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Aussie
Rules
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Centrebet Capers
TENNIS The fairytale finish to the Australian Open didn't eventuate when Roger Federer overpowered Marcos Baghdatis in the final. Baghdatis was adopted by Australian punters and although he went into the final at an underdog’s price of 5.75, he was a bad result for us. Apart from all the bets taken at the opening quote of 331.00 and all the way down until he made the final, we were bombarded with bets on the final as well. Two bets of $10,000 came at 6.00, several $5000 bets at around the same price and literally thousands of smaller bets. It was left to our overseas clients who didn't rate Baghdatis to balance the book for us, including one hefty bet of $80,000 coming for Federer at 1.14, and another two bets of $50,000 at the same price. The women's final was shrouded in controversy when Justine Henin-Hardenne withdrew from the final when it looked like she was going to be beaten by Amelie Mauresmo anyway. The withdrawal tainted Mauresmo's win, although from the outset it was obvious she was the better player. Amazingly it was the third match for the tournament that Mauresmo had won when her opponent had to retire. Mauresmo was the 3.00 outsider in the final but as the game was not completed in the normal fashion, all bets on the final match (excluding the bet types already decided) were refunded. This caused some hysterical headlines around the country but it is in keeping with rule changes made some two years ago and had happened two nights earlier when Kim Clijsters withdrew. Naturally those who backed Mauresmo might feel hard done by but for every person that backed Mauresmo, there were two that backed Henin-Hardenne so they all received a pleasant surprise. Where some confusion arose was in relation to the 'Championship' winner. As all titles are based on an 'all in' basis, those bets stood, hence anybody who backed Mauresmo at the big odds was paid out as a winner and anybody who backed Henin-Hardenne was on a loser. CRICKET The current one-day series being played in Australia seems like 'Days of our Lives'……it will never end! We are only up to game ten, with another two preliminary matches to be played after that and then there is a best of three finals series. While there is always some level of interest in betting on cricket, we can see from our own list of transactions on the matches that punters are getting tired of the endless stream of games. The past week has been very quiet and even the upcoming match between Australia and South Africa hasn't sparked any high level of activity. The Aussies will be back to near full and are priced up at 1.35, with South Africa at 3.10. These two seem assured of playing off in the finals so that hasn't helped the betting either and at the time of writing, the biggest bet for Australia had only been $2000. AMERICAN FOOTBALL The biggest day on the American sports calendar is approaching with Super Bowl XL due to be played on Monday morning our time. If you are a bit confused about how the betting on the game looks then you have every right to be. The Pittsburgh Steelers enter the game as four point favourites after finishing the regular season as sixth seed in the AFC. Then we have Seattle who finished the season with eleven straight wins and ranked first in the NFC and they go in significant underdogs. The Steelers have done what no other team in NFL history have done and that is win three straight road games en-route to the Super Bowl, an amazing feat in itself. Punters think that their run can continue as they have already firmed from 1.55 into 1.50 with the handicap moving a full point to -4. We didn't take any substantial bets at the opening line but three $5000 wagers were taken conceding a 3½ point-start with another bet of $10,000 at -4 and we continue to see money come at that handicap. The action is all one-sided however, as several Aussie's think there is value with Seattle. One has placed $10,000 on Seattle to win at 2.60 while we took three separate bets of $2000 for the Seahawks with the 3½ start before it moved to 4. A couple have come back and had the same bets again at the new number and we have also taken two bets totaling €14,000 for Seattle with the start. RUGBY LEAGUE The 2006 season gets under way this weekend when the premiers from Super League and the NRL do battle in the World Club Challenge. Historically the Australian sides have struggled in this match as the conditions in the UK are normally atrocious. Wests Tigers are also going to be fielding a severely under-manned side with notable absentees being Marshall, Halatau and Payten. Bradford have lost a few players since last years win but have more than made up with that in new signings and are nearly at full strength. We have allocated heavy favouritism to Bradford, trading at 1.35 or conceding 8½ point-start. The Tigers have attracted a few early bets to win the match at 3.20 and also two bets of $2000 with the start but we expect all the late money to be for Bradford. RUGBY UNION This weekend sees the rugby season kick off with the first round of the Six Nations. This should act as a little entree for the real deal as Super 14's under way next Friday night. Firstly, on Saturday evening Ireland hosts Italy in the season starter. Ireland has Brian O'Driscoll back and has been installed a short quote of 1.02 and conceding 23½ point-start, while you can get 13.00 for the Italians. This match has not stirred too much interest with perhaps the weather being the variable which may invoke some action. The second game and without doubt the game of the round has England hosting Wales at Twickenham. The English are 1.15 and must concede 14½ start while the Welsh are 5.50. Not a bad price for Grand Slam title holders. The final game on Sunday evening has Scotland hosting the enigmatic French at Murrayfield. The visitors are 1.15 favourites and conceding 14½ point-start with a much improved Scotland at 5.50. This may represent the value of the round as the weather here is also likely to play a hand. Finally on the Super 14 front, the big firmers this week have been the Hurricanes at 10.00 into 8.50 and the Bulls 15.00 into 13.00 with both teams backed to win more than $30,000. Others to firm have been the Chiefs on the back of some impressive trial form while the Waratahs have had their admirers after dispensing with the Blues last weekend and possessing a backline with potency of a viper. BOXING The bout that many cynics thought would never take place, Anthony Mundine v Danny Green is going ahead on April 19 in Sydney. Without a doubt, this will be the biggest ever fight held in Australia as far as betting goes and now that we have a firm date, people are prepared to throw money down on the likely winner and how the victory will be achieved. Up until the date was announced this week, we had already taken close to $30,000 on the fight, where Mundine had firmed from 1.80 into 1.75. 'The Man' lost few admirers with last year’s loss to Denmark's Mikkel Kessler and in the last couple of days, close to $20,000 has forced that price into 1.70. Danny Green has had his share of supporters including $5000 wagers at 2.10, along with a bet of $1500 for Danny to win by KO at 3.75. GOLF Tiger Woods became the first player to win four Buick Invitational titles after winning a sudden death play-off against rookie Australian Nathan Green and two-time Masters Champion Jose Maria Olazabal. While the win was a success for Tiger it was also a success for Centrebet but not without the mandatory scare. Three-time winner Phil Mickelson and a resurgent Sergio Garcia were both backed to win in excess of $100,000 at 9.00 and 15.00 respectively and both were in the hunt for a long way before finishing in a tie for eighth, two shots from the winner. The tour heads to Arizona this week for the FBR Open. Phil Mickelson has been installed favourite at 6.50 ahead of Vijay Singh at 7.50 with Garcia and David Toms next in the betting at 13.00. On the European tour, Tiger Woods heads a strong field at the Emirates G.C in Dubai, including South Africans Ernie Els and Retief Goosen. Woods has been installed favourite at 3.40 and is hoping third time lucky as he takes on defending champion Els, at 7.50. Goosen is next in the betting at 11.00 while Qatar Masters winner, Henrik Stenson is next at 13.00. On the ladies scene we head to the lovely Royal Pines Resort on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia, for a combined European and Australasian tour event, the ANZ Ladies Masters. Karrie Webb is a solid favourite here at 5.00 ahead of young Japanese sensation Ai Miyazato at 7.00 and another local, Rachael Hetherington at 10.00. Miyazato has been well supported along with Korean Hee Young Park at 67.00, Sarah Kemp at 101.00 and Louise Stahle also at 101.00, all backed to win in excess of $30,000. WINTER GAMES The Winter Games are only a little over a week away and on Monday we will be opening an extensive coverage on all events. Betting will be available to win all gold medals, as well as individual and country specific performances. There will also be a myriad of head to head betting options on all individual and team events, as well as betting on each match in team event sports. We have had the men’s and women’s ice hockey gold medal markets opened up for some time, and there has been plenty of interest shown in them. Defending champions, Canada have been early firmers from 3.25 into 2.80 to win men’s gold, ahead of the Czech Republic (4.00), Russia and Sweden at 6.00. Almost half of the Canadian team was in the side that was victorious over the USA in Salt Lake but they face some stiff opposition, particularly from the Czechs. The betting on the ice hockey matches will be massive throughout the fortnight of the games and several bet types will be available on each match. FOOTBALL Centrebet accepts wagers each week on hundreds of football matches around the world and many punters try and stab winners in several of the leagues. Multi-betting is a popular bet type whereby you can roll several selections into one bet and the rewards can be quite profitable if you are a decent judge or you have a bit of luck. One Norwegian client fits into both categories after having a terrific weekend on football. He took two multi-bets totaling 30,000 NOK ($AUD 6000) and got both to the line for a win of just over 1.1 million NOK ($AUD 230,000). He coupled up half-time/full-time doubles in a couple of high profile matches, into some goal totals in Spain and rounded off with a Dutch football game. Knowing what fierce rivalry exists between the Swedes and the Norwegians, there was a touch of irony as to how this punter came to collect. The final leg was on Groningen to beat NAC Breda in the Dutch League and they scored a goal in the last minute. The irony was that it was a Swedish player who scored the winning. We wonder if he will be telling his Norwegian mates about his new favourite player. Betting has opened for Euro 2008, where England and Holland share top billing at 5.50 while a bet of $10,000 has seen Barcelona firm from 5.00 into 4.75 to win this year’s Champions League title. ACADEMY AWARDS Nominations for this year’s Academy Awards are out and there weren't too many shocks from the original markets that we opened several weeks ago. On this side of the world, former 'bad boy' Heath Ledger is our only main hope but he is going to find the going tough after Philip Seymour Hoffman won the Golden Globe Award recently. We have Hoffman a hot favourite to win Best Actor at 1.12 ahead of Ledger at 8.00, although as soon as nominations came through, Aussie punters jumped straight into Ledger at 9.00. The bets haven't been that big, just constant. Brokeback Mountain, the rather controversial movie in which Ledger starred, is also a hot favourite at 1.15 to win the Best Picture Award but nobody is prepared to take the short odds. While it is clearly a great movie, there are some concerns as to how the conservative members of the Academy voting panel will take it. For that reason there has been good money for Crash, now into 6.50 after opening at 11.00. Crash has been backed to take out over $25,000 in a flurry of bets and we have also layed some hefty bets on Munich which has seen its price come in from 21.00 to 13.00. Reese Witherspoon is also a warm favourite at 1.20 to win the Best Actress Oscar for her role in Walk the Line and while we took one bet of $US 2500 at that quote, there has been plenty of support for Felicity Huffman at 4.00 to spring an upset. ELECTIONS Another election and another favourite won. It didn't really come as a surprise that incumbent Tarja Halonen was re-elected for her second term as President of Finland on the weekend. We had rated Halonen a raging hot 1.02 chance in the original field of eight but when the run-off election was held against Sauli Niinisto, Halonen had drifted out to 1.28. There was money both ways but two conflicting polls leading into the final two days saw betting go haywire. The first had the two candidates neck and neck, so that saw nearly €20,000 force the price of Niinisto into 2.50 after touching 4.00 at one stage on Thursday. Then the next poll had Halonen 10 points clear, so the money came the other way, including bets of €15,000 (1.25) and €10,000 (1.20), while money dried up for Niinisto. In the end, a win by Tarja Halonen was our best result and we got our wish when she got 51.8% of the vote to win narrowly. Until next week, good punting For
further information contact Gerard Daffy at Centrebet on 02 9206 8715 or
centrebet@centrebet.com
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