Every four years there comes a great football tournament that gets the whole world excited like nothing else, and that is the world cup. This years event is hosted in South Africa and starts 11th June 2010.
With the fairly recent online betting world taking off, last time round I didn't research my teams enough and was a little too slow on the uptake to take advantage of some of the great odds being offered in certain draws.
Some online betting agencies were offering odds of up to 5,000 to 1 against the chances of anyone scoring at least 6 goals in one match, and had I got in early enough then I could have made a kiling with high scoring teams like Argentina and Spain.
This time round the bookmakers have learned their lesson, and even an unbelievably high score line of 9-0 ( which has only ever been managed in the final rounds twice since its inception in 1930's and none in the last 35 years ) are only a pathetic 100 to 1 against, so is no longer worth the risk.
However, the first group stages for this years competition seem very uneven, with each group having one clear favourite and one lucky-to-be-here outsider, allowing plenty of scope for adventurous betting with accumulators that still have a high probability of getting at least your money back if done correctly.
If you have never gambled, or are very unlucky when you do then I would suggest that either you don't bet at all or only a few pennies per accumulator.
My prediction for qualifiers of the the groups are as follows ;-
Group A - France & Mexico
Group B - Argentina & Nigeria
Group C - England & USA
Group D - Germany & Ghana
Group E - Netherlands & Cameroon
Group F - Italy & Paraguay
Group G - Brazil & Portugal
Group H - Spain & Chile
Although there is always the possibility of a shock surprise, like France being knocked out the first round without scoring a single goal (World Cup in Korea/Japan 2002) , I feel fairly certain that my first pick team in each group will qualify either first or second.
My second choices are much less certain, and often I have picked an African team purely on the basis of them having the home ground advantage, as they will be used to the pitch conditions, heat & humidity, climate, water quality, time zones, etc.
Personally I have avoided anything beyond the first round, I have avoided predicting final scores (and other very risky bets like time of first goal or how many yellow cards and fouls commited) and I have only selected a few individual games to bet on.
That said, with online betting making it simple to pick your choices and offering a multitude of different combination bets, I have set up several combination bets with at least four of my sure things together with a single second choice to create some realistic accumulators that still have worth while odds.
None of my bets conflict with each other, as if I have learned that trying to cover myself with spread betting (betting both sides) does nothing more than guarantee that some of my bets will fail, and this is the fastest way to end up with nothing at the end.
I have also had a purely silly moment with a single 1 x 10p accumulator bet on all my second choices that if it comes off will net a huge windfall, but the combined odds are worse than the lottery so I am not holding out any hope on that one.
Overall, I will be not only be dissapointed but indeed very shocked if my system does not at least make my money back, with the added potential for making between a small and a medium size return upon my investment.
I am also going to make a small prediction here of who I think will make the quarter finals, but there are so many possibly minor changes that would affect the first and second placings of this set of results that I myself don't feel it is worth the risk of betting upon it.
Quarter Final 1 - France vs German
Quarter Final 2 - England vs Argentina
Quarter Final 3 - Netherlands vs Italy
Quarter Final 4 - Brazil vs Spain
Being Patriotic I am not going to curse fate by saying any more, but as 6 of my 8 predicted finalists are from Europe there are good odds that this years winner will be European, with South America being the only other choice according to my estimations.
No comments:
Post a Comment