How To Win Gold On The Olympics James McLoughlin
SO RIO IS UPON US. THERE S 10 000 OLYMPIANS COMPETING. AND I VE HEARD OF 20 OF THEM. MOST OF WHICH PLAY FOR THE US BASKETBALL TEAM. BUT THAT S NOT GOING TO STOP ME FROM BETTING MY ABSOLUTE BRAINS OUT. IF THERE S A RORT TO BE HAD IN THE WOMEN S FENCING I LL BE GETTING ON FOR AS MUCH AS THE BOOKIES LET ME. AND THEN I LL GO AGAIN UNDER ANOTHER NAME. Here are my tips for finding winners in the Olympics: Forget Doing Your Own Form Unless you ve watched every swimming meeting over the last four years, don t start now. Going through results and videos will give you a minimal chance of framing an accurate betting market. Save time and improve your results by letting other people do the work. Professional punters. Some bloke in Sydney will live and breathe sailing. Him and his sailing club boys can hammer the markets and push bookies towards the correct odds. You re job is to spot the slowest moving bookie and jump on board with them. This sounds time sensitive, and it is, but opportunities will be available for hours, if not days. Another market mover will be the athletes themselves. Or their family members. The Taikwodo champion might have an AIS scholarship but he works at Pizza Hut. He can t see himself pulling a Bradbury and earning the Milo commercial so he needs to clip Sportsbet under his brother in law s name. He knows the real favourite more than the bookmaker who hasn t heard of a single participant in the event. I remember in 2008 one of the tips of the Olympics came through. I was working at a big bookmaker and we saw all these new accounts popping up. They were all backing the same relay team as their first bet. The surnames looked strikingly similar to the blokes in the event. The Aussies opened up at $10. Smashed into $2.70 before the final. Without giving the event away, the yanks had a bunch of blokes including Phelps. They were odds on favourite, which is why the Aussies started so big. Every bloke in the office was riding the Aussie mail for serious cash. We were shoving tickets into Tab terminals and hitting all of the shops. The final was an absolute belter but our men took the silver, losing by half a second. (Of course they f*cking did!) We might not have got the choccies but you wanted to be on. I m certain a bunch of other punters would have joined in for the ride as some bookmakers had the $10 sitting there for ages. In 2016 we re trying to be the blokes that catch that steam.
So How Do We Catch A Rort? You look at each event on OddsChecker or Best Odds. You go through each market, trying to find bookmaker discrepancies. For example. Seebohm might have looked shocking in her first heat in the 200m Backstroke. She s out the gate. And all the money comes for Missy Franklin. Missy is $4 at most bookies but Ubet are asleep at the wheel, still offering the $9 she started at. So you re going to clip Ubet knowing that she is no longer a $9 chance in the market. Do this on enough markets are you ll be a long way in front. Second Opinion Another great resource is Pinnacle. These guys get the smartest mail in the world. If they mark Rickie Fowler as $6.30 to win the golf and you can get $7 at Sportsbet. Then whack Sportsbet. Pinnacle is a great place to come after you ve spotted a discrepancy on OddsChecker or Best Odds. Or it can be the first place you come to. Compare Pinnacle directly with your favourite local bookmaker. If you can find a price that is 10% or bigger then fire away. Third Opinion Betfair. Useless when there is no liquidity in the market. But once the volume gets up there is no better resource. This is the place to look for discrepancies when a market is about to start. Or if it s a really popular event. You ll know the market is ready when the matched amount exceeds $10 000. And when there is a small difference between the BACK and LAY side. The market below isn t ripe enough as you can see from the big gaps between numbers.
Keep Your Eyes & Ears Open When Usain Bolt did his hammy at the Jamaican trials it took nearly a full 24 hours for Sportsbet to move Justin Gatlin in from $3.25 (he might have been even bigger) to $2.61. Injuries happen. As do unforeseen events and scandals. Be alert and catch the information first. Bookies are trying to do the same but they don t have any secret sources. They re browsing the same websites as you. With less enthusiasm.
Rort Promos Bookies will be using the Olympic hysteria to get media attention and capture new clients. They ll be generous promos at every shop. Go to their websites daily and spot a spoil. Just make sure you re having other bets on your account as well otherwise they ll remove the promotional privileges. Ladbrokes and Sportsbet are normally the most generous. Followed by Crown. I think Tab will be offering some decent spoils too. Don t Be Patriotic The weight of a nation will be on some of our athletes. Which also means the weight of the Australian wallet will be as well. Aussies back Aussies at Aussie bookmakers. The bookmakers don t need to incentive betting by offering juicy odds on local athletes. Cate Campbell will probably win the 100m freestyle. But her odds are closer to $1.66 according to unbiased bookmaker, Pinnacle. Ladbrokes Australia are currently gauging the same betting option at $1.30!
So Ladbrokes are trying to Bill Cosby the Australian punter. But before you call the betting police, understand that a heavy gauge means there is value to be had. Look at the next few runners in the market. In this example, there s more value than a Boxing Day sale. Let s look at Pinnacle: And now Sportsbet:
Ranomi Alphabet Kromowidjojo is $19 at Sportsbet and $8.50 at Pinnacle. She s second favourite in the 50m freestyle and the wrong price there too. Bronte Campbell, Cate s sister, is marginally overs. And Sarah Sjostrom is $8 when she should be about $6.50. I m backing both the Euros. It s the 100m freestyle. The only pool event that is more of a raffle is the 50. Sorry Cate, but I ll be aggressively cheering against you in Rio. You can get similar mistakes at Ladbrokes. As usual, bookies are just blindly copying each other. Look For Obscure Markets Don t just look to bet in markets that you re watching. You ll have a hard time sniping a Michael Phelps event. Everyone is paying attention that market, including the bookmaker. Go out wide. The more obscure the event, the more likely you ll spot a bookmaker error. Take it from us, the bloke who has been assigned the women s weightlifting has about as much interest in it as you. He s just trying to copy and paste the right numbers off a competitor, then sneak off for a 20 minute dart. Timing Is Everything The hardest thing for a bookmaker during the Olympics is getting the timing right for each event. Every time they open a market they have to know when the next event is. Making sure their market comes down just before the next heat. They have websites and time zone calculators to help with this but human error is rife. Particularly when they work until 5pm and the event they manage starts at 2am. If you re careless bookie put in 3am, he has to rely on Overnight Johnno and Midnight Mike to catch the errors. Unfortunately, Johnno is watching skin flicks and Mike is punting on major league baseball. This leaves a huge opportunity to bet on events that have started. Even if it s not the final you can still find tremendous value betting after a qualifier has been left open. Now we know the favs often take the foot off the gas in the swimming warmups, but often an up and comer can come from nowhere and swim an olympic record in the heats. Which suggests they re no longer a $10 chance and probably worth a throw at the stumps. The same applies for qualifying events in other sports. When you spot muck ups in qualifiers or even finals, bet sneaky. Don t have the biggest bet of your life when you spot an event open. Try to stay under the radar. Have a two legged multi into a favourite in the next round of NRL or AFL.
Push It To The Limit The biggest challenge to winning gold during the Olympics is that bookies don t like bets on these markets. If you re a losing account whose profiled as green you might be look after, but for the most part the liabilities on these markets are small. Which means betting tickets are referred to bookmakers when you try to win more than $500. To circumvent the rules we have a few suggestions: Try multibets, as we suggested above. Just don t go beyond two or three legs. Have a few pickle bets first. A couple $10 rubbish bets right before you put through a $50-100 hot one on a $26 gymnist. The best option is to back them for cash. Hopefully your local TAB (or Ubet or Tabtouch, depending on your state) is the one at fault. Feed the machines until it accepts no more. Then head to the next TAB around the corner and jam that one. Thankfully, the limits on the TAB terminals (at this time of writing) is about $2500-3000 so you can get a decent bet on. No profiling, no account closures, no issues getting paid. Just don t lose the ticket. How To Win More Gold Than The Chinese So, to summarise, use odds comparison websites. Let professionals do the form for you. Pinnacle and Betfair are exceptional resources as well. Make sure you have an account at multiple betting shops. You can use our Free Bet Resource to open fresh accounts with big free bets. Take advantage of the other bookie promos too. And always have cash on hand as you never know when you need to drop everything and run to your local, backing rorts with cash. Remember, the blokes updating these markets care less about the Olympics than almost anyone. They ve had women s equestrian dumped on them, on top of their usual role as soccer manager. They re just looking for the Olympics to be over so they can get back to the Premier League. So fish around. Anyone with a genuine nose for betting markets will have a significant edge. Lastly, keep your eye on our Free Tips section. We ll spot errors for you and put them on the website.