27th April 2002 - issue 14

1. A betting bonanza

The World Cup promises to offer all sorts of opportunities to astute gamblers, and bookie free bettors in particular. As the first World Cup since the internet betting age began in earnest, and certainly since the start of the bookie free era we are into uncharted territory and it will be very interesting to see to what extent the internet has created a global betting market. If you wanted to bet on England at a UK bookie the odds would be artificially low, the result of a large volume of people following their hearts not their heads. Now thanks to the internet you can bet with foreign bookies such as Interwetten, or foreign punters (not that you would ever know) through the bookie free sites. This should result, for example, in the odds on England being more realistic than you would get from your High Street bookie, although it will be interesting to see.

The site which perhaps has the highest expectations from the World Cup is www.betdaq.com (nb not betdaqracing). The renowned gamblers of the Far East have always been a key target audience market for Betdaq with the intention of building up trade in time for the World Cup. Now this is upon us it will be interesting to see how successful Betdaq have been in selling the betting exchange concept to the Asians. Obviously the location of the World Cup, along with the Asian fascination with football betting means the level of betting activity from our Far Eastern friends could be unprecedented. If they are using Betdaq very heavily it could be the case that on certain matches that there will be high liquidity at odds which may not necessarily follow the patterns of the other more UK based p2p sites. If so this could offer great opportunities to members of multiple p2p sites. Rob Hartnett from Betdaq told Bookie Free News:

“We have been running a local Asian odds service for a few weeks now which has regularly featured six figure matched volumes. This will all be pooled onto the main betdaq.com in the next week in advance of the World Cup and could certainly be at odds with others approach to games. Remember when we spoke of the Global betting exchange. Well it is about to come out into the sunlight. The UK service will offer its own markets for a spell but by the World Cup they will most likely be as one."

The World Cup will be seen as a major springboard for the conventional bookies as well, and we can expect serious marketing campaigns from all of them. Many offer some sort of introductory offer eg a free £10 bet and it is possible that some will enhance these offers in order to win their share of the new punters that the World Cup is bound to attract, (the early kick off times will play into the hands of the internet bookies, while doing no favours at all to their High Street counterparts) Whilst this newsletter is about using the bookie free sites, it may be worth taking this opportunity to open some accounts with the regular bookies, and take advantage of some of this free betting. In addition the marketing departments of these companies come up with all sorts of interesting special offers relating to specific markets, on specific events, and they are bound to be working overtime during the World Cup. If you use your free bet in conjunction with one of these special offers it could pay off handsomely. Some sites that will help you with this process include www.bookiebusters.net which has a review of every imaginable bookie detailing any free offers.

2. On line research

I have trawled the internet looking for good statistic based websites and have been surprised at the difficulty I had in finding really good statistical information. Of the World Cup sites I found, the best was http://www.worldcup.isn.pl/ This has details of all World Cup matches along with a few additional helpful statistics. For background information about team's performances in the lead up to the World Cup go to http://www.rdasilva.demon.co.uk/ which appears to give the result of just about every international match ever played over the past 125 years whatever the competition, and even friendlies. An incredible site. www.fifaworldcup.com has detailed reports on recent matches involving the world cup teams, and will be worth keeping an eye on during the tournament.

3. Another World Cup resource

Today, hot off the press, I received a copy of a report from the publishers of the Insider (see Bookie Free News issue 10) which is entitled "How to win money betting on World Cup 2002" This 74 page report goes into enormous detail on a wide range of statistics relating to the records of each team leading up to the competition, plus where appropriate their performance in recent World Cups. Billed as the information that is only normally made available to bookies I have to agree that it is packed full of stats that I have been unable to find anywhere on the internet. The report lists statistics which will help you place profitable bets on numbers of goals, correct scores, yellow/red cards (all 36 referees are examined in depth), first goalscorers, top tournament goalscorer and corners. In addition the industry insider who wrote the report interprets these statistics, giving a valuable insight into specific bets to watch out for. Surprisingly this report costs just £9.95, which is amazing value. If you intend to get involved in betting on the World Cup I would recommend this report as essential, because if you don't have it, it's likely that your opponent will have.