Western Force vs Lions - big middle on hcps

2 questions,how do you get a bet on with stanleys?,and secondly what happens if the Lions win by 34 and they tell you they made a mistake.

Jimeen, in fairness to db he's flagging up a good betting opportunity here for others, although your questions are very relevant in view of the current carry on by members of the bookmaking fraternity.

Anyway, re the second part of your question, here's what one punter did when encountering an offer on a rugby match in a bookies that he thought might represent a palpable error :

Customer walks into his local Celtic Bookmakers on morning of 16/11/10 around 10.30. Spots A4 sheet on wall with following advert:   "WALLABY WACKERS - In the Munster v Australia game Celtic will refund all losing bets if the game is won by Munster. Max refund 200 per customer. Singles Only. No duplicate bets. "

Customer thinks that's a crazy offer and must be a mistake. He can back Australia at 4/6 and, unless the game ends in a draw (25/1), he has effectively got a free bet. Consequently ignores offer.

Later that evening customer is in another Celtic shop in Clonmel. To his amazement, offer is still on display. He approaches counter and enquires of manager if the offer is a mistake, pointing out what a great bet it represents. She replies that it isn't. Customer considers having a bet but is worried that palpable error rule may be quoted post-game. Approaches counter again and requests manager to phone head office to verify offer. She does so and, after hanging up the phone, states that offer is okay. Surprised, customer places e200 on Aus to win match at 4/6. Leaves shop.

Munster win game and, one week later, customer enters shop and gets paid his e200 bet refund.

thats why ivan yeats is looking out at crows eating maggots in wales!!

Reb,its hardly much of a betting opportunity now is it. How do you get a bet on with Stanleys if you are based in Ireland ?. You are getting 20/1 about a 10/1 chance,and that would be if Stanleys pay without messing,which is no certainty and you have to drive to Belfast to get on more than likely,and then the price has to be there when you get there,plus they may choose not to lay it either,that would hardly be a surprise either.
This is a bullshitt middle,not a big middle. A big middle would be if there was a possibility of clicking both bets for no risk at all.
That incident with Celtic was quite obviously a mistake,and Yates should be applauded for not trying to evade payment. I wouldnt fancy too many of his competitors at the time doing the same.

jimeen,ivan was always a bit reckless.i remember he gave 10/1 river liane at a chelt preview a few yr ago.. when he was generally 2/1.he would have got in as much if he offered 5/1.it got beat but it was still reckless in the extreme.

Ivan KNEW re River Liane.

Stanley = Stan James, apologies for my own shorthand there.

Betpack online would follow their prices exactly too (and maybe Betpack shops as well).

The -30 will be paid out, no palp there, -32 & -33 readily available at the time. Sky were also -30 but couldn't get on in time there.

As regards the attractiveness or not of the middle, obviously we would all like a free bet every now and then where both sides of the handicap are Evs (or maybe 11/10 & 10/11) but you might only get a 1-2 of those a year and even then you are usually waiting on just the one number.

I'm more than prepared to stake 5pts on each side with a 20/1 chance of hitting any of 4 numbers and take the hit of 0.5 pt if the bet loses.

Line out to 40 now!

Stan James as opposed to Stanleys makes a huge difference to the bet. It is now possible to get both bets now without undue hassle,and 20/1 is definitely a  very big price when there is a 4 point window.
Ivan was a big gambler and is a nice fellow too. As a punter himself he had a certain affinity with his customers,but i agree he did some reckless stuff. For a very clever man,it was hard to believe some of it. I'd say he can hardly believe he did some of it himself.

hes a lovely lad for sure but used to do specials for cheltenham and aintree that defied logic.also his ew terms were very generous i remember.he was first to go the double payment for a dead heat also i think?

Ivan may have been clever intellectually but he was a poor businessman and lacked an understanding of risk. It seems to me that, with the rapid expansion of his shops, he put a big reliance on the passing of legislation that would allow FOBT's in Irish betting shops with a view to a subsequent sale of his estate. He placed all his eggs in one basket. Never a good idea.

The line opened at 17 with Hills as far as I know and the differences were due to trying to reassess after a weak Western Force side were named. It seems this took money rather than trader expertise in many cases as the line consistently moved all day. I would not have had the slightest idea myself as to what the line should be but a 4 point middle spread would be a nice enough position to be in, although at this stage you would be expecting to miss out and lose 4.5% of your stakes.

No bookie could claim a palpable error for being a few points better than another firm in a points handicap.

Not sure what the true odds would be for the match to finish within the 31-34 point handicap but lets say it was 10/1 then getting 20/1 is not a very big price. Everyone would take 20/1 for a 10/1 shot but anyone who calls it a very big price does not know much about betting. In percentage terms getting evens for an 8/11 chance is a better bet.

So getting 20/1 about a 10/1 shot isn't a big difference and getting 1/1 about an 8/11 shot is better for the punter

So say you had 2 choices

1. Be able to get 20/1 about every 10/1 shot over 100 bets
2. Be able to get 1/1 about every 8/11 shot over 100 bets

Lets assume that the odds are true

Which one would you go for


1. 20/1 about a 10/1 shot

A 10/1 shot wins approx 9% of the time (actually 9.09%)so that give you 9 wins from the 100 races which returns €180 (remember you are backing at 20/1). The 91 losers obviously return nothing so you have staked €100 and returned €180 which is a profit of €80


2. 1/1 about a 8/11 shot

A 8/11 shot wins approx 58% of the time (actually 57.89%)so that give you 58 wins from the 100 races which returns €116 (remember you are backing at 1/1). The 42 losers obviously return nothing so you have staked €100 and returned €116 which is a profit of €16


Let me know if I have done the calculations incorrectly

LOL - I have made an error

9 wins at 20/1 returns €189 and not €180 as per my original post so the 20/1 shots show a profit of €89

Mmmm, maybe someone will need to give a second opinion. The way i would look at it would be with the even money shot for a true 8/11 chance you are getting an 8% edge for each bet. With the 20/1 for a true 10/1 your edge over each bet is less than 5%. Happy to stand corrected if i am wrong that over 100 bets it works out differently.

On the face of it your maths seem right db but the calculations must be wrong somewhere. This is how i would work it out.

Based on the odds being true odds. And lets say you want to trade or arb with the ability to back at the reverse of those same odds with a 100% book being available.

A) I would put £5 on the 20/1 shot = returns of £105. As the true odds is 10/1 to win its therefore 1/10 to lose. I place £100 on at 1/10 to lose = returns £110.
I have staked £105 to win £5 at best. Well, we could arb it out exactly to about £4.50 if we wanted to. But at any rate its the wrong side of a fiver profit or 4.5% profit in percentage terms.

B) I stake £50 on an even money shot = returns £100. As the true odds is 8/11 to win its therefore 11/8 to lose. I need to place £42 on it to lose to return £100.
I have staked a total of £92 to return £100 whatever result occurs for a profit of £8 or 8%.

A 8/11 shot wins approx 58% of the time (actually 57.89%)

Where did you get that statistic?

Well a better way of putting it would be a 8/11 shot has a roughly 58% chance of winning.

You obviously live in an ideal world.

A friend of mine lays 33/1 shots on betfair. He reckons that 33/1 winners are a rarity and come up less than once in a 100 races.

For the purpose of discusion we were talking about true odds. In other words there is a box of red and white balls and in that box an exact number are a certain colour depending on the odds.

In my example I stated "lets assume the odds are true"

Also the odds on Betfair are so close to the true market odds that 33/1 shots (Betfair SP obviously) do indeed win once in every 34 races

At the business end of the market, the odds are even more efficient with Even money shots winning almost exactly 50% of the time

But yes in the real world a bookie could not make a living laying 33/1 for something which has exactly that chance of winning. Bit like buying something for a tenner and selling it on for a tenner and calling it a business.

DB your calculations have me confused because i dont see how you can be right but at the same time they seem to add up. I am not feeling my best at the moment so my brain is not functioning at it full capacity but out of curiosity i am keen to find out which of us is right. One of us must be wrong.

Paddletoe - I see where you're coming from but very very few punters would have a stake range of 1-10 points unless using Kelly Criterion or something similar. Most people would stake between 1-5 points unless there are exceptional circumstances

Nonetheless we are veering towards a different discussion here at this stage when my original reply was to refute your allegation that I know "very little about betting"

Sorry if i came across a little unkind. Never my intention. On one hand its a matter of opinion what you call a very good bet. On the other hand its a simple matter of mathmatics regarding the value of the two proposition bets were are differing over.

Even if you are staking small the percentage expected profit would be still a factor. Percentages dont change.

DB lets say you could arb/trade out each bet in the way i stated and we both started out with £100 the difference would actually be greater in my favour if we repeated the bet 100 times because after each bet i would have the means to stake more than you from that initial £100.

Have had a mare of an evening, got the time wrong of the race Abstraction ran in so missed him. Then backed Davy's second one for Byrnes only to come up against an in form Ted Dolly (couldn't believe Davy got beaten the way he was travelling, I'd say he couldn't believe it either), also backed the Highclere horse at Sandown that was stepping down in trip to a mile. Crap draw and Moore had to drop him out and they crawled. He switched to get a run, but the horses in front weren't stopping. Commend is the horses name, gone off shortish in all his races and well backed into 9/2 again tonight. he is an absolute moral for me in a Class 4 next time over a mile.

All in all an awful nights punting, between my own stupidity, slow pace and just rotten luck that I'd run into one in Ted Dolly. i wouldn't blame any of the jockeys, it is just the way it goes sometimes. K Harrington is poor, I think someone posted her stats on here and they are bad given the people she rides for, but then we know that before we back her. She is a good looking girl who probably speaks well in front of owners(many of whom are probably family friends) that is why she gets rides I'd guess. I wouldn't hold it against her, if they are offering them to her she is hardly going to say no.

ballz that was supposed to be for the Kate Harrington thread, apologies!!

To be fair getting 20/1 for a 10/1 chance is a very good bet STROKE good bet. Matter of opinion if you want to emphasise the very. Apologies DB for going out of my way to have a go at you. Only did so as i thought you were also a little unkind to the origianl psoter. Anyway, good night and all the best.

Paddletoe -  I have had a look at Kelly Criteria using the 2 examples we have been using and according to www.albionresearch.com/Kelly/default.php, taking 20/1 about a 10/1 shot should increase your bank by 1.65% of each bet while taking 1/1 about an 8/11 shot would increase your bank by 1.25 on each bet. This assumes using the stakes suggested by Kelly which are €4.54 for the 20/1 bet and €15.77 for the 1/1 bet.

Don't worry about it - I didn't like being told it was a "bullshitt middle" there either LOL

I'll have a proper look tomorrow but I'm pretty sure the difference is to do with the bigger advantage, percentage-wise on the odds being offered, being greater in the 20/1 - 10/1 example is the reason for that bet being the more attractive, mathematically speaking

db is correct here .paddletoe ,u are thinking of an edge in absolute terms....an edge of 8% on even money shots is completely different  from an 8% edge on 2-1,3-1 shots or whatever.

Yeah seen better middles to be fair. Never seen the second lions match but there were a lot better middles in running on the first tour match. The bookies were all over the place on the handicap in running for that match.

The only sport in really do middle bets is cricket in running on the score in the first 6 or 15 overs in odi's or sessions in test matches. Not very unusual to get a ten run difference in your favour where the range of runs is no more than 30. So 10/1 ( two 5/6's) for a 2/1 poke.

Happy to stand corrected Kingrat so maybe someone could explain it fully. Honestly cant see the other side here.

DB mentions a staking plan but if i am getting a certain 8% edge ( assuming i coulod trade/arb it ) as opposed to his 4.5% edge i am not messing around with staking plans. I am getting as much on as i can. My only limitation is how much i can get on.

ok paddle,do u think an 8% edge on even money shots is the same as an 8% edge on 2-1 shots in terms of profit and both at the same level stakes?

Okay Kingrat i am following you but can you please expand a little.

i put up a post timed at 21.18 tonight. What part of it would you disagree with.

but yre laying there.when yre laying an 8% edge on even money shots, will get a better return than 8% edge on 2-1 shots.

how am i laying?

we could be here all night but an interesting topic.it gets to the hearth of how to bet correctly.laters!good night to ya.

In my post i could have worded things in a different way. Same difference. I am backing an even money shot to win and then backing it not to win at 11/8. I am not laying it at 8/11. I am BACKING it at 11/8 to win providing a certain outcome happens which in this case just happens to be to lose but in another example it could be to win.. I am a backer in both instances. Just because your doing a bet on something not to happen does not mean your a layer. Imagine its a two horse race. I am backing one horse at evens and the other at 11/8.

Often bookmakers have a two outcome market on something to happen or not to happen. If i back something not to happen i am still a backer. I am not a layer.

10/1 odds = 9.09% chance    Edge = 4.33%
20/1 odds = 4.76% chance

EVS odds =  50.00% chance   Edge = 7.85%
8/11 odds = 57.85% chance

Having read the rest of the thread ,one of ye is using expected value and the other is using the difference in probability.

Using your example DB (.0909 * 20) - (.9091 * 1) = .9089(you're forgetting to include your stake in 9 winning bets)

Yes, it was clear the main difference between our betting strategies was that DB'S was based on expected value and mine was based on guaranteed profit. Over 100 bets DB'S expected value would average out. The problem he would have would be that he would have to have a staking plan whereas i would not.

Lets say we would started with a bankroll of £100. Once any of us goes into a negative balance we can not play any more. Over 100 days we can do 1 bet a day at our different odds already mentioned. We can chose our own stakes which may be different.

DB cant really start off putting his whole bank on at expected value in his first bet as 90% of times he is broke.

My betting strategy ( assuming a mythical 100% betting market ) is to use 100% of my bankroll for every bet and pick up the 8% guaranteed profit every time. My bankroll is also being increased by compound factors so i can stake more every bet at the same rate of return. My exact profit after 100 bets can be easily worked out.

My question to DB is to see how much he can turn his £100 original stake into using any staking plan he choses.

Catch up this debate at another time because as mrs marx said to karl there is a time to stop talking about money and actually start making some of it.