Gambling Away

Finally the time has arrived and Europe is going crazy for soccer again. Today a momentary peak of excitement as London and England natives were cheering in the office (all away from their desks in front of the conference room TV’s) to see England first start off pretty well but then crash versus the Frenche defence. This was the first time I saw MD’s respectfully recognise their subordinates soccer love and actually let them watch the game (none of them actually stayed to watch themselves though).. As the game progressed people started to take small bets against France and it seemed that everybody had their own ideas on the outcome of the game and ultimately the tournament.

This brought me back to Sunday when we were watching the Italy versus Spain game and went online beforehand to submit a few bets on various scenarios e.g. betting on the percentages of ownership of the ball during the game or on the corners each team would shoot (somebody must have made a fortune during the Bayern Chelsea game on all those corners for Munich).

While the odds keep getting better and better on some extremely strange scenarios that could happen during the game you soon start to forget the actual game and just observe the variables that make your bet come true and influence your odds of winning. I must admit that the amounts we play with at the moment are pretty small but it certainly gives another perspective to the game and adds some more excitement. My favourite bet shortly became the overtime in the first half time, praying some of the players would stay on the ground for a bit longer after being fouled. Even though I mostly miss the exact time (around 2 minutes if I bet 3 and around 3 minutes if I bet 2) it hasn’t gotten old just yet.

Even though the soccer background may only apply to the European monkeys on here, the betting etc. surely applies to everybody as well.

So my question in general would be if anybody on WSO does use the common betting websites, has developed some betting routines or does it the oldschool way, dragging a bunch of bills to your local bookie?

Happy to also hear some strategies that have paid off in the past.

6 Comments
 

Heh. Great post. We wrote a small trading app in our office. Strictly for IT-ish people though (Quants/core IT), none of the business people on it.

I wrote a small market-making applet and immediately ran into some serious debt (Maximum capitalization is 50 Euros, so I'll be okay).

But Rhaegar fought valiantly, Rhaegar fought nobly, Rhaegar fought bravely. And Rhaegar died.
 

Don't personally use it, but online betting is growing. Friends (Swedish) use it because they also are able to watch sports online in HD as a part of some package for the betting program.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."
 

I have written about this countless times before but a dude I work with bets huge size and has to send money orders to the phillipines and shit all the time to fund his books since he is based in the US. Pretty huge pain in the ass but he makes enough that its worth it.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses - Henry Ford
 

Use 'bwin' because I can watch the game as well, you just need a positiv balance. Tried 'betfair' but they were only good because I got 30%(?) rakeback on poker.

CNBC sucks "This financial crisis is worse than a divorce. I've lost all my money, but the wife is still here." - Client after getting blown up
 

A lot of local bookie these days have their own websites that you can log onto and put your bets in and track. They might not have as many live wagers like what play will be run next but they do have live wagers for quarters and things like that. Good thing about local bookies (if you can trust them) is that you can get your money the next tuesday or wednesday depending on their paydays. You dont have to send money to their bookie before hand either so they have to trust you too. But it might be another option for you.

 

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