Olympic previews

The sun is shining in southern England, the athletes are all here, the city is abuzz with excitement, the opening ceremony is less than 36hrs away - get set for the greatest spectacle on Earth, the London Summer Olympics!

Across the fortnight my focus will be on swimming, athletics and hockey in the order of priority. Other sports no doubt will appear from me but count them as a bonus rather than my targets.

Just like with my guest previews for racing and Eurovision, I am throwing the blog open to anyone keen to write Olympic event betting previews. No worries if you overlap with my work, I'll just make sure they are clearly marked as I'll be keeping a personal P+L logged. And please make them more detailed than the Racing Post's liftout edition yesterday, that was lip service at best! To volunteer your writing services, contact me on Twitter or in the comments to this post.

I tend to bet late, after heats and semis, so don't expect to be knocking off early prices from my previews. Hopefully it also means the markets are stronger and we might get some decent bets on.

And if you've not seen my Olympic tipping before (previously restricted to Australian forums), here's a proofed spreadsheet from PuntingAce with my results from Beijing 2008 and the respective aths & swimming World Champs of 2009. With both WCs in Asia last summer, timezones were bad, markets were weak and I was back to full-time work so I didn't cover them.

Citius, Altius, Fortius!

Comments

It's all gone Pete Tong at Betfair!

The Christmas Hurdle from Leopardstown, a good Grade 2 race during the holiday period. But now it will go into history as the race which brought Betfair down. Over £21m at odds of 29 available on Voler La Vedette in-running - that's a potential liability of over £500m. You might think that's a bit suspicious, something's fishy, especially with the horse starting at a Betfair SP of 2.96. Well, this wasn't a horse being stopped by a jockey either - the bloody horse won! Look at what was matched at 29. Split that in half and multiply by 28 for the actual liability for the layer(s). (Matched amounts always shown as double the backers' stake, never counts the layers' risk). There's no way a Betfair client would have £600m+ in their account. Maybe £20 or even £50m from the massive syndicates who regard(ed) Betfair as safer than any bank, but not £600m. So the error has to be something technical. However, rumour has it, a helpdesk reply (not gospel, natur

Betdaq.... sold...... FOR HOW MUCH???

So as rumoured for a while, Ladbrokes have finally acquired the lemon, sorry, purple-coloured betting exchange, Betdaq. For a mind-boggling €30m as 'initial consideration'. That's an even more ridiculous price than Fernando Torres for £50m, or any English player Liverpool have purchased in recent seasons! As I've written previously there are no logical business reasons for this acquisition. from Nov 29, 2012 The Racing Post reported this week that Ladbrokes are nearing a decision to acquire Betdaq. This baffles me, it really does. Betdaq are a complete and utter lemon. Their only rival in the market has kicked so many own goals over the years with the premium charge, followed by an increase in the premium charge, cost of API and data use, customer service standards which have fallen faster than Facebook share value, site crashes and various other faults. So many pissed off Betfair customers, yet Betdaq are still tailed off with a lap to go. Around the world, Betfair

lay the field - my favourite racing strategy

Dabbling with laying the field in-running at various prices today, not just one price, but several in the same race. Got several matched in the previous race at Brighton, then this race came along at Nottingham. Such a long straight at Nottingham makes punters often over-react and think the finish line is closer than it actually is. As you can see by the number of bets matched, there was plenty of volatility in this in-play market. It's rare you'll get a complete wipe-out with one horse getting matched at all levels, but it can happen, so don't give yourself too much risk...

Sport is made for betting

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