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Going with the crowd is now the way to seeing the future with better odds | Greg Wood

The rise of Betfair’s wisdom-of-crowds online gambling model has put canny sports fans in the driving seatSir Tim Rice found a moment during the gripping final hours of the third Ashes Test at Headingley last weekend to tweet about the latest betting on the outcome. “Just phoned my bookie (a rare occurrence of course),” he said, “to see what odds they were offering against an England win. They quoted 6-1! Ludicrous. Should be 500-1. At 100-1 I might have invested a fiver. Having said that I am still rooting for England. Nothing is impossible.”My first reaction on reading his complaint was a wave of nostalgia. A quarter of a century after the internet turned gambling, and so much else, into...

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