Master statistician Nate Silver has crunched football’s numbers and found managers are paying price for supporters’ blind faithHow well do you know your football team? And how do you think they will get on next weekend? Because my bet would be that however well you think you know your team, no matter how dispassionately you feel you can assess their chances after season upon season of occasional highs and abundant lows, there is a database in the United States that knows a great deal more about your club’s performance than you do.In fact, there are quite a few databases which contain more wisdom about the nitty-gritty of how and why football teams succeed or fail than any human could ever...
The Premier League is huge in Asia but there is often a high price to pay for betting on its matchesThere is a scene in an early episode of The Simpsons that says quite a lot about sports fans in general, and fans who gamble on sport in particular. Krusty the Clown and his accountant are watching a basketball game on TV. “Let me get this straight,” the accountant says. “You took all the money you made franchising your name and bet it against the Harlem Globetrotters?” To which Krusty wails: “But I thought the Generals were due.”The Globetrotters crossed the line between a spectator sport and scripted entertainment. Outside Springfield – where it was the local Mafia don who...
Tony O’Reilly’s habit led him to steal from his employer after racking up huge losses – but his bookmakers ought to shoulder some of the blameIt was difficult to sympathise with bookmakers as they wailed over last month’s announcement that the maximum stake per spin on fixed-odds betting terminals will be cut from £100 to £2. “Won’t somebody think of the betting shop staff?” they pleaded rather disingenuously, considering a Campaign for Fairer Gambling study conducted three years ago which claimed that for every 5,000 jobs that might be created by their FOBTs, a further 25,000 are lost elsewhere.It seemed more reasonable to conclude that what was actually upsetting the bookies was the realisation that their days of gouging the...
The line that Britbet is “by racing and for racing” might just strike a chord with some punters at leastGoodbye, Nanny. Hello, Britbet. It will take some getting used to when the Tote disappears from the vast majority of racecourse betting windows from mid-July. The Tote has been a fixture on British tracks since 1928, when Stanley Baldwin’s racehorse-owning chancellor of the exchequer, a certain Winston Churchill, persuaded the prime minister to set up a government-owned betting business. Britbet, the Tote’s in-house replacement on 54 tracks, has historic boots to fill. Related: Tote to disappear from most British racecourses as Betfred monopoly ends Catterick 2.00 Jaunty Flyer 2.35 The Dawn Man 3.05 Sharp Response (nap) 3.35 Monfass 4.05 Boric 4.35...
Chucking out press releases about ending the practices of grid girls and swimsuit-wearing promotions workers to claim some sort of moral high ground should ring a few alarm bellsTo the list of Great Woke‑ings of our time, we must formally add the gambling industry. This year has seen the disbandment of the Presidents’ Club, Formula One’s pious announcement that it was ending the practice of grid girls and now the Gambling Commission demanding the industry’s biggest conference stops expecting female promotions workers to wear swimsuits on the basis that it is “a significant stain on the industry’s reputation”.Can you imagine how disgusting and depraved the practice must have been to significantly stain the gambling industry’s “reputation”? This is a business...