I went to my cousin Peters wedding this weekend and when I got the invitation a couple of months ago my first thought was that I would be missing the Currie Cup final. You can imagine my delight when the big day fell on a gap week and I was not the only guest relieved and grateful at their choice of date.

That is not to say there was no rugby on the go but I was likely the only person in the room who cared about the result in the Leopards playoff clash against the Eagles.

The reason (and this is the beauty of sports betting) is that I along with a host of other punters had labeled the Leopards as absolute good things to beat the handicap and we had lumped our cash on accordingly.

The handicap started out at -10.5 (we needed the Leopards by 11 or more) but was up at around 15 points by kick off, a sign that some serious money was down.

One of my punting partners on the Goodforthegame Forum Sean kept me updated on progress via sms. I always prefer watching a game believing that I can somehow influence the result but this was the next best thing and I was constantly on the lookout for a flash of light signaling another message had arrived.

After a slow start the messages took on a positive spin and with 10 minutes to go Sean was clearly in bullish mood “42-23 Leopards, buy the wedding couple a drink on me”.

Minutes later I read “47-30 Leopards, Eagles scored but our boys hit straight back, 5 min left” and I allowed myself a smile, surely the Leopards would close up shop and take that 17 point advantage into the reverse clash next week?

Far from it (and this is where the pain of sports betting comes in) as the next two messages were to break the news that the Eagles had scored 2 tries in the last 5 minutes to bring the final score to 47-42.

For a few minutes I felt absolutely deflated as much for all those that followed my advice to punt the Leopards as my own loss but Sean’s final sms “Minor setback, will find value tomorrow” put things into perspective and like a true punter I wrote the game off as a bad beat and enjoyed an excellent party.

This article first appeared in the Citizen CitiGaming section on Thursday 29 October 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