I was surfing the internet late one night in March when I stumbled upon the news that Jenson Button had shortened dramatically in the betting of the Formula 1 title race on the back of some positive testing by his brand new Brawn team. 

Having been available at 80/1 just hours earlier punters had steamed in backing him all the way into 8/1 third favourite – amazing when you consider the man had won only a single GP in his entire career.

Logging onto the local online sites I saw that most of them had cut Button in to 20/1 or less but that there were a few who had not yet started laying bets and I duly put a couple of hundred rand on the Brit at an average of 53/1. If the truth be told I expected this like many other dramatic betting coups would come to nothing and had I had any inclination that Button would win 6 of the first 8 races I would certainly have put a bigger bet down.

Nonetheless I was in a very strong position heading into this past weekend’s British GP at Silverstone. For a R200 investment I stand to make over 10k and Button was expected to build on his lead.

In fact he was so short in the betting that one Irish bookmaker even declared it race over and paid out all Button bets for the title.

It appeared to be a case of sitting back and waiting to collect at the end of the season but in my life things are seldom that simple and I watched with some concern on Sunday as all 3 of his closest rivals not only beat him but dominated him in his home GP.

He still holds a strong lead over Barrichello, Webber and Vettel but the manner of the latter’s win was such that I can now see this battle going down to the wire. 

I hope I am wrong and that Button comes out firing in 3 weeks time to consolidate his lead and he remains the man in pole position at 1/4 but Vettel has been slashed from double figure quotes into 11/4 and I have a nasty feeling I am going to have to sweat for my cash. It just proves once again that there is no such thing as easy money.

This article first appeared in the Citizen CitiGaming section on Thursday 25 June 2009

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and presents a sports betting radio show every Saturday morning at 07h30 on 1485AM Radio Today or Channel 169 of the DSTV Audio Bouquet. 

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

Goodforthegame will be posting betting previews on every Confederations Cup match as well as the Lions Tour.