It has been well documented on Twitter that my punting form has taken a leave of absence for the last couple of weeks and sitting down to write my Citizen piece I was decidedly short of inspiration. Yes we have the Tri Nations starting this weekend and there is plenty of sport on the go but when your form goes cold then bets don’t exactly jump off the page at you.

I decided to trawl our local bookies websites to pass some time and while on Voltbet the sub section titled “Odd Odds” caught my eye. Offshore bookmakers have long been masters of pricing up on novelty events, more with an aim to getting some publicity than making money and these days our local bookies are comfortably able to hold their own with betting on everything from the Royal Wedding to who will be the next US President.

Even I was surprised though to see that Voltbet were offering odds on whether or not the World would end on the 21^st of December 2012. Before you panic the good news is that the World ending is a massive underdog at 100/1 with 1/100 on offer that life will go on as normal on the 22^nd of December 2012.

It struck me that here at last was a risk free bet. You could empty your account onto the 1/100 that the world won’t end and a 1% return on your investment awaits you should you wake up the morning after. Of course should you lose your bet you would have done your money but then again with everyone including the bookmaker having departed these shores you will not have to lose any sleep over it.

Now a 1% return on funds over the next 17 months is hardly worth tying your money up for but my tactic will be to wait until just before midnight on the 20^th of December 2012 before taking the bet. 24 hours later I will either be in the queue for the Pearly Gates or considering how to spend the R50 or so I would have had added to my account.

I don’t think we will see a lot of price movement in this market given that those taking the 100/1 will never collect but perhaps we can force Voltbet to go 1/200 on the 20^th of December 2012?

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 21st of July 2011.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and presents a sports betting radio show every Thursday night from 22h00 – 22h30 on 1485AM Radio Today or Channel 169 of the DSTV Audio Bouquet and to get on his free weekly e-mail list just send a message to brent@goodforthegame.co.za titled “Best Bets”.

You can follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/brentgraham or get on his mailing list by dropping him a line at brent@goodforthegame.co.za