Wayne Rooney's uncle...

[lovingboth]

Well, I posted that a day too early, didn't I?

I hope no-one bet on England winning the World Cup before The Hope Of The Nation broke his foot...

Speaking of betting, it'd be very interesting to see how the 'next England manager' odds changed on the betting exchanges before the various announcements of the past week. Did people take advantage of inside knowledge?

Comments

[sultrylady.livejournal.com]

Very interesting, although the new manager doesn't take over until after the world cup. Or do you mean bets on who would be the next manager?
You've really made me think...there must be other bets based on decisions rather than chance, I'm sure the bookies have it covered. I'm going to ponder that one.
Hello by the way, it's been a while.
^S

[lovingboth]

Yep, bets on who would be.

One of the joys of betting exchanges is that you can be a bookmaker - if you do not think X will happen, you can accept bets that it will.

So, if you know the FA will offer the job to 'Big Phil', you can both bet on him and offer good odds on everone else = people will bet with you on their favourites.

Another joy is that you can go on to take a completely contradictory position.. and, if you're right, come out even further ahead.

So, you know 'Big Phil' is going to turn it down. Everyone else expects him to accept, so the odds on all the other candidates are say 100 to 1 against = you can clean up.

A final joy is that observers can see this happening - if the odds change rapidly, it's probable that someone knows something.

The classic example was during the previous Tory leadership contest - David Davis was favourite, and would have won had there been an election, but about an hour before he announced he would not be standing (he knew the Tories would lose the next General Election, and expected to win the leadership election afterwards - oops) his odds suddenly shifted as the handful of people who knew he wouldn't stand started accepting bets that he'd win.

Hello :) I have been reading you - glad the good bits are going well!

[sultrylady.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the lesson, I knew basics but I've never had that much interest. My only bets have ever been on the National. I would win something every year without fail. I used a foolsafe way of picking my horses...I would set my limit (of money I could afford to lose), look at the names of the horses, and place a bet on anything that had a name that meant something to me. If only one horse stood out the lot went on it, conversly if there were 6 horse the same amount would be split among them.

The one year I didn't have any interest in the race was the year that it was cancelled at starting post.
I don't bet on it nowadays though because of the number of animals that get injured, my simple protest!