There is no better time to be a sports bettor in South Africa. With the World Cup fast approaching and new online players emerging on a regular basis the competition for the punters hard earned buck is heating up and for those prepared to shop around there are some great deals about.

Take the recent US PGA Championships. Bookmakers generally offer 25% of the win price for a player to finish in the Top 5 but local layer Betxchange outdid their rivals by offering quarter odds for a Top 6 finish. One place may not sound like a lot but you will be surprised how often your selection finishes just outside the Top 5 as happened to Henrik Stenson on Sunday. Needing to par 17 and 18 to finish 6^th on his own he bogeyed his penultimate hole to drop into a tie with 3 others.

Dead heat rules applied and my dividend was reduced accordingly but had I placed the bet with anyone else in the country it would have been a straight loss.

They also offered a promotion to encourage punters to place their outright bets with them stating that their Internet clients would get their stake refunded if their selection finished 2^nd or 3^rd including ties.

With this is mind I had a hefty bet on Tiger Woods at 2/1 figuring he would at the very least be in the firing line come the back 9 Sunday and so it proved.

It came down to a two horse race and Woods having looked a virtual certainty for much of the tournament was beaten by rank outsider Y E Yang.

Instead of a big loss on Woods I got my money back although I was nonetheless kicking myself afterwards for not boxing smarter. With a handful or holes remaining I could have backed Yang at 3/1 and ensured a healthy profit either way.

Perhaps it was the 3 previous late nights but my brain moved too slowly and the realization of just how strong a position I was in only hit me while trying to get to sleep in the early hours of Monday morning.

The fact remains though that by being alert to the specials being offered by this bookmaker I was able to turn a large loss on the two bets into a small profit and in so doing live to fight another day.

This article first appeared in the Citizen CitiGaming section on Thursday 20 August 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 the Tri Nations, Currie Cup, Ashes, Premier League and PSL.