Betting Blog - Bang and Pod’s bets

Hull win 1-0.  Nice.  £98 profit each.  The 1X2 price for Hull was 2.38.  £40 extra if we’d have gone for that.  I am going to have to start doing more ‘odds against’ 1X2 bets.  Asian Handicaps are good but its so hard to make a consistent profit betting on those.

Anyway. a couple of interesting blogs.  First is an Italian Betting Blog.  (here’s) the google translated link.  Looks like he is a long term winner.  Maybe I’ll follow his picks for the summer.  Love the disclaimer at the bottom.

The other one is punt.com.  Its a blog by someone who makes a living off Betfair.  I think this page is worth a read if you are serious about betting.  http://www.punt.com/faqs/index.html

Knowledge is power.

If you aren’t a gambler but want to gamble, then I’m not going to stop you.  I always tell people to not gamble if they haven’t started and to stop if they have.  Particularly when they don’t appear to be very clued up.  Before anyone gambles for entertainment or otherwise they need to know a few things:

• Why bookmakers make a profit.
• Why casinos make a profit.
• Gambling causes problems for people, it can be dangerous to do, even for those with the best of intentions.
• This is a mathematical game, if you know points one and two then you will also know the chances of you making a profit is close to zero!
• The chances of you losing your money is therefore close to 100%.
• If you are doing it for entertainment then spend time figuring out how you will feel once you have lost.  Because quite simply, you will - make sure you are ok with that and make sure you won’t want to make it back.
• Never bet more money than you can afford to lose.
• Probability, probability, probability.  You can’t beat it.  The gambler’s fallacy. Don’t know about probability ? - Give up now.
• Never use gambling as an escape from real life problems.  Some gambling games hypnotically affect people, they are designed to suck you in and make you forget reality.  Never forget the bigger picture, know how much money you are betting.
• Some casinos pump oxygen round to keep the gambler’s going for longer, slot machines make trance like patterns with their lights.  Don’t you think this is more than a little out of order?
• It is in bookmakers best interests to glamorise gambling.  To make you think you can win and to push bad strategies subconsciously onto you.  Hardly surprising is it?
• People selling systems are almost guaranteed to be losers.  Why would you sell a system when the rewards for using it would be so much higher.  Also, a sold system becomes worthless because so many people use it and the bookmakers / markets change because of it - system no longer works.

I knew all those points apart from the casinos pumping oxygen into the rooms to keep gamblers alert.  I don’t think its out of order at all.  Allowing drunk people in to the casino is wrong.  Oxygen and flashing lights are the least of things thats wrong with casinos.

You can read the blog here