Nearly for Madrid (and me)

Mixed weekend on the betting front this week, did mainly 'Any Unquoted Score' on Betfair, again with limited success.

Was going to do either Chelsea or Arsenal for the Saturday 3pm bet, went with Arsenal as thought Birmingham might crumble a bit in 2nd half, and Chelsea scored after 15 mins so there was no value in the price (or so I wrongly thought). Just about my luck.

Won a few pound on Man Utd putting 4 past Bolton, lost on some correct score bets on Saturday afternoon's Premier League games, also lost on Barcelona for 'Any Unquoted' and lost on the correct score with Zaragoza V Valencia.

Did get my money back on Arsenal game, as laid the 0-1 to cover my bets, about 5 minutes before Almunia set up Kevin Phillips injury time equaliser. Wasn't too impressed though as did Arsenal 2-0 and 2-1 in-running and apparently Nasri missed a sitter to make it 2-0 just before Phillips' goal.

Laid Villareal at HT against Sevilla and was well happy when some donkey missed a sitter 5 mins into 2nd half for Sevilla, could have been different if he'd scored, so lost there as well. Also did Madrid on Any Unquoted and laid off my loses for a free bet, wasn't happy with 3-2 result though. Again, another close call.

All-in all about a tenner down which isn't a disaster (only using a small betting bank). The Man Utd win basically subsidised my weekends gambling.

Think I'm going to stick with backing the 'Any Unquoted Scores' for a while and see how it goes, it's more a matter of timing the bet properly. No point backing the likes of Madrid, Man Utd, Chelsea or Barca at the start, as sometimes the price is as low as 5/2 to 3/1, which is ridiculous.

Generally try to wait til the half hour mark and hope it's still 0-0. Or if theres an early goal wait for the hour mark and if only still 1-0, then get on. Not sure if it a sustainable long term bet, but going to give it a run for rest of the season, haven't bottomed out my account on it yet!

What about Arsene Wenger saying to a journo "Leave me alone with that, for fuck's sake," because the hack was trying to provoke him into saying Birmingham had kicked lumps out of his side. Makes a change, he is usually only too happy to point the finger at the opposition.

No luck for Hamilton

What a weekend for Lewis Hamilton, I would imagine he can't get away from Australia quick enough after the events of the last three days.

First he gets caught doing a burnout in his road car on Friday night and suffers the humiliation of having his car impounded, he must have felt a right idiot in the paddock on Saturday morning.

Worse than that was the two goons trying to stop the Aussie camera crew filming Hamilton in the back of the police car, how stupid did they look? Nearly as stupid as Hamilton did.

I don't doubt for a minute that Hamilton is the only driver to do this on public highways, but he should try not to do it right in front of the cops. Maybe he should stick to the Stevenage 'Morrisons' car park (or the Swiss equivalent) at night, with all the other boy racers.

To compound his misfortune he then struggled to only 11th on the grid. Then when the race started he drove brilliantly, working his way through the field to 3rd place and pushing for 2nd, that was until his team called him in for a tactical tyre change.

The tyre change set Hamilton back further but he held onto 5th place before Mark Webber crashed into him and sent him spinning into the gravel, fortunately Hamilton recoved to come in 6th, but without the balls-up and the crash he probably would have come in 2nd or 3rd..

All-in-all, Hamilton started the weekend stupidly, was average in qualifying, drove well in the race but was shafted by, first, his team, and then by Mark Webber.

I bet he can't wait for next year.

Go on, get in there, Frank.

Today saw the sad announcement that one of the voices of Boxing, Harry Carpenter passed away on Saturday aged 84. Along with his contemporary, Reg Gutteridge, who passed away last year, they were the voices of Boxing as I grew up as a kid, and that is how I will remember them both.

Carpenter was one of the old school of commentators, with the 'less is more' approach to his commentary, not one of the attention seeking screamers we hear more and more of these days.

There is not too many commentators around who have famous quotes attributed to them, Carpenter had many, my personal favourite was "Go on... get in there, Frank" when Carpenter was commentating on Frank Bruno's fight against Mike Tyson in 1989, always the consummate professional, Carpenter briefly let his guard down revealing his passion and partiality for Frank Bruno.

The comment is up there with all the great ones for me. Like Brian Moore's "It's up for grabs now", or Jack Karnehm's "Good luck, mate", the legendary Kenneth Wolstenholme etc.

Along with the above mentioned, Carpenter will be remembered as one of the greats with the likes of Richie Benuad, Brian Johnston, Bill McLaren, Peter O'Sullivan, Dan Maskell and Peter Alliss, all names that are synonymous with their particular sports.

Harry passed away peacefully in his sleep on Saturday, one of his closest friends in Boxing was Frank Bruno, with whom the pair became famous for the catchphrase "Know wot I mean, Harry."

Bruno was said to be devastated at the news, a spokesman on behalf of Bruno said "Frank has many acquaintances but not many real friends. Harry Carpenter was a friend." A fitting tribute.

RIP Harry.

Bloody Ibrahimovic!

After backing Barcelona to score 4 goals (any unquoted score) on Betfair, I was subjected to a period of pulling my hair out at the sight of this €60 Million so-called goal scorer missing chance after chance against Real Zaragoza on Sunday night, including an unbelievable open goal.

Thank God for Lionel Messi, who almost single handedly won me my bet with a hat-trick and winning a penalty. With Zaragoza coming back to 2-3 in the last couple of minutes though the game was still alive, for this reason you can imagine my horror at the sight of Zlatan Ibrahimovic being given the ball to take the 90th minute penalty won by Messi.

Thankfully he scored but not without giving me another stress attack, I couldn't believe they let him take it after the night he had. I could understand him taking it if Barca had a 3-0 lead, but this was only 3-2. Phew.

Also won a couple of quid laying Leicester at half time when they were 2-0 up against the mighty Coventry City. 1/20 they were on Betfair, that was miles too short for me. Lost on Chelsea to win 2-1 and Man Utd to win 3-1 or 3-2.

Also lost a couple of pounds (in-running) on over 2.5 goals in the Rangers V St Mirren match, honestly, why do I bet on Scottish football, this was a joke of a match. 11 men against 9, and the 11 could hardly manage a shot at goal. No wonder Robbie Keane is already saying he is coming back to Spurs.

Thought the quote of the weekend was Lawrence Dallaglio saying the words "quick ball" and "England" in the same sentence when describing Ben Foden's try in Paris on Saturday night. Thats like saying "Portsmouth" and "3 points" or "Ronaldo" and "stayed on his feet under a challenge in the penalty area" in the same sentence.

At least we can blame the rain for using the kicking game this time, although I did think it was far from the worst performance I've seen from England lately. Bit late though!

Free Bets changes during Cheltenham

The sight of the Cheltenham festival this week hasn't had the bookies running for the 'free bets' cover I thought they would have done, they will no doubt wait for Aintree before withdrawing all offers on mass.

Totesport made the most significant change, reducing their Free Bet offer from £60 to £50. Coral bucked that trend and have upped their free bet offer from £10 to £20 during the festival.

The action on the course saw Irish bookie Paddy Power not have to refund thousands of losing bets with one of their 'money back specials' after Dunguib failed to win the Supreme Novices' Hurdle.

The man himself, Paddy Power, said the result of that race on its own made a difference to his firm of around £4 million. Not bad for a days work. It goes to show just what a massive price he puts on publicity.

Binocular and Tony McCoy also cost a few layers on Betfair a lot of money after winning the Champion Hurdle.

Reminiscent to that of Kicking King back in 2005, Binocular was originally withdrawn a few weeks prior to the festival with trainer Nicky Henderson saying the horse wasn't right and wouldn't be running.

Layers on Betfair - as they do - decided to offer stakes on Binocular at the maximum Betfair price of 999/1. Some stupid punters (six in all) decided it was worth a risk (or didn't realise) and decided to back Binocular at this price and the rest, as they say, is history.

Like that of Kicking King, the circumstances later changed and Binocular took part and won on Tuesday resulting in the six stupid punters cashing in at 999/1.

What fools, backing a horse that isn't running! Do I feel sorry for layers trying to take advantage like this? What do you think!!

I loved the Betfair spokesmans comment of the lucky six, he remarked "The only downside for the winning sextet is that they can never strike a winning single bet at bigger odds in the future!"

I'm sure the layers are sharing in the particular grief of that downside as well, just goes to show that there is no such thing as free money.

2010 General Election Betting

The opinion polls are starting to show the gap between the Tory Party and the Labour Party is closing, as a result the Bookies have reacted by cutting Labour into around the 9/2 - 4/1 mark, the Tory's have drifted sightly from 1/12 to the 1/5 - 1/6 mark.

As a result of this, the likelihood of a Hung Parliament has become a more realistic outcome with William Hill now offering 6/4 on this scenario happening. Ladbrokes are even going as far as offering 7/1 on there being more than one General Election in 2010.

In the event of a Hung Parliament, Hill's go 10/3 on David Cameron to be PM, 4/1 on Gordon Brown remaining resident in No 10, and 50/1 any other.

There would appear to be no bookies now offering odds on the 6th May being the date for the General Election

A further revelation has seen the BBC claim that they rejected a request from Downing St to allow Gordon Brown to appear on Match of the Day 2 (on a Sunday night), claiming it is too close to the General Election.

Useless trivia, former Labour leader Tony Blair once appeared on the BBC's Football Focus programme.

To Win General Election (Most Seats) Betting

The Conservative Party are 1/5 with Betfred
Labour are 9/2 with Sportingbet
Liberal Democrats are 200/1 with Bet365

Tiger Woods set to return

Despite not giving any indications of an imminent return to Golf in his (apology) speech a couple of weeks ago, it would now appear that Tiger Woods is likely to be back playing Golf, either before, or at The Masters in Augusta.

The word is that Woods is back in training, and back practising on the range, this has seen a dramatic cut in the odds on him participating in this years Masters, with him now at 2/5 on Betfair to compete in this years event starting on 8th April.

The bookmakers are clearly expecting him back as well, with Paddy Power (5/2), William Hill (3/1) and Ladbrokes (4/1), all making him their respective tournament favourite.

It makes sense Woods coming back in time for the Masters if he really wants to beat Jack Nicklaus' record of 18 Majors, we already know how much he enjoys playing at Augusta.

He would also want to have plenty of Golf under his belt before playing the US Open and (British) Open Championship. This year the Open is at St Andrews, where Woods has won 2 of his 3 Championships. Also, his US Open victory in 2000 came at Pebble Beach Links, which is where it is to be held this year,

Bearing in mind his track record on these courses it would be highly unlikely that Woods will pass up these opportunities to try and close the gap on Nicklaus.

A further twist has seen Tiger offered a $75 Million, 5 year sponsorship deal by Irish bookmakers Paddy Power, bucking the trend of sponsors dropping him.

His management company IMG have apparently rejected the deal, but it is understood that the Irish Bookmakers are still keen to sponsor Woods and a new offer is set to be tabled soon.