In his weekly blog for the CitiGaming section of the Citizen newspaper Brent Graham describes his first live streaming betting experience.  {readmorelink}Read more{/readmorelink}

I am one of those sports punters who enjoy watching the event I am betting on. I do occasionally make a play on a match I cannot watch and in these cases I am usually glued to my cell phone agonizing over when the next SMS update will arrive. My wife will vouch that sitting at dinner with me is no fun when my eyes constantly dart to my BlackBerry to see if the little red light signaling a new message is flashing and frankly when things don’t go your way it is a terrible way to lose your money.

This weekend I found another way to part myself from my hard earned cash and as far as frustration levels go it was right up there. The Western Province v Leopards game was not televised but SuperSport had “kindly” offered the game through live streaming on the internet.

Great I thought as I placed a large “buy” bet on WP shirt numbers – I needed lots of tries and the bigger the number on the try scorer’s jersey the better. I got the former but the forwards decided it was their day and despite 9 tries beings scored I still came up well short.

The journey though is what this article is about and while watching a live match on the internet may work in places it certainly does not at the connection speeds in my lounge.

From the start the picture would only run for a few seconds before freezing while the commentary usually continued meaning I actually saw very little of the action and I eventually came to terms with the feature as a very expensive (the second half alone used around 150megs) radio commentary with the visuals adding little to no value.

As the game drew to an end I needed a Province try in order to come somewhere close to square and as they broke a pass was flung to full back Jantjies who appeared to be in the clear.

At that moment the picture froze and the commentary disappeared and I was left staring at a rugby ball suspended in front of a pair of outstretched hands. I waited hoping that the next shot would be of Jantjies dotting down under the posts but instead I saw the players shaking hands, the pass having clearly gone astray. Internet streaming is as painful a way as any to do your dough!

Betting previews for the weekends Currie Cup games will be posted in our RUGBY SECTION

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 16th of September 2010.

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