Introduction to Pinnacle Sports

Updated: 15.08.2025

PinnacleSports.com is an online sportsbook, a betting site that takes you beyond the borders of the United States - as more and more U.S.-based betting operations are forced to do. Founded in 1998, Pinnacle was one of the first online sportsbooks. Today, a decade after its inception, Pinnacle remains one of the best in the business. Bets are placed here by and for the world's biggest and most successful bettors, who expect the lowest margins, the highest limits, and the fastest payouts - none of which seem to involve the kind of "personal limit" collars that keep most U.S. bettors on probation. Not only is Pinnacle the best-kept secret in offshore sports betting, but it's an offshore operation that doesn't specifically cater to American customers.

The Computer Group

It is often said that Pinnacle Sports is owned by former members of a notorious U.S. betting syndicate called the Computer Group, which started in the 1970s. Since personal computers didn't exist back then, the first computers they used were massive machines rented for several thousand dollars a month. In the beginning, a former nuclear submarine designer, Michael Kent, communicated with the computer, and an orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Ivan Mindlin, facilitated the placing of bets. The group had dozens of members when legendary gambler Bill Walters was recruited in 1983. By that time, the group was making as much as $1 million a week betting on college sports.

In 1987, the Computer Group disbanded over legal issues and the members went their separate ways. There are rumors that 5Dimes.com was programmed by a former member and that BetHorizon was founded by one of their key runners. These are unconfirmed. While also only a rumor, though one that has never been denied, it's often said that PinnacleSports.com had the most Computer Group ties - heretagesports.eu is now owned by a single former member.

Pinnacle’s Start: The Original Heritage Sports

The organization that currently operates heritagesports.eu has a sole owner who was a partner in the original Heritage Sports. This company was founded on Margarita Island, Venezuela in the early to mid 1990's. The original company is said to have been heavily influenced by the founders of the Computer Group. Like its predecessor, this toll-free bookmaker serving the United States offers its customers high betting limits and fast payouts.

In 1998, a law was passed that required betting sites operating from Margarita Island to partner with a hotel with at least 300 rooms. The only hotel on the island at the time happened to be associated with people close to the rising power of Hugo Chávez. Seeing the future president's writing on the wall, some sportsbooks, including PlayersOnly (now sportsbook.ag) and Rio (later Skybook), moved their operations. NASA (now betus.com) and many others simply disappeared. Of the books that disappeared, most did not pay their players what was owed to them. With this in mind, it is important to note that Heritage had the decency to pay its customers after the fact, as did the other books that disappeared.

Pinnacle Sports Founded in the Dutch Antilles

Pinnacle Sports launched in October 1998 from Curacao, then in the Dutch Antilles (part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands), where they could count on a stable government - unlike many other countries sportsbooks had chosen. Pinnacle's management was almost a perfect match for the class act Heritage Sports had taken. At the time, sports betting was illegal in the U.S., but Heritage Sports had found a way to offer it. Once Pinnacle was up and running, it was again the class act that made them popular with U.S. bettors who could not bet legally. Still, in 1998, it was a coin flip whether a sportsbook you opened an account with was run by crooks.

Even without betting, Pinnacle Sports was an early adopter of the Internet. They owned many domains (some just an IP address), but pinnacle.an and sportgamblers.com correctly pointed to their main site. Left untouched, these domains displayed display advertising. When Pinnacle went live on the Web, to the credit of their lead Web developer, they operated with an updated look, a clean interface, and an easy to navigate site. In addition, while forum conversations tended to be a bit freewheeling, Pinnacle operated with a high degree of charity and integrity, never running its online sportsbook in a way that drew the ire of customers or resulted in a bad reputation.

Pinnacle Sports Early Internet Struggles

Pinnacle's evolution from a nascent Internet betting site to the behemoth it is today hasn't been without its share of hardships. Their website, in its initial iteration, had an awful lot of been-there, done-that downtime. On two notable occasions, it was completely wiped out: once by a hurricane and once by a tropical storm. But those weather-related mishaps were less of a challenge than the internal storm that soon blew up in everyone's faces.

Just a few months after the launch of planetpinnacle.com, its operators found themselves competing with a copycat site, Direcbet. Using the same software that powered Pinnacle Sports' operations, Direcbet began offering online betting to the same global clientele that had made Pinnacle profitable. Adding insult to injury, the people running Direcbet's engine were almost all former Pinnacle employees, recruited by a mole working inside Pinnacle to help with the hostile takeover. Somewhere in the mole's lavishly padded office was a poster that read, "First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." The saga of Direcbet and its insidiousness would surely have surprised and delighted its founder, Swiss mathematical genius Eric A.Z. Zuber. By all accounts, Zuber had ample reason to tell his life story in a few dozen comic panels.

Pinnacle Masters Online Bookmaking

The proposals made by Pinnacle Sports in 2003 sounded crazy. They could easily have been the parting words of a bookmaker about to go under. One of these ideas was that a player could bet as much as he wanted, in any amount, and win as many times as he wanted, and not have his account restricted in any way because Pinnacle was open to winning players. However, since that time, sportsbooks in Las Vegas, betting shops in the UK, and almost all online betting sites not only keep a very close eye on what kind of player is using their site, but also limit those players who they deem to be gambling addicts.

In 2004, they introduced the lowest house edge in the casino industry, and followed up with house edges in all American sports that were $0.05 better than the industry standard. In some cases, these edges were reduced to $0.05 (i.e., from $0.05 to $0.04); however, they still maintained a $0.05 edge over their competitors. Here is what their edge looked like in certain situations: - For most bookmakers and sportsbooks, the default price was NFL: -110 (1.91 decimal odds) / -110 (1.91 decimal odds). - For Pinnacle, the price was NFL: -104 (1.96 decimal odds) / -104 (1.96 decimal odds).

Pinnacle not only had the lowest odds, but also the highest betting limits. You could place a bet at Pinnacle today for anywhere from 25,000 to 80,000 Euros on an NFL point spread. And that is a "per bet limit" that only gives them a chance to move the line, as players can place as many max bets as they want. What's even more amazing is that payouts are handled on autopilot. If you request a large withdrawal from Pinnacle to an e-wallet like Neteller or Skrill, once your account is verified, any future withdrawals will arrive in a matter of minutes.

Understanding the Pinnacle Model

Pinnacle Sports employs the most skilled oddsmakers in the world. They open betting lines in a market with $5,000 to $10,000 as the starting limit for each bet. Adjustments to the lines are made based on the volume of bets taken and the amount of money in play. Ideally, the last line represents a spot that your known winners have no interest in.

The way Pinnacle moves the lines is ingenious; it involves advanced algorithms that take into account the player, the amount wagered, the timing, and the reason for the wager. In other words, the user's profile counts just as much, if not more, than the amount, side and vertical of the bet. Pinnacle is confident that it has reached a place where neither side has a betting advantage. From there, it makes a profit using less than half the mark-up that other sportsbooks charge.

The Pinnacle Pulse

Armed with a platform from which they could gain an edge over the savvy bettor, Pinnacle Sports began the task of educating the forum-dwelling bettor. For this audience, they created a newsletter called Pinnacle Pulse, which offered various tidbits about betting, prop pricing, and more. Between September 2005 and September 2007, they published a total of 77 issues of Pinnacle Pulse, and if you are really interested, I bet you can find all of them somewhere online.

While the name of their marketing director, Simon Noble (former CEO of the first online sportsbook), signed the bottom of these publications, many were ghostwritten by Elihu D. Feustel. He's since written Conquering Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street. He's better known these days as SBR host Justin7.

How the Betting Market Matured

Soon, word spread that Pinnacle's odds were the most accurate, and they just had vig. This meant that you could go to any recreational sportsbook like JustBet or Sportsbook.com and look for arbitrage opportunities. When you found them, you could either bet in a way that guaranteed you a profit with an arb, or you could just bet the non-pinnacle side. The latter was often +EV, and many people made a fortune doing it. This was a good way for the betting market to mature (become efficient), largely due to Pinnacle's offer of reduced juice, large max bets, and no limit on the number of max bets you could make. And just like that, Pinnacle, this offshore company, changed the entire landscape of the betting market.

Pinnacle Sports Today

Today, Pinnacle Sports is still licensed in Curacao. It has also obtained a license from the Alderney Gambling Control Commission (AGCC), which is recognized by the United Kingdom. Pinnacle is free to market its products in the UK through print and television with virtually no restrictions other than those that apply to all gambling operations. The UK is a huge market for Pinnacle. Since almost all gambling in the UK is now conducted over the Internet, Pinnacle, which operates primarily on the Internet, is able to take full advantage of the UK gambling market.