When you bet on as much sport as I do you are bound to make an occasional error when submitting your bets and this weekend my complacency cost me a tidy packet.

It was Sunday evening and I was getting excited ahead of the Crusaders v Sharks game at Twickenham. My betting strategy for this game was to back the Crusaders by 11 points or more but also to take bets that would arrive if the game was a high scoring one.

I don’t usually place so many different bets but for this one I was on over 47 points at 9/10, on the Sharks to score 18 points or more at 1/1 and on 6 tries or more at 12/10. That was just the fixed odds and I was also high on try scorer shirt numbers (these bets are decided on the sum total of the try scorers jersey numbers) in the spreads markets – or so I thought.

The match kicked off and by half time I had already banked some decent cash with my fixed odds bets as the points flowed freely. I was also looking good in the spreads where backline players had scored five of the six tries and in the second half I was more than happy to shout home a couple of Sharks 5 pointers to push my profit up.

As the final whistle went I calculated my earnings on the game and it was certainly 80 minutes well spent.

While waiting for the interviews a confirmation e-mail from one of the bookies caught my eye and to my horror I saw the word sell instead of buy on my match shirt numbers trade. A maximum profit on this bet suddenly turned into a thumping loss and my overall position took a 40% knock.

Although I still came out well in front on the match a great win had turned into a good one and I berated myself for being so careless. It was not the first time it had happened to me but the strange thing is that none of my mistakes over the years have gone my way and seen me collect or retain money that I should have lost.

No when I make an error it is always costly but as any good punter would do I will learn from the experience and move on, the laughter of the betting gods still ringing in my ears.  

  
This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was first published on the 31st of March 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”.

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