Saturday 2 January 2010

The Perils Of Gambling


Don't do it, kids.

In a former life, Dick was quite involved in darts and provided tips to a rather salubrious subscription betting site. They must have been good because I was made a free life member. Some of the darts info I am afforded would make your hair curl so an anonymous darts blog would have been quite interesting. Unfortunately, I tried it for a couple of weeks and darts fans completely missed the point.

Anyway, one still likes to keep one's hand in and I threw a lazy tenner at Simon Whitlock at 66/1 earlier this month with a deliberate view to laying if it got too hot. That day was yesterday but, with distractions aplenty I bloody forgot, didn't I.

Brilliant, then, that he won to offer a much more attractive lay today. Bloody wonderful, in fact, as the bet was still alive and dent to my return, after hedging, was reduced by half.

Guaranteed profit is nice, but seeing him beat Barneveld tonight is rather worrying. I'm now left with a matched liability of £581 if he should beat Taylor tomorrow, leaving a mere £73 profit.

Now, it ain't happening, of that I'm pretty sure, but if he'd lost to Wade (with my lay placed) or Barney, I'd have been quite happy. With Taylor, though, I'm in the odd position of wanting Whitlock to win despite it costing me about £500.

There should be no sentiment in betting, so I wish I'd not bothered with a wager in the first place, to be honest.

Ungrateful bastard, ain't I?




6 comments:

John Demetriou said...

Ah, the old gambler's 'hindsight is 20 20' lesson.

Been there many times mate. Many times indeed.

By the way, if you want to make money, Betfair are offering silly odds on Leeds doing well against Man Utd tomorrow. I've taken a spread of correct scores at fantastic odds. 1-1, 0-1, 1-2 and 2-2.

Massively worth investing in those scorelines. But don't blame me if you dabble and it don't come off!

Hey, come on, at least I'm not doing a Lawro and predicting a Man Utd win by 2 goals to nil.

(I just guessed he predicted that, then I went to the Beeb site and lo and behold, I was right. Why does he bother?!?!)

John Demetriou said...

WHAT DID I FUCKIN' SAY!!!!

60 MINS GONE, AND LEEDS UP 1-0.

CHRIST, I'LL WIN HUNDREDS IF IT CARRIES ON LIKE THIS!

WOOO HOOO!!
HAHAHAHA!!

:-)

John Demetriou said...

So, Dick, did you lump on that game or not?

Dick Puddlecote said...

Nuts! I've only just seen it so no, I didn't. Hope you made merry hay with it, though. :-)

As a non league fan, I don't generally look far above that level for value (bookies are less aware of minutiae down there, although stake limits are lower), so I probably would have missed out anyway. Although it seems you had the value concept firmly in your mind with this one.

It looks like you could have taken advantage of that great human trait of herd mentality with this bet. Opposing that and using the head rather than the heart is how the astute punter can gain an edge and beat the old adage that 'only a bookie wins'. But I suspect you know all that.

If I was watching the game anyway, those scores would have been a nice starting point for in-running, and being the ringfencer I am, I would likely have tried to go green before the second half was too old.

I usually look for profit, small and often.

John Demetriou said...

Ah, you're more strategic and clever than me. I get allured by odds and profit margins too much. Which means I bet and win less, but when I win, it turns out gravy.

All the best

JD

Dick Puddlecote said...

Kerching! I'm in gravy now, too.

It means another title for the tedious Stokie midget toilet-maker, but I'm a solid £570 up.

Booked a flight tonight as celebration.