Betting Blog - Bang and Pod’s bets

Looks like a nailed on cert this one.

Hills are 1/10 that Alex will be voted out of Big Brother on Friday with Mario offered at 11/2. William Hill also offer 6/1 that Alex will beat the record eviction vote percentage of 91.6%. The record 91.6% has stood since 2006 and is held by the unforgettable Sezer!

“Mario is extremely lucky that he is up against such a foul mouthed freak as he is not popular at all, But Alex is our shortest first quote for the boot and she will be gone by Saturday morning,” said Hill’s spokesman Rupert Adams.

William Hill Bet:
6/1 Alexander gains more than 91.6% of the eviction vote

William Hill Eviction Betting: 1/10 Alexandra, 11/2 Mario

William Hill Big Brother Winner: 5/2 Kathreya, 7/2 Luke, 5/1 Michael, 8/1 Rachel, 8/1 Darnell, 12/1 Rex, 14/1 Dale, 25/1 Mohamed, 25/1 Rebecca, 25/1 Jennifer, 40/1 Sylvia, 50/1 Lisa, 50/1 Dennis, 66/1 Mario, 100/1 Alexandra

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

It was meant to start again this month.  There’s only this weekend and next left of the football betting season so we’ve decided to give it a miss.  We’ve still betting individually but not putting money in to a pot. 

My first bet of the month is going to be a rock solid banker treble.  If any of these fail, I think it’ll be time to stop betting for good.  Just can’t see it. Man U have to win, Derby can’t stop getting thrashed and Villa are in form and still could take 5th place from Everton. 

Man Utd v West Ham
Aston Villa v Wigan Athletic
Blackburn v Derby

All home wins, £50 staked at 2.36

Pod’s bets go down the toilet due to a couple of late goals.  The whole bet was a little stupid anyway.  Most he could have won was about £850 from his £350 and that was if all of the came in.  He should have had a accumulator on the 3 results rather than a patent.  I think patent bets are only worth while if the odds are 4/1 or greater.  As they were all Asian Handicaps, he needed all 3 to win to make any decent profit. 

Anyway, going to try a bit of spread betting next season.  I figure that football spead betting will be more profitable as when we lose, we don’t lose by much.  Thats the plan anyway.  It’ll be something for next season as funny things happen toward the end of the season and with spread betting, you can win big but also lose big. 

After the terrible Saturday, I forgot about a four fold I stuck on midweek.  I was looking at the fixture list and picked out, Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea and Villa as bankers and stuck them in a 4 fold multiple.  I got 5.73 for that, £50.  I figured that the rest of the fixtures were too tricky and would be best left alone.  I really should not have bet on any other matches. 

Fingers cross.  If this comes in, I’ll regard this weekend as a ’stinker’ rather than a ‘fatal body blow’. 

Just read this on the Indie website
Footballer ‘fixed match to pay off gambling debt of £50,000′

How an ‘epidemic’ of addiction is destroying the careers and lives of some of the game’s top players

A footballer with a serious gambling problem has admitted accepting a £50,000 bribe to help throw a game in Britain, The Independent can reveal.

According to a source familiar with the circumstances, the player – who has a Premiership club on his CV – racked up a £50,000 debt with a bookmaker. The bookmaker said he would write off the debt if the player got himself sent off and also persuaded three team-mates to get booked in a specific game.

That explains how my rock solid bets lose Looks like a lower league anyway.  I don’t be on them.  Dying to find out who the bookie is.  Never betting with them again. 

I was right about the half time draw in Liverpool/ Arsenal.  I knew it would be close, but rather than 2.1 for the half time draw I went for 0-0 at half time at 2.5.  Its just sickening when you lose like that.  To top it off with 20 minutes to go, Arsenal dominating possession, I decide to go on a claw back mission.  £50 notes Arsenal to win at 2.8.  As soon as I stuck it on I released that Arsenal were having a bout of arsenalitis and were dominating but not actually shooting.  It ended 1-1.  Terrible night. 

This weekend the syndicate is back.   Looked at the fixtures and nothing stands out.  Guess that I’ll just be having what Pod’s having.  Its been an absolute stinker of a month but he’s been doing well.  Speaking of Pod,  just found his poker video (from the poker dome) on youtube, so cheesy (if like me, you can’t be bothered to watch it all, he wins it)

Just been on the sportingodds site for the Arsenal/ Liverpool game.  The have a market called half time under over 0.5 goals.  Basically, if its 0-0 at half time, its under (2.5), else its over 0.5 goals (1.5).  They also have a market called half time correct score.  0-0 is priced at 2.25.  So if you think its going to be 0-0 at half time, then bet on unders at half time at 2.5.  I think the games going to be tight, so £50 notes on that.  Half time draw is evens at most places. 

That’s an even more retarded situation than when bookies price a home win and a -0.5 on the Asian Handicap differently.   You might get 1.91 on a home win but switch the Asian Odds and you might get evens.  That’s just about understandable though as the markets are booked differently.  I guess it just shows that correct score betting is a bad bet and betting at Asian Bookies is good. 

As for mine and Pod’s bets this week.  Looks like its going to be Man U draw no bet at 1.8.  End of the month, so money is a bit tight.  Going to hope the price holds up until tomorrow. 

Spurs lose, 4-1 after leading 1-0.  It might be time to black list those fellas.  Man U cruise to a 4-0 victory, Chelsea hang on for a 1-0 win.  Would have been so sweet if the Spuds would have won. 

 Anyway, overall I didn’t lose anything this weekend.  Lucky for me I had Sunderland to beat West Ham.  Sunderland score in the 95th minute or something daft like that.  Price was 2.3 so actually made a small profit. 

We’ll be back with the new month.  Looking at the Champions League, Man U on the Asian +0 at 1.95 looks great.  Roma have their captain and top scorer out.  Man U took the piss out of Villa the other day.  They are such a class side and should be clear favourites to win the Champions League.  Barcelona have no chance.  I was checking the odds the other day, Betis vs Barcelona, Betis were 200/1 or something like that to beat Barcelona after they went 2-0.  Betis came back and won 3-2.  That doesn’t happen to Champions. 

Not too happy with the default wordpress spam catcher, Akismet.  Like all wordpress sites, this gets loads of spam.  Akismet catches loads but there were some false positives in there.  You still have to go through the comments and delete them.  So decided to put a captcha on the comments form.  The captcha is this one and the word list is from here  Hopefully that will stop the spam (ironic considering what I used to do for a living).