5Dimes Sportsbook opened in Costa Rica nearly 18 years ago in 2000 by Tony Williams, a former professional sports bettor. As a sharp player Tony had the insight on how to attract bettors with unique offerings while never overexposing 5dimes. The book’s first claim to fame was its wagering menu, the largest for North American sports. At one time 5dimes.eu had five different casinos and two different poker rooms. If you wanted to make a bet on a Division 2 college that had more than one cardinal point in its name (South Western ‘Still-No-Idea-Where-the-hell-it-is’ University), 5Dimes.com was the place to go. 5Dimes was the very first sportsbook to book bets on teams featuring Lebron James and Carmelo Anthony… because they were in high school… as underclassmen.
In 2007 5dimes.eu began offering almost all of their betting menu on reduced juice markets, AKA low vig, AKA -105, AKA half what the standard price a sportsbook typically charged. Tony wasn’t quite Jeff Bezos. Afterall Pinnacle was the first bookmaker in the market to maintain the reduced model but they suddenly switched their focused to the United Kingdom and Asia. 5Dimes recognizing the demand for value at the right time solidified itself as one of the largest betting sites. Since then not much has changed. The software has improved but the model remains the same: high value, high volume bookmaking. This value for the player means 5dimes excels at player retention.
Online Since: March, 2000
Sign up Bonus: 50% Free Play (don’t do it)
Bonus Fine Print: 10X rollover with 1/10th of the bonus released for each
rollover
Reduced Juice: Yes – the best reduced juice sportsbook with all regular
league bets at -105 except soccer.
Unique Odds: Yes – 5Dimes will often be weighted to one side.
Deposits: Credit Card, Bitcoin, Person-to-Person
Bitcoin: Yes, Held in USD
Payouts: Free 1x per month: Check, Person2Person. Bitcoin – always free
5Dimes Pros: Biggest Menu, -105 Standard Pricing, 5c Overnight Baseball
5Dimes Cons: Bonus Structure, Up to 48 hour Bitcoin withdrawal, Full Price
Soccer
5Dimes Sportsbook has been taking bets before its customers were born
Yes, 5dimes can officially say it has been taking wagers before some of
its customers were alive. It has been over 18 years since the 5dimes.com
website was launched. It’s impressive when you consider 5dimes started
taking bets when people dialed in to AOL and spent most of their time in
chatrooms asking A/S/L? or sending the kind of email forwards long forgotten
if not for Grandma recently discovering the internet.
Sign-up Bonus – It’s relatively crappy.
The 5dimes Deposit bonus almost seems to be set up to educate bettors on
the value of reduced juice -105, VS -110 betting. It’s not that a
50% Free-play is bad. It’s just that when you compare the bonus to the reduced
juice offering its like committing to cable for the full year because they
gave you two months free instead of going with Netflix for 9 bucks. And
just like that cable package, you can’t simply switch to Netflix after
the bonus is over. You are stuck with the deal you made. 5Dimes gives players
50% Free-play bonus on deposits of $400 and then 20% on anything above that.
Bonus Terms – Get out your calculator
If you understand how sportsbook play-through requirements work, this is
not that complicated. However, if you understand how sportsbook play-through
requirements work… you are opting for reduced juice.
Using the example of 50% free-play bonus of the max bonus amount of $200,
5Dimes releases a $20 free-play (10%) for each one of the 10 required play-throughs
(rollovers) of Deposit + Bonus. So rather than get your free-play on the
day of your deposit, it is released after you give the sportsbook its wagering
activity. Using a rough evaluation of a free play being worth half of its
amount in cash, you are getting $10 for every $100 wagered. When you bet
that same $100 on a given day and won half of your bets you would pay $5
in vig (on the $50 losing side). Now, recalculate that at -105 and you save
$2.50 for every $100 wagered. To summarize: You get $10 of value for every
$100 wagered but only up to $200. With reduced juice, you are in theory
paying yourself $2.50 for the same $100 wagered, but also for every $100
wagered after that, forever. All bettors will lose some of their wagers.
Reduce juice minimizes those losses.
Reduced Juice at -105
Less than -110 pricing has a few different names including Reduced juice,
Reduced Vig, Discount Vig, or is simply referred to by how many cents on
the dollar it represents. Reduced juice is often -105 or -107 but can be
anything less than -110. 5Dimes offers all standard straight bets at -105
with the exception of soccer markets. For example, the Celtics full game
spread would be priced at -105 but the Celtics spread for the 2nd half would
be the industry standard -110 price. For players line shopping and looking
for long term value, this feature makes 5dimes a must-have.
Unique Odds – At 105 there is not room to straddle
A sportsbook that has -110 lines has enough wiggle room to essentially stay
around, or straddle, the average odds. There are good sportsbooks that have
a model of not being exposed to bettors who are looking for the best odds
on their pick. With 10 cents less to work with as well line movement propelled
by its thousands of bettors, 5dimes is often offering the best price on
a team.
Bitcoin – You don’t actually bet in crypto
Bettors want to bet on their sport picks not on the price of bitcoin. When
players send bitcoins to 5dimes they will see the value in US dollars reflected
in their 5dimes balance. When they request funds, it is also in dollars.
That means if you request $100, 5dimes will always send $100 worth of bitcoin
and barring a bitcoin value change in the time it takes you to redeem your
coins to dollars, $100 is what you get, free of fees. Typically bitcoin
redemptions take a few business hours although 5dimes asks that players
allow for up to 48 hours to send the funds.
5Dimes Pros & Cons
When talking about one of the best sportsbooks of all time it is hard to
outline cons for the sake of doing so. Having 5dimes as one of your sportsbooks
will save you money on a nightly basis so pointing out that the homepage
is ugly or bitcoin withdrawals can take an extra day may seem superficial.
However if you are a brand new bettor about to burn some cash for the weekend’s
playoffs, then finding a big cash bonus may be the better choice, especially
because you are still eligible for -105 at 5Dimes Sportsbook later. If you
are settling in to one betting site for the season or just need to add the
sportsbooks that may have the best odds for a given play, 5dimes makes sense & less cents.