I have been meaning to write this post for over a week after following Betfairs’ tipsters one evening on the football. Betfair proudly promoted their football tipsters under the banner “Thursday Football Cheat Sheet: All The Best Bets In One Place” Was this the best bets for them or the punters? What happened will shock you.
On the 3rd of November Genk hosted West Ham and Betfair is quoted at saying “West Ham have won all three of their UEL games so far and are a decent bet to maintain that winning streak” Kevin Hatchard then goes on to to say that Genk has only won one of their last 4 home matches, he failed to mention the fact that they (Gent) were victorious over Rapid Vienna away who in turn went on to beat Dinamo Zagreb 2-1. I feel that these two bits of information should have been included in his write-up. He also hinted that a “Win to Nil” for a “Chunky” 3.85 was a sensible play but given the information above would make this financial suicide. Hatchard’s advised bet was “Back West Ham to win” at 2.08. With the information that he gave alone a more sensible bet of over 2.5 goals might have been more prudent. Final score 2-2
Next tipster given lip service by Betfair was Frank Monkhouse who in my opinion was actually trying to talk himself out of his advised bet of “Back Rangers at 1.95” when they travelled to Brondby. I quote
“Rangers look shaky in defence and conceded the first goal at the weekend again” also “At Ibrox, Rangers struggled to beat the 10 men of Hibs, managed only a draw against Hearts after passing up several goalscoring opertunities, then battled back from two goals down to rescue a point against the Dons.” Does this really sound like a man who has confidence in a Rangers team? Perhaps not!!
Final Score 1-1 with Brondby being on the score sheet first (Albeit from an own goal from Rangers ) From his write up Brondby scoring first might have been better advice!!
Dan Finch was tasked with the Tottenham v Vitesse game in the UEFA Europa Conferance League that same evening and proceded to ramble on about the abilities of the new Spurs manager, Conte. An assumption that Conte would “likely switch to playing with 3 central defenders to help shore up a backline that has conceded in 11 of their last 12 games” was his total assertion that his advised bet of Tottenham to Win to Nil would come to fruition. He failed to mention one vital fact that Vitesse have scored in every single UEC game. Final score was 3-2 and a brief mention that over 2.5 goals was priced at 1.71 and a home win and over 2.5 goals increased this price to 1.95. Having spent just 3 minutes looking up Vitesse’s scoring ability I would never have backed a win to nil result at odds of 2.1
Kevin Hatchard was back in the limelight for the Leicester City game against Spartak Moscow and wile I agree with him that there was little value at backing Leicester to win at match odds of 1.33 he went on to say “we can boost that price to a much healthier 2.64if we back Leicester to win and both teams to score. Four of Leicester’s last 5 victories in ALL competitions have seen both teams find the net” What he failed to mention is that in the Europa League Leicester have achieved this just Twice. Having said this however this bet out of all the ones advised so far is the one with most credibility as one of these occasions was in fact the previous meeting of these two teams where Leicester won 3-2 in Moscow.
Final score 1-1
In the final advised bet on the “cheat sheet” Dan Finch yet again rambled on about managers and not the teams ability to score or not as his advised bet of both teams to score in the Roma v Bodo/Glimt game should perhaps have included the fact that the Norwegian side are actually league leaders at home in the Eliteserien to give more weight to the advise given. This bet however was the only one to win at odds of 1.83 as the final score was 2-2
To summarise only 1 out of these 5 advised bets came in I feel that if more information had been forthcoming as to the actual relevancy of the individual advice three of these bets would have been discounted out of hand
Final Score
Betfair 4 Punters 1
Betornot 