese game of chance
• Craps – the classic casino game
• American Roulette –roulette with two green zero spaces
• Casino War – a classic children's game translated for the casino
• European Roulette –roulette with one green zero space
• Baccarat – a casino classic casino game of guessing
• Red Dog – a poker-like luck-based card game

Video Poker

• Aces and Eights
• 7-Stud Poker
• All American Poker
• Bonus Deuces Wild
• Bonus Poker
• Bonus Poker Deluxe
• Deuces Wild
• Double Bonus Poker
• Double Double Bonus Poker
• Double Double Jackpot Poker
• Double Jackpot Poker
• Jacks or Better
• Joker Poker
• Loose Deuces
• Mystery Bonus Poker
• Pick'Em Poker
• Sevens Wild

Jackpot Games

Rather than being a category of unique titles, this heading collects every titles with a progressive jackpot in one easy-to-find location. It's designed to be a convenient way for bettors to find jackpot titles, but there are no unique games on this list.

Slots

Just over 100 of the site's games are slots – a small number, even when all the games are designed by Betsoft, my favorite slot producer. For the sake of convenience, Sportsbook.ag breaks up their slot collection into the following categories:

• All Jackpot Slots
• 30 Pay Line Slots
• 24 & 25 Pay Line Slots
• 15 & 20 Pay Line Slots
• 8, 9 & 10 Pay Line Slots
• Classic 3 Reel Slots

By far the largest category is 30 Pay Line slots, an area of design where Betsoft really outdoes itself in terms of quality.

Scratch Card Games

I found just one game under this heading, a scratch card-style virtual lottery game called Scratcherz.

Hi-Lo Games

• Casino War – a classic children's game as played in the casino
• Draw Hi-Lo – a guessing game played with cards

Keno & Lotto Games

• Keno Jackpot
• 80 Ball Keno
• Krazy Keno
• Klub Keno
• Virtual Lotto

Sports Games

The only game listed here is the Virtual Racebook, which allows bettors to take a chance on a simulated horse racing event. If you enjoy horse racing, though, I'm not sure why you wouldn't bet in the site's attached Racebook. This is an oddly tone-deaf inclusion for Sportsbook.ag – I didn't even know Betsoft made a game like this, which is not one of their triumphs. I found it slow and boring.

Besides a so-so collection of slots, I have nothing to say in recommendation of this casino library. Maybe Sportsbook.ag should cut a deal with a couple of other game designers to include some variety and spice up what has to be one of the least-inspired collections of Betsoft games I've ever reviewed.

The poker software at Sportsbook.ag comes from the Merge network – Sportsbook.ag was once a part of the Cake network, but jumped ship to Merge when it became apparent that Cake was going to fail. The software is decent – it looks good, has plenty of features that poker players will love, and contains native support for both Mac and Windows.

I'm not so keen on the Merge network mostly because it's small. According to PokerScout, Merge's peak traffic amount in the past week was 527 cash players. That makes it one of the smaller networks – by no means the smallest, but nowhere near the size of the top five.

It's common to read that competition is "soft" at all-in-one sites like Sportsbook.ag. This has to do with the fact that the site operates casino games, a sportsbook, and a racebook as well as a poker room. The assumption is that sportsbook and casino customers wander into the poker room with very little skill, providing a school of fish for more experienced players to take down. I remain unconvinced about this fact – I've seen stellar poker play at all-in-one sites and terrible play at the big boys in the business.

Games available at Sportsbook.ag's poker room:

• Texas Hold'em
• Omaha
• Omaha hi-lo
• Seven card stud
• Seven card stud hi-lo

Most of the traffic is condensed into the micro and medium-stakes games, with very little traffic at all beyond the $1/$2 level at my last visit.

As for tournaments – this is one area in which Sportsbook.ag's poker room does pretty well. The site hosts a long list of daily, weekly, and monthly tournaments, which is nice for a site with a small player base. I saw buy-ins ranging from $0.25 up to $200, but I know larger buy-ins are available on weeks – I visited on a weekday.

Sportsbook.ag has a variety of tournament styles, too – not just Texas Hold'em tournaments up and down the board, either. Right now, tournaments in Omaha and various forms of hi-lo are taking place, with plenty more on the daily schedule to come.

As is often the case at poker rooms of any size, the most popular tourneys are the site's weekly and monthly guaranteed prize pool events. Sunday's guaranteed tournament hands out prizes worth $50,000 – an amount that doubles to $100,000 once a month when the site runs its biggest monthly guaranteed event.

Usually, if you click a link that says "Contact Us", you'll be taken to a list of phone numbers, email addresses, and live chat links, and so on. That's not the case at Sportsbook.ag – clicking their "Contact Us" link takes you to a pretty useless FAQ section, with not a phone number or email address in sight. The fact that the site doesn't run a Live Chat service is very disappointing.

I did some Googling and found the following contact information for the site's customer support desk:

• 1-800-632-6088 - agents are available at this number between 8 AM and 3 AM EST.
• Email the site - [email protected]

Sportsbook.ag is pretty much indistinguishable from PlayersOnly and a few other properties owned by the Jezette group. The best section of the site is the sportsbook – just look at that long list of available markets. Unfortunately, it's still not worth writing home about. The interface looks outdated and (at least from my last visit) performs very slow. It tends to lag or at least does something similar, which really slows down the overall betting process.