When the Springboks lost to Ireland at Croke Park I resigned myself to the fact that there would be no more rugby betting for me until the Super 14. Last Friday morning though I came upon a thread in our Betting Forum started by my regular radio show guest RuggaBugga which suggested bets on the IRB 7’s taking place in George.

Local bookmakers were pricing up on every game and following many of his selections and some of my own I managed to show a decent profit over the 2 days.

Looking back on the tournament I am convinced that this format is one where punters who are prepared to take it seriously can make some decent cash. Bookmakers don’t have the usual time to analyse the matches which come thick and fast and that in itself means that the shrewd sports bettor who is not obliged to wager on every game can take advantage of any misjudgments that may occur.

One bookmaker for example had Portugal at +4 against France on Saturday and having watched the teams play on the Friday, Portugal were begging to be backed as they were clearly the better side.

I think what happened here is that the layer was influenced by the fact that France are such a strong 15 man outfit and struggled to accept the fact that Portugal could start favourites. The term “Bookmakers Lag” describes it nicely and the incident above was not isolated.

Australia are a rugby powerhouse in the 15 man code but have just not cut it in the shortened version of late. They started 25 point favourites in places against Russia in their opening match and an alert punter (which I at that stage was not) would have picked up that their opponents had shown promise in the previous 7’s tournament and were big runners. The match was drawn.

The Wallabies continued to be overestimated throughout the event as bookmakers struggled to reconcile actual form with the nations reputation and while by the time the quarterfinals came about the “lag” had lessoned, Kenya (another unfashionable rugby nation) were still great value at -7 and they duly won by 12.

If you can take emotion out of your decision you can occasionally gain an edge over the bookmaker and I for one will be following 7’s closely from now on.

This article first appeared in the Citizen CitiGaming section on Thursday 17 December 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