Bookiebeater Goes Greek

It's been two weeks since my last bet - I've been away travelling (for work reasons) and have missed my habitual Saturday & Sunday morning routine.

The bets on offer today are less than inspiring - Roma and AC Milan look like good bets but I'm feeling a little unsure of Italian football just now. I prefer home teams to be playing in front of their own supporters and having matches being played behind closed doors means I'll avoid Italy for the time being.

So... it's off to Greece with a £42 punt on Panathanaikos who play Iraklis later today.

All Games Won To Nil

My "Uniteds" came good today. Manchester United won 2-0 and Ballymena United won 1-0. The results weren't as convincing as I expected, but the Paddy Power Pot swelled nonetheless.

When I saw the results come in, I thought I would place one more bet. £41 went on to AZ Alkmaar who were playing Willem II. The game finished just a few minutes ago and the 1/8 shot won 2-0.

I'm out of the country for a week now - I won't be back until Monday 18th - so there won't be any posts and there won't be any bets. No doubt there will be plenty of opportunities lost as a result of this. I get back just in time for the next round of the Champions League but I don't see that any of the matches at this stage of the competition are worthy of a Bookie Beater Bet.

In the mean time - be lucky.

Two Uniteds In One Bet...

I'm disappearing for week - work related. So I need to get my bets on earlier than usual. I'm quite concerned after the analysis I performed this week but here we go anyway.

I'm plumping for Manchester United this Saturday. They play Charlton Athletic in the Premiership and Charlton are looking doomed. That said, they do have a good record against the top teams in recent years. Manchester United, however, need to keep winning in order to maintain their 6 point lead over Chelsea. They are 1/7 with Paddy Power.

I'm doubling the bet with another United - Ballymena United. They are my father-in-law's team but that isn't the reason why I'm backing them. They are playing a cup match against Comber Rec and the gulf in divisions should be enough to see Ballymena through to the next round. They are also 1/7 with Paddy Power and the combined bet will get £38 - a quarter of the Paddy Power Pot.

If I were a betting man, I would look out for the Six Nations Rugby this weekend. England should thump Italy by a considerable margin and you'll get 10/11 if they can do so by 27 points. The bookies make Wales and Ireland favourites for the other two matches against Scotland (away) and France respectively. I'm not so sure about these and neither are the bookies - they think there will only be a few points in it! I'm not a betting man, so I'm staying clear of these!

Day of the Week Analysis

I'd previously promised to perform some analysis on which days of the week seem to be the most profitable for my betting system - for curiosity's sake, of course.

Well, analysis of the Paddy Power Pot shows that the hit rate is 79.11% over all and each day scoring as follows:

Monday	91%
Thursday	89%
Sunday	83%
Wednesday	81%
Friday	78%
Saturday	76%
Tuesday	62%

Interesting results I thought... must remember to never bet on a Tuesday night ever again!

I also took a look at the "Teams That Never Let You Down" to see if my theory about them is correct:

Team	P	Won
AC Milan	12	12
Juventus	10	10
AEK Athens	8	8
Barcelona	8	8
Fiorentina	6	6
Shelbourne	5	5
Tottenham	5	5
Panathanaikos	4	4
Inter Milan	12	11
Chelsea	11	10
Fenerbahce	10	9
Galatasaray	9	8
Benfica	8	7
Porto	8	7
PSV Eindhoven	8	7
Roma	8	7

What does all this mean? Probably not much other than I will stick to looking out for AC Milan and Juventus for the time being!

Yan's The Man

Well done Yan... Larisa came up trumps with a thumping 3-0 win. £36.00 returned £43.20 and made up (somewhat) for the disappointment of the Porto result last night.

The Paddy Power Pot now stands at £154.90 - which is respectable and certainly better than the banks would've provided.

This week is international week and I won't be betting on any of those matches. The next set of bets are likely to be next Saturday. In the meantime, I'll do a bit of analysis on my betting patterns of the last 2 years.

The Dangers of Gambling

Well, a last minute strike by an Amadora player brought the 29 match unbeaten run to an end last night - Porto lost 1-0. The Bookie Beater doesn't lost too many bets and most of those losing bets are because the match has ended in a draw - it is very unusual that the home team loses.

Ho hum... the Paddy Power Pot is still over £100 wealthier than the start of the season.

Today looks tough - Seville and Real Madrid are possibilities, but they aren't giving me the "warm and fuzzy" feeling that I need. Yan's pick, however, do look promising. Larisa play Ionikos and are now priced at 1/5 and they are getting the quarter of the Paddy Power Pot - £36.

Exponential Returns

I don't consider myself to be a gambler. I know gamblers. I'm not one of them!

Gamblers are forever chasing the big win and they sometimes get the big win. However, they fail to realise that they have spent a fortune backing losers prior to their win. Of course, when they do win, they like to demonstrate how clever they have been by buying everyone in their vicinity a drink and immediately losing their money once again.

I repeat... I am not one of them!

I have a job, a family, a mortgage and a savings account. In the UK, I can reasonably expect to get ~5% on my savings account and I feel quite smug at the end of the year when the bank credit my account with a few extra pennies (after they have given a fair whack of those pennies to the tax man, of course).

Finding a way to make my money earn more than ~5% is a reasonably worthwhile cause. The housing market, the stock market or the bookmakers are all options. To be fair, I do invest in the traditional markets - housing and stock. But the bookmakers is quite exciting.

Under Bookie Beater rules, a £10 pot results in a £2.50 bet on a top drawer football team playing at home at odds of ~1/5. A win moves the pot to £10.50 or, in other words, I've just earned 5% interest on my investment inside 90 minutes.

19 similar bets (a quarter of the pot after each bet) would move me to ~£25. Another 19, ~£64. Another 19, ~£161. Another 19, ~£408.

In theory, after 1 year's gambling at a rate of just 2 bets a week, I could've moved my £10 pot to ~£1,600, Of course, that is assuming that my 104 bets were all correct! I'm quite sure, however, that I would be hard pressed to find a bank that can offer such a spectacular return!

Of course, my recent 29 match unbeaten run must come to an end soon (and it could well be this weekend's Porto bet that does the trick). I've never put a run of 104 games together. But even allowing for the odd slip-up, I'm fairly sure that the returns offered by the high street banks can be bettered - significantly.

Anyway, it only takes 6 winning bets to turn a profit regardless of the outcome of your next bet. 6 wins, and you are playing with someone else's money!

Can Porto make it £200

I don't normally place my Saturday bets until Saturday morning - it's my ritual of analysis coupled with coffee (with a dash of peace and quiet).

However, I'm betting a little early this week as I don't think there is much to analyse. This weekend looks quite tricky to call for a lot of matches - Anderlecht, Fenerbahce and Benfica should win but I don't seem to have enough confidence in them right now. (That's probably got something to do with the psychology of betting a quarter of the Paddy Power Pot which now stands at almost £200).

Juventus and FC Porto are this Saturday's main picks but I'm plumping for FC Porto at 1/5. FC Porto are playing Estrela Amadora who are 23 points behind FC Porto (who also happen to be top of the league winning 13 out of 16 games so far). If all goes well, the Paddy Power Pot will break through the £200 mark for the first time this season.

Fingers crossed!