Beat the Summer Bookies: Week One

By: Rob Sedgwick
Date: 04/06/2006

WELCOME to a new series of Beat the Bookies called Beat the Summer Bookies. In the last series over the course of the regular season a profit of around 40% was recorded, meaning the bookies were not just beaten but whipped! Can it be repeated?

This summer, or most of it anyway, we don't have to pretend to be interested in tennis or cricket (Rugby League, in case you are wondering, is an irrelevance - an irritating waste of airspace on Radio Humberside) as there is the small matter of the World Cup!

The most important thing about the World Cup is the second word, it's a cup. Anything can happen in our wonderful game, especially in one-off matches. It just so happens that the World Cup has only ever been won by one of a handful of teams. The last World Cup and Euro 2004 both showed that literally anything can happen, but the markets all overstate the probability of usual suspects doing well. Don't be conned by this: there have not been enough World Cups to see the true range of likely winners yet. From a betting point of view the secret is not to back the favourites - that, in my opinion, is a mugs' game.

Given the above comments my tactic is to avoid betting with the markets on the popular bets and look generally to bet in the opposite direction to the prevailing "wisdom". Betting exchanges, of whom the market leader is Betfair, are my preferred means of doing this for the simple reason they offer better odds and give you the chance to cover your bets - from your potential winnings - without having to fork out huge sums.

Here are my Week One betting tips for the World Cup.