This offering from Racecracker’s Clive Jones was sent over to me last week but, as you’ll see, is timeless betting advice. Enjoy!
Josh
When is a bet a good bet irrespective of the result?
Today I have read advice to place a bet on the forthcoming Man Utd vs. Aston Villa FA Cup 3rd round tie…
It was advised by Sporting Life which is owned by Sky, so I always take such advice with a pinch of salt. After all, are they likely to employ good tipsters whose job is to fleece Sky?!
So, whenever I see such advice I always look to see if the bet is more attractive with a bookmaker other than SkyBet. Employing them to fleece other bookies? That sounds more like the SkyBet I know!
Their argument goes that Villa are taking the competition seriously, after all, Steven Gerrard has said so! (Does Gerrard famously never lie?)…
Villa will likely set up similarly to Wolves who so comfortably beat Man Utd last time out (maybe, maybe not, I wouldn’t know)…
United will not take it seriously (likely, after all, which of the top sides do take the FA Cup seriously before the quarter finals?)…
There are also reams of stats about the number of corners United’s opposition have had, as their headline tip is Villa 6+ corners at 9/4.
All of this may be true but, for me, it comes from an untrustworthy source.
So, what can I find out for myself?
As Oddschecker has recently changed its football odds layout and I can find nothing quickly and often not at all, I can’t find other bookmakers odds on Villa corners, but they have widened their thoughts towards possible goal scorers, naming Konsa and Mings on the grounds that they will be up for corners more often than expected and therefore have an increased likelihood of scoring. This I can check.
Konsa is 20/1 with Sporting Index and bet365 but is as low as 8/1 with Sky, Hills, 888, Bet Victor, Coral and Ladbrokes and 15/2 with Boyles. Mings is also 20/1 with bet365 but is a general 14/1 and 12/1 with Unibet, 11/1 with Spreadex and 10/1 with Boyles.
It is easy to see that Konsa and Mings are seriously overpriced with bet365 so I have invested £5 on each of them, a decision based on across the board bookmaker prices and very little else. By the time you read this, you will probably know the result of these bets but, win or lose, it’s a cast iron “good bet”
I use this technique for assessing bookmaker ‘boosted’ offers which are often not boosted at all, with the original bet so lowly priced that even the boost is below what others are offering!
The stake money for Konsa/Mings came from Paddy Power’s kind Sunday offering of Wolves, West Ham and Liverpool all to win their FA Cup ties at 7/2. The best price available on Oddschecker was 2.05/1 so 7/2 was 70% above best price (3.5/2.05).
Anything over 50% is good for these offers but they always need to be checked because plenty of them don’t represent value. Paddy limit their offers to £10 stakes (fair enough really) and this is my latest attempt to reach £100 profit from offers. £35 up from Sunday, £10 staked tonight. I’ll let you know how it goes.
