Very late for a swing like that though. More likely that she was winning throughout regardless of performances.

That would have been the call to arms everyone needed to finally defeat the screechy tart

Anyone who didn`t win tonight really ought to give up betting on RTV. We`ve all been telling each other for weeks how beatable Leah was so, to whoever was backing her at 1.12, I say `Please come back`.  Not that she couldn`t have won, but, as always, it`s the value that counts. 1.12? Anyone remember a worse value price? I suspect that, like fll, we are all asking ourselves why we didn`t win a lot more.

With apologies to GB2, who, I`m sure, has a very good reason.

Unfortunately had to leave about quarter to nine to take the missus out but I've just caught up on iplayer and absolutely frilled Andrea won. The last song was a brilliant performance. Laid Leah just before I went out just on the off chance. Not for a lot but its paid for the night out.

Wish we had voting figures as would love to know how close Cleo got to taking her out, I suspect it was very close.

Like others have said above, I'm annoyed with myself this morning for not making more on this...

I went into the final level profit on all four - which is something I've never done before, as I've always taken a view at some stage.  But I lost interest in this series, really - and didn't even watch last night's show live.

We all had our doubts about Leah's ability to capture the MOR MEM vote, but the competition was really so poor this year it was difficult to see where the challenge would come from.  In fact there was an argument to say that the other three would split any MOR vote.

On the one hand, I'm glad that I let my green on the others ride - it shows once again that there's no such thing as a certainty in these reality contests, especially on the BBC.  So it has paid to keep all of the finalists on side and hedge my bets.

But of course, in hindsight I should have traded a good chunk of Leah out to at least double my profit on the other three.  Sometimes it really does pay to stick with your instincts - and many of us questioned whether a cool, edgy act like Leah could win this.

Of course, despite all the pimping, ramping and desperate pleas for votes, in the end it all came down to song choice again.  I personally loved Leah's duet with Will, but inevitably that will have proven a big turn-off for the majority of viewers.  She slaughtered Whitney too, so in the end the 'Arms of an Angel' proved to be a sublime masterstroke, striking right at the heart of potential voters.

If I had been watching live, either at the duet stage or after Andrea's final solo I'm sure I'd have laid some Leah back, especially at the prices quoted above.  It just underlines how important it is to see these things through to the end and trust your punting instincts.

Value is value, no matter how big the certainty may appear to be at the outset!

not for me; just Fanny Mark II.  Andrea is edgier than your sister by the way.

We're talking by BBC standards here!

Yep I loved it too, but you couldn't even see her for most of the performance as she was hidden behind Will tap-dancing! Bizarre...

I thought her duet with Will was a desperately poor choice, it was well staged but absolutely missed the target audience by a mile. Its fine producing cool edgy artists if you have a cool edgy audience but the Saturday night audience is anything but that.
The dwindling viewing figures tells us that the BBC arent giving their customers what they want, their pitiful ramping of Leah further alienated the audience. Only Tom comes out of the series with his credibilty intact though I thought Danny did ok last night. Unfortunately Will and Jessie are liabilities and are more intent on self promotion than their artists.
We will get The Voice back next year unfortunately we will have the same production team and coaches and it is they who will kill off the programme.

Sounds like they were conspiring against the blind girl. As if she was sympathetic enough

To answer Tims post. The short answer is I've always believed the main difference between winning and losing at any form of gambling is psychology and not maths.
God knows why I didn't lay Leah. Especially after the desperation of Jessie and Will which many of us on here noted.
Well I do kind of know. After a poor year I went into the final with a defeatist attitude and didn't want to lay another poor value favourite, but end up losing fairly big again when they scraped home.

I wished I'd watched it all now. Thought the blind girl might win when she did Angel, but I figured Leah was that short for a reason

If I had picked Little Mix at the outset, I don`t think I would ever again suffer from a defeatist attitude. You`ll have to do an Austin Powers, and get your mojo back.

Mojo needed for GB2 as well, then. You and fll can fight over who gets Liz Hurley or Heather Graham to help the retrieval mission.

Nobody gets everything right, so you have to be able to deal with the losses. Any long-term winner (presumably most of the regs here) knows there will be pitfalls along the way. As an indie bookie who never lays off, I am used to dealing with these ups and downs, on a minute-by-minute basis, and with `real` cash. This has left me never getting particularly excited when I win at Specials, or distraught when I lose.

I don`t know about you lot but, when I first joined Betfair, across all the forums, the mantra was ` you`ve got to find an edge`.I used to think `edge? Where the hell do I find one of those?` Somewhere along the line, I`m not sure when or where, and in no small part thanks to the regs, I seem to have found my Specials edge.

As have fll, and GB2, with years of form as proof of deservedly high mojo levels. So, come on boys, buck up! Pull yourselves together! We need the heavyweights leading the chaaaaaaaaaaaaaarge from the front!

The Voice sows the seeds of its own destruction.  XF casts its net wide and so has a fair chance of striking gold; it can even create groups in running.  By contrast The Voice tries to find the diamond among a "select" few.  Problem is they end up giving a chance to has beens or never will be's. Even with Leah she has been on youtube for a while and will have been checked out already and found wanting by the big recording companies.

Maybe they should drop the desperate drive for artistic integrity and just let the GBP decide without patronising them for getting it "wrong".

Just so long as they don't stop begging for votes .  I must watch Danny summing up right at the end where every word he said was a plea to vote for Leah and then at the very end he said "So vote for Andrea" as a complete non sequiter iirc.

and could't think of anything better to say than this below from Henry.  We were possibly dealing with a different/new set of circumstances here.

"Agree with conclusions articulated here. And would like to add – no need for anyone to beat themselves up over not laying Leah. There was new situation here. For me anyway. The pleading of the show for its very survival. More extreme than Cowell’s pleas. And to a possibly much smaller audience. A couple of times Will said something to the effect of – we need someone commercial/Leah for the show to survive. How would the BBC viewers respond? Especially with viewing numbers dramatically down. For the first two live shows numbers were pitiful, but then the final had more or less the same as last year. Casual viewers. Who may only have seen a few shows in total before the final. Who probably never even heard the pleas, even if they were to care. So it was all irrelevant. But everything always seems obvious with hindsight."