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 In sports betting circles we talk about “Buying Money” which refers to a bet that is taken at very short odds and is often thrown into accumulators to try and push the final payout up. {readmorelink}Read more{/readmorelink}
For example the Bulls were 1/25 to beat the Leopards on Saturday meaning your bet on them would generate a 4% return on investment.
To make R40 you would need to invest R1000 and most punters would prefer to look for bets with longer odds rather than tie up the stake with such a small profit as a reward.
The other downside of course is that the Leopards could have won the game leaving you a lot lighter in the pocket and feeling pretty glum.
In August I put aside a grand and set myself a target of doubling it through placing bets that were on the verge of being sure things. I was basically going to try and “buy” a 100% return on investment through a number of large bets on short priced favourites. As the balance gradually grew (my first bet on the All Blacks to win the Tri Nations delivered a whole R30 profit) I would then re-invest the lot on the next short priced prospect.
I tracked my progress in the Goodforthegame forum and caught a couple of early Currie Cup wins by opposing sides like the Leopards against the big guns. The experiment nearly came undone in the US Open tennis though where 2 of my short priced “certs” were taken to 5 sets with one of them Djokovic actually a big underdog at one point in the 4th set of his match.
He (and I) survived that and I wisely left tennis alone (having come within a mouse click of seeing it all end on 1/5 shot Andy Roddick) and focused on rugby with the result that my balance now sits at R1908 just R92 short of target thanks to WP, the Bulls and the Cheetahs all arriving this past weekend.
I must say it has been good fun and while the individual bets have returned small amounts collectively I am over 90% up and that’s a decent return in anyone’s books.
I have come close enough to losing it all to know this is not a viable long term investment strategy but assuming I make target I may just be tempted to try and double up again!
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 30th 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
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