Europe: Evens (Paddy Power)
The Draw: 10/1 (Betfred) and 11/1 on the exchanges.
The best prices add up to just 100.4% and the advice is to play the United States at 11/8 and wait for the other prices to drift to take advantage of an over broke book by the collective layers. I am mindful that the European players will receive frenzied support from the local Irish fans, whilst Ian Woosnam has secured the right to make the fairways and greens with a European bias with the links style of pitch and run play. As suggested earlier in this publication, the prices will vary considerably over the three days but 11/8 (USA) will create a positive start to your ledger.
It is the Americans who tend to land the big victories during the course of the year and if Tiger and his playmates dominate the week by week headlines, I could envisage the price of the Europeans drifting quite early in the season, especially if the USA players run riot in The Masters at Augusta.
The layers are looking to ‘get’ the US money into their satchels convinced that ‘team spirit’ will overcome any deficiency that the European team might take into the match, but this is a dangerous stance to adopt. The scenario has worked in favour of the Europeans before, but it should be remembered that such psychology takes on a new perspective when the original outsiders have now become the favourites to win the event. The underdogs have fought tenaciously as teams down the years in almost every sport you can name. How else could Wimbledon have beaten Liverpool in the F.A. Cup Final in 1988, when man for man they were facing a hopeless task?
Would Wimbledon have had so much blood coursing
through their veins if the bookmakers had priced them up as favourites for the game? Take that thought with you when you consider betting on the Ryder Cup this autumn.
Football – The 2006/07 Premiership season.
Football is becoming an increasingly ‘mental’ sport, especially at the top level, where psychology is as important as the talent of the players that take to the field. The first goal of a match dictates the rest of the game, yet ‘Sven’ (to name but one) does not seem prepared to accept the situation. If I asked you to name the top player in the Premiership in the season just finished, players such as Lampard, Terry and Gerrard would probably spring to mind. What you and ‘Sven’ should take into account however, is that only one player in the top flight of domestic football scored the first goal of the game eight times last season, and his name is Darren Bent. Indeed, Charlton only scored the opening goal of the game on twelve occasions from thirty-eight opportunities, yet Bent scored eight of those important goals!
This is the type of crucial information that you should digest before calculating odds, whether you intend to be a layer or a player. The Art of Bookmaking (as the forward suggests) is written in a manner which leaves the emphasis on you the reader, to determine how you want to develop your greater understanding of compiling odds. You might consider that Beattie (Everton) remains an underrated player (another forward that Sven turned down), especially as the old fashioned centre forward scored the opening goal of the game on seven occasions during the 2005/2006 season. Further investigation would lead you to deduce
however, that all seven of Beattie’s opening goals were scored at Goodison Park; hence as a potential bookmaker, you should restrict the odds when Everton are entertaining the opposition, but ‘lay’ the forward away from home.
Goal scoring is about confidence as much as anything else, and some forwards struggle to match their home performances on their travels. This is not the case with Tottenham’s Robbie Keane however, as the Irish international opened the scoring on five occasions away from White Hart Lane last year. Whatever big name that Tottenham might sign in the month or years to come will struggle to match Keane from a mental perspective, and that is what makes Robbie such an important and valuable asset.
How many times did you (as a punter) back a Premiership match to end in a draw last season? Unless you secured a usually unavailable price of 4/1 or more, you were wasting your money in general terms. Just twenty per cent of the Premiership games ended all square last season, and as a
‘bookmaker’ you should seek to turn these facts to your advantage.
You can still lay the draw in these games on the exchanges at 5/2 and 11/4, as punters accept that an average price of just 12/5 is available in the betting outlets. By laying the draw you are finding an edge against your fellow trader, and fundamentally, this must be your aim for this coming season.
With just three results to consider, some potential bookmakers will feel uneasy about laying a seemingly exaggerated price about the stalemate, but such people should study the facts and steam in, because that’s what bookmaking is (or should be) all about. Armed with the facts
and stats that you have read in this book, you now need the
‘balls’ to back up the information because the bookmaking business is not all about money and knowledge. Unless you have the courage of your conviction, you will go where so many bookies have gone in the past.
John McCririck is a lot of things but he is no fool. As a failed bookmaker (and I know the feeling), John will tell you that there are 2000 less independent bookmakers now compared to the old days. So many more shops would have closed down in the last few years but for the gaming machines that can be found in the licensed premises these days, and betting shop bookmakers are not so much ‘layers’
these days but agents who cream off their expenses from
‘punters’ who rarely bet on horse racing.
Independent bookmakers are fast becoming punters themselves, looking to beat their fellow punters on the exchanges in much the same way that I have played the toteplacepot down the years.
If you play the exchanges either as a layer or a player, you are seeking to beat your fellow ‘punter’, pure and simple. It is a scenario that I have adopted with the toteplacepot and fellow punters are so much easier to defeat than established bookmakers.
When you take stock of what you have read in this publication, the one thing you should do is to dwell on the information you have gleaned. Do not make a snap decision on whether you want to become the next ‘new bookie’ on the block, or give up your ‘day job’ thinking that you now have what it takes to change direction in life. Digest the facts, make observations and treat each new morning as a learning day, which I am still doing after thirty five years in the business.
‘Play’ at becoming a bookmaker if you like, by laying and striking imaginary bets and enter the results down in debit and credit columns. Do not withdraw large sums of money and start waging war with layers and players until you have a definite strategy. Only then should you decide if you are ready to take the ‘Art of Bookmaking’ a stage further.