The Weekend Wager

Welcome to this the latest ‘Weekend Wager’ free betting column produced by Terry Allen from the Secret Betting Club and Money Maker Review service.

I work as part of the team at the Secret Betting Club where we uncover exactly which experts, systems and tipsters you should follow to make money betting. As well as proofing dozens of tipsters we also include monthly articles on professional gambling tips and betting strategies. Every article and review we put together is also listed at our new member’s website Money Maker Review.

1. Terry Says

A lot of chat in betting circles this week about the Racing Post newspaper and the fiery resignation letter from its most senior journalist Paul Haigh (read about it here). Haigh didn’t pull any punches in his letter, as he said he had become ‘ashamed’ of writing for the paper as it is now dictated to by its main advertisers, the bookmakers. Naturally the Racing Post hit back and denied it all but chatting with my own contacts; most of us believe Haigh has a very good point. It’s high time the Racing Post got back to representing the everyday punter’s interests a bit more as without us they would be nothing after all (And indeed the decline in sales for the newspaper indicates most punters’ attitude to them nicely).

Still in saying that, quite a few of my pro punter friends don’t spend much time with the Racing Post these days as there are so many other resources for helping pick out a winning angle. It’s a bit rich that even the William Hill website contains the Racing Post racing analysis (and tips!), so just goes to show how effective they think it is in taking money off them (not very).

A bit more reflection from my column last week when I spoke about the understanding by those around me of how I work as a gambler. When I say I make money betting as an occupation, many people still have the thought that I sit around a smoke filled bookies, taking calls from stable contacts and various racing insiders in order to satisfy a crippling gambling addiction. Nothing of course could be further from the truth about me! (Just in case you were worried)

As if to highlight the ignorance of many towards betting professionally these days, we had one SBC member post on our forum this week about how his own bank manager has a problem with him using his current account for betting purposes. Never mind the fact he is making a success from his own gambling! I can just imagine this particular bank manager is letting his imagination run wild about just how this betting income is generated. Thankfully this is the exception rather than the rule when it comes to banks as they generally have no problem once a bit more clued up on the subject.

I can’t imagine many stock market investors have the same problem with their own bank accounts, but as most of us probably know in reality betting is very similar to financial trading when you get down to it. We all know how the stock market has fared lately so give me betting any day of the week over stocks and shares.

Until next Friday…

Terry Allen

2. The Next Week In Betting

Formula One returns with a bang this weekend down under and a lot of betting interest focused that way as the new season gets underway. It’s been a chaotic close season for the sport and we have one of the most wide open championship winner markets for a long time. Utter madness at times as the odds on Lewis Hamilton to win explains as he has gone from 7/4 to current 8/1 best price in just 6 weeks and Rubens Barrichello has gone from 150/1 into 12/1 in just a few weeks!

A lot of talk has been on the new Brawn team and you can get 7/1 best price with Stan James on Jensen Button and 12/1 with Skybet on Rubens Barrichello to win outright. There are lots of specialist markets for the actual curtain raiser in Melbourne where Button (9/2 Boylesports) is narrow fave, closely followed by Barrichello (5/1 VCbet) and Raikonnen (11/2 Skybet). The 6/5 on Button to finish on the podium with Boylesports and the 11/8 for Barrichello to do the same with Betfred is my take on this race.

International games dominate the football side of things with England having what will no doubt be a very uninspiring friendly against the mighty Slovakia. They are a tiny 3/10 best price with Paddy Power to win, and if your having a bet on the English to win a home friendly at that short a price, I think you need your head examined! Competitive action sees Wales at home to Finland and with the visitors a tasty 11/4 with Hills to win, they look value to me. It was only recently that Germany undeservedly got a 3-3 draw away in Helsinki after all. Other stand-outs for me include Serbia at 5/2 with Betfred away at Romania, as they are very much an up-and-coming team in world football. Any readers from North of the border can also pick up a huge 12/1 with Bet365 on Scotland to win away at Holland and while I don’t think George Burleys men will win, they appeal from an Asian Handicap point of view.

More ODI action for England today with the usually shy Kevin Pietersen stating today how knackered he is playing for the Three Lions and cant wait to get home from the Caribbean (England’s attitude is nicely summed up at this humorous must-read site). Perhaps someone should remind our Kev of the weather over here in blighty, I wouldn’t mind swapping with him! He will be dragging his weary bones to face up to the West Indies in the 3^rd game today, where the home team are narrow faves to win, although this will be underway by the team you read this. There is also a 20/20 international between South Africa and Australia in Joburg this afternoon although it will feature plenty of unknown names and maybe best avoiding. The bookies can’t split them either with the home team best priced evens with Paddy Power and Ponting’s men best 10/11 with Boylesports. There is a 2^nd 20/20 game between the two on Sunday before a full 5-game ODI tournament starts next Friday.

Good luck with whatever you’re having a punt on this week.

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3. Tipping Legends Column

The Tipping Legends are 2 horse racing specialists who both have an in-depth knowledge of the sport and will be supplying a full rundown of some of the weekend’s feature races and betting angles. These guys know their stuff when it comes to racing, ignore at your peril.

The Grand National

As a NH fan & a trends fan, then no race holds more appeal for me than the Grand National. Each year more and more articles cover the trends so hopefully I’m not repeating much here. I feel though Nick Mordin has the right approach, which I will highlight here and that is to not be too rigid about trends but to let them guide you.

Three trends are well known but are powerful all the same. Horses aged between 8 & 12 are strongly favoured (last 69 winners!!) and even the 8 yr olds have a poor time of it. The second trend is that you need a proven stayer – the last 38 winners have all won over at least 3 miles. Lastly those over 11 stone are greatly disadvantaged and the last horse to carry over 11 stone 5 to victory was Red Rum, when the race was a very different animal than it is today.

Basically, it would need a very strong argument to look at any horse that doesn’t tick these three and as trends go, they are very strong.

What I do is to attach a score against each trend and then use this as a guide. The following is a suggestion

AGE
Aged 9-12 – 5 pts
Aged 8 – 2 pts
other age – 0 pts

WEIGHT
Under 11 stone – 4 pts
Under 11 stone 6 – 2 pts
Over 11 stone 5 – 0 pts

DISTANCE
Won over 3 miles – 5 pts
Placed in good company over 3 miles – 2 pts
Others – 0 pts

Then other trends worthy of points are…

Previous Grand National fences experience – 3pts
Irish – 4 pts (great recent record)
Placed or won at Cheltenham – minus 2 pts (must take a lot out of a horse to do well there)
French Bred – minus 2 pts
Last raced over hurdles – 2 pts (a way to protect handicap marks)

I am confident that the places and eventual winner will be dominated by those horses that score highly on the above and will form a strong shortlist to work on. On the back of this, ground is a big factor as fast ground or soft ground can rule out approximately half of the contenders in my eyes. You don’t win over 4.5 miles without conditions being in your favour.

After all that – you need a huge chunk of luck!! Easy really!

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4. The Winabobatoo Weekender

Winabobatoo are English Premier League, Football League and Scottish Premier betting experts. Using their own excellent football system to often ‘Win a bob or two’ for their members, they are sharing one of their ‘star’ bets every week with us. Star bets are their best rated, best value bets and worth following in with a few bob of your own.

There are no Premiership, Championship, or SPL games this weekend, so our choice of games is a little more limited, but we have all the League 1, League 2, and Conference games available.

We’ve been using two of my “Betting systems,” to highlight bets in this column over the last few weeks. We’ve dipped into my “Away Form System,” and “Play Away” systems. I was going to give you an Away Form System bet today but the bookies have cut the price from 7/4 to 13/8, after my members put their money on it last night, so I’ll give you a Play Away bet where the price is available with most bookmakers.

Kidderminster are vying for a play-off place in the Conference and they are travelling to York this Saturday. York aren’t out of the relegation mire yet but have a couple of games in hand on their rivals. The evidence suggests that Kidderminster should take the points home with them on enough occasions to make the price of 6/4 (2.50) worth the risk.

The price is currently available with many bookmakers.

Have a bet on Kidderminster to beat York at 6/4 (2.50) available with Hills, Corals, Tote, Bet 365, and others.

Good luck with your betting.

Mike Lindley (www.winabobatoo.co.uk )

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5. Skeeve’s Non-League

Skeeve is our resident Non-League betting expert who will be sharing with you his best advice for this weekend’s domestic non-league card. What Skeeve doesn’t know about all things semi-pro ain’t worth knowing and the bookies hate it as lets face it they know next-to nothing about football at this level.

Hi everybody,

It had to happen eventually, our last weekend’s bet lost (Dorchester failed to turn up), but these stats still look very good indeed:

FREE	PICKS	STAKED	RETURNED	W-V-L	PROFIT	ROI
	19	84	120.48	14-1-4	+36.48	143.4%

I’ll have a couple of improvised draw-no-bets this weekend and, of course, I’ll share one of these with all of you. It’s going to be my 20th free pick for this column and I’d like it to be another winning bet.

The membership and the waiting list are both closed for the rest of the season. Everyone who ends the season as a Skeeve Picks subscriber will be offered a spot for next season and if someone drops out, I’ll contact the first guy on the waiting list for next season. If you want to be on the waiting list for next season, feel free to send me an e-mail.

cheers,

Skeeve

28/3/2009

BLUE SQUARE NORTH

AD-HOC DRAW-NO-BET: Hucknall – BLYTH 2 (2.30 @Bwin) 3.5 units & X (3.60 @Bet365) 1.5 unit

Blyth lost their away match at Stalybridge this Tuesday (0:2) and they’re the worst away team in the league (only one win so far, that’s why this is an improvised draw-no-bet – but, it’s fair to say that they’re much better on the road since they’ve won at King’s Lynn two months ago; they did lose by one goal at Hinckley and Fleetwood, but they’ve also shared points at Alfreton and Tamworth after that), but I still think they’re way overpriced here. First of all, there’s the motivation factor as they’re still in the relegation zone, but with a few matches in hand. Second of all, there’s the fact that they’ve drawn three and then won two matches before the defeat at Stalybridge (1:1 at Tamworth, 2:0 vs high-flying Telford, 2:1 vs Stafford, 0:2 at Stalybridge are their last four results) – a nice mini-run. And, the last but not least, you should know what exactly happened at Stalybridge (their reserve keeper wasn’t registered as a substitute, so one of their strikers had to stand between the sticks when their no1 got injured again in the 56th minute, when it was still 0:0) – this time they’ll have a proper keeper for the whole 90 minutes, Farman did very well in Bell’s absence in the last few matches, but Bell could be fit too. But, this is a bet against Hucknall maybe even a bit more than it is a bet on Blyth.

Hucknall are rock bottom, only 22 points, eleven less than 19th Burscough who are just above the relegation zone – they’re going down alright. They’re the worst home team in the league, 2-4-11, 16:31, no one conceded more than them at home and only a couple of teams scored less. They have five defeats and two away draws (they’ve actually picked up more points away from home this season, but it’s not really a Champions League atmosphere currently at Hucknall, playing infront of only 140 people – that’s how many showed up for their home match/defeat against Farsley a couple of days ago) in the last seven (0:2 at poor Hyde, 0:1 at Gateshead, 0:2 to Redditch, 0:0 at King’s Lynn, 0:2 to Solihull, 2:2 at Gainsborough, 2:3 to Tamworth, 1:2 to Farsley), four consecutive home defeats – and they seem to play better against promotion candidates than against relegation candidates (in fact, if we take a look at their matches against the other biggest relegation candidates – Hyde, Blyth, Burscough, Redditch and Farsley, we can see that they’ve lost seven out of eight matches, twice to both awful Hyde and depleted Farsley; seven defeats and a goalless draw away at Redditch). The return of Wilson and Bacon didn’t really help them at home against Farsley this Tuesday – they’ve gifted them two easy goals and lost the match 1:2 (some very poor defending, hesitant at 0:1 and a shot spilled by Hucknall’s keeper at 1:2 – Hucknall’s goal for 1:1 was very fortunate btw) – and they’ll most probably be without two key players for this match, defender Sucharewycz and midfielder Liburd (both extremely doubtful).

Blyth already trashed them 3:0 in August and I expect them to complete a double, but I have to improvise a draw-no-bet, Blyth’s away record is terrible and if Hucknall get lucky, they could snatch a point that won’t save them from relegation, but a point nevertheless. Anything above 2.10 for an away win looks good to me, but I feel I have to be careful, Blyth played three matches less than Burscough (who are just above them and just above the relegation zone) and if Burscough lose at Solihull (which I definitely can see happening) and Blyth only take a point at Hucknall, Blyth are still going to get out of the relegation zone and they’ll still have three matches in hand. So, a draw wouldn’t be a disaster for Blyth, that’s why we’re improvising a draw-no-bet – I’m pretty sure Hucknall won’t win, but this way we make +3.05 units profit in case of an away win and a comforting +0.4 in case of a draw.

(2.30 for an away win also at Blue Square, Paddy Power, Victor Chandler and also at Expekt and BoyleSports btw, 2.25 at Bet365, Coral, StanJames and also at BetFred and Gamebookers btw, but you can even find 2.40 at some less known bookmakers… 3.60 for a draw also at Coral, Skybet, StanJames…)

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