The inside tip on sports gambling

Just as i thought a topic on gambling by somebody who doesn't gamble, and responded to by most non gamblers. One great issue here is that these lets call them Betting Shops are driving even harder to keep their market share alive whilst driving out the competition which makes these companies even more aggressive to promote their company hence we see the wall to wall market advertising from all of them clamering for their market share. You can win by gambling on sport's if you know you're odds and more importantly are prepared to lose ,which most gamblers don't asses, you can't win if you don't acknowledge the ramifications from you're wager. But whats even more important and concerning is when your child say's daddy their decent odds when prices are shown on the screen when they are 12 -14 years of age ,thats when you should be flicking channels you generally know when the prices are coming in relation to the kiddies. Bookmaking firms nowadays aren't interested so much in our money their more interested in breeding our children to asses prices for sports and thats were i have a serious issue with these firms, our kids.

i am not happy with all this betting advertising all over my sports broadcast, channel 9 are serial offenders with their coverage of the cricket and NRL (not that we see too much of that down in melbourne). i think the ease of betting on sport is getting out of hand. id like to see a rule where instead of being able to just plug your credit card into the sportsbettingistooeasy.com iphone app or website, you should actually have to get off your arse and go down to the TAB.

Indeed. Plus, isn't that part of the job? Just like insurance companies, gosh!, paying out insurance claims, isn't the job of the bookmaker to pay out winning bets from time to time? Anyway, I have no sympathy for bookmakers and their various complaints.

Great article Michael. The creeping encroachment of sporting betting is appalling. Especially when you consider the way exotic bets are not just corrupting players, but actually undermining our confidence in the players every time they do something stupid. 'Are they on the take???' What is it with sport? We just got rid of all the cigarette's and now have booze and gambling? Is it really that hard to stick to ethical companies?

I enjoy a punt on sport and I disagree with the idea that the odds are always stacked against you but I must say that's what the Bookies try to achieve. When an event is truly a 50-50 contest the Bookies set the prices at something like $1.95 v $1.95 so the pay out is marginally less than the true odds - hence their "advantage". If you want to take punting on sport more seriously and make money in the long haul you have to spend time assessing the odds accurately, track form and statistics that are true indicators of good form. Then you must make objective judgements about what the true odds for the event are. Once you've done this you can compare your odds with those set by the bookmaker and bet when you think the bookmaker has made an error in your favor (i.e your assessment of the true odds is $2.50 and the bookmaker is offering $3.00). I this situation an Irish statistician named Kelly has come up with a formula that tells you how much of your bank you should bet. Notice in this situation I only expect to win 40% of the time but if my assessment is right the Bookies odds more than pay for my losses. Of course the Bookies aren't often wrong and when they are it usually isn't by a big margin but this is the theory behind successful sports bettting (and I have the results over the last 3 seasons of the AFL and NFL to prove it does work if your discliplined). I do agree that betting on hunches is a long term, losing strategy (even though I still have the ocasional $10 bet when watching a game at the pub) Even if you don't want to go through the statistcal analysis you should always ask yourself "If these two teams play each other 10 times what would I expect the result to be?" and compare this percentage with the Bookie's percentage before you bet. Having said all of that even I agree that the promotion of odds for sports events is way over top. I don't mind the Sports Betting Companies sponsoring teams, events and venues but I think the commentators should just comment on the game. I actually think some legislation along the lines of banning the mention of odds on radio and television from 1/2 an hour before the game until the conclusion of the event is in order. And when a sports punter like me thinks this way we've definitely got a problem

Nathan, Just because you are someone who watches sport and doesn't play the pokies don't think that sports betting comes anywhere near the amount of money gambled on the pokies. Also the amount which you can lose on pokies are far higher given they operate nearly 24/7 and your rates of success are much lower. I don;t disagree with your sentiments that the issue is a problem, but it is important to keep it in perspective.

the government's ignorance to this gambling promotion is farcical. they're up in arms about smoking and plain packaged ciggs, and even getting started on pokies now, but nothing about sports betting. I would ssy sports betting is potentially more dangerous than pokies, you can bet online with large amounts of cash and lose it all in one match or race. and the fact that the advertising is plastered everywhere, surely that's just encouraging problem gamblers to get on. It's a national disgrace and makes our sports image look tacky and cheap.

Individuals can win, but it is very rare. I've known a professional gambler in my time, and he would be ridiculously wealthy one week and poor as the next. That Centrebet ad just seems to look like a simulation of a gambling problem.

I agree with the general sentiment of this piece, but I'm not sure it's true you're always destined to lose money. The public is as a whole, but there might well be some smart individual punters out there. My real issue is how difficult its become to protect kids from gambling. I think my mum wouldn't have let me watch footy on TV if there'd been as much gambling advertising in the 80s as there is now.

Well said. I always read on Monday how an anonymous punter turned $10 into $30k but getting a series of "multiple-bets" correct. I think this is another ploy to encourage betting. The agency only has to add up some unlikely results that happened over that previous weekend and tell us a bet was placed on these results. -- Comment left via The Roar's iPhone app. Download The Roar's iPhone App in the App Store here.