Tiger Woods fell just short of another victory this past weekend and he will tell you that the difference between winning and losing is often very small with a lipped putt here or there often being the deciding factor. You can strike the ball superbly but if you are not able to work magic on the greens you are going to struggle to win.

I can draw a comparison with sports betting where choosing winners is all well and good but if you structure your bets incorrectly you can “lip out” and still walk away a loser.

This past weekend is a case in point. I had labeled the Cheetahs to beat the Griquas at 8/10 as my best bet of the weekend with the Boks to beat the Wallabies by more than 3 points at 9/10 as my second pick. In third place were the Bulls to beat the Lions by 5 points or more.

Given that my top two selections came home smoking cigars you would expect me to show a profit despite the Bulls falling flat at Coca Cola Park but sadly that was not the case.

My main bet was a 3/1 multiple where I dropped the handicaps and took the conservative option of my fancies to simply win their matches. The Boks were never in doubt and the Cheetahs cruised in meaning I was sitting pretty heading into the Bulls match although crucially other than a small handicap bet on the Boks I had not actually banked anything yet.

There was an opportunity for me to cover my stake by backing the home team but I was confident enough in the Bulls to let things ride.

That proved to be an error and the Lions totally outplayed their opponents from across the Jukskei bring my treble crashing down in the final leg.

Had my form coming into the weekend been better I would no doubt have had individual strikes on both the Boks and Cheetahs but in retrospect I structured my bets badly and despite making a couple of decent selections I wound up losing money.

Like Tiger I was left to reflect on what might have been although his version of failure still saw him collect a few hundred thousand dollars whereas mine saw me coughing up money to the bookies so I guess comparisons between us remain tenuous at best.

This article first appeared in the Citizen CitiGaming section on Thursday 03 September 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

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