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Aussie
Rules
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Centrebet Capers
CRICKET It’s been called 'the greatest upset in Australian sporting history' and it’s hard to argue the point after Bangladesh defeated Australia in a one day international on the weekend. It doesn't matter how short teams or competitors are there are always people willing to back them thinking that they cannot be beaten and we had a classic example here. Australia were 1.01 (1/100) and there were many who saw it as an opportunity to pick up some easy cash. The two biggest bets were $30,000 (to win $300) and one of those punters was very philosophical afterwards saying that he had tried to back Australia for enough to pay for a night out with his wife on Saturday night. That little exercise has possibly means they won’t be going out for the next three years. Some of the other bets included $20,000, $15,000, three lots of $10,000 and even a bet of $300 to win $3. The person who had the $15,000 was extremely unlucky as he had originally placed the bet on the British Lions to beat Otago (which they did) at 1.15 but then changed the bet to include Australia to win the cricket. That loss saw betting go up on the Sunday match between England and Australia. The English were layable at 2.15 while there were some who couldn't believe that the Aussies could lose two in a row and ploughed in to the 1.70. We did bet live throughout this game but the betting was extremely quiet with less than $150,000 taken. There was a notable drop off in interest after the English innings got under way with Aussie punters having to grab some sleep before heading off to work the next day. Both sides will do battle again tonight, where Australia are again favourites at 1.70 with England at 2.10. Early trading has seen nearly $20,000 come for both sides. Even though they have lost their two opening matches Australia are still the favourites at 1.75 to win the Natwest Series ahead of England at 2.00 with Bangladesh at 26.00. TENNIS Justine Henin-Hardene is the only big casualty as the opening week of Wimbledon draws to a close. It’s been a favourites dominated tournament so far but the opening round loss suffered by Henin- Hardene at 1.05 was enough to cover other losses incurred that day. As we said last week, the French Open champ was coming in to Wimbledon on a poor preparation and she suffered the consequences. Henin-Hardene was the 3.75 favourite heading into the first round and was easily our worst result, having been backed to win close to $120,000. Last year’s winner, Maria Sharapova is the new favourite at 3.00 but Kim Clijsters has been the one targeted by punters, including bets of €5000 from Germany at 5.00 and another of $4000 from Australia at 4.75. Roger Federer is on track to win his third Wimbledon title in a row as he cuts a swathe through the early rounds. We have kept on the safe side of Federer, who is currently trading at 1.50 but have still taken some substantial wagers including $18,000 and $10,000. Lleyton Hewitt appears to have made a full recovery from injury and is currently on the third line of betting at 15.00. While Hewitt was ignored by punters before the event started we are beginning to see some betting activity under his name. Marat Safin had a good win over Mark Philippoussis last night and is now in to 16.00 and is also one of our worst results. AUSTRALIAN RULES After 11 rounds of strange results, punters have fought back courageously over the past two weeks in the battle with bookies. Last weekend was the first part of the 'split' round and of the six matches played, four outright favourites won (and covered their handicaps), while the other two matches went to well backed sides. Hawthorn were very hard to sell in Friday's game against Port Adelaide and the way they makes you wonder how they ever beat the teams they did a month ago. We took a bet of $40,000 for Port conceding 29.5 points start, and they had plenty to spare in a 188-71 point victory. One bet of interest from this game was $8000 that the total game score would be under 176.5 points (at 2.25), but in a rare occurrence, Port got past that total by themselves. The betting on the Melbourne v West Coast game was everything we expected but the game itself turned out to be a little lopsided as the West Coast cruised to a 15 point win. While Melbourne went in as favourites at 1.80 there was plenty of money won on the West Coast. Some of the bigger bets included $18,000 at 1.97 and $13,000 at 2.00. This week only two matches will be played to conclude the split round. St Kilda is 1.30 to defeat Essendon at Telstra Dome on Friday night. Sydney meantime, is 1.45 to down Collingwood at Telstra Stadium. In early trading there’s little interest in the two outsiders but about $15,000 has been placed on the favourite double. West Coast is in to 3.00 to win the premiership but the two big movers from the weekend were last year’s grand finalists, Port Adelaide and Brisbane. Both had big wins and with Geelong and Melbourne struggling Port are in to 7.50 (from 12) while Brisbane has firmed from 15.00 into 9.00. RUGBY LEAGUE Following on from the big victory punters had on us on Wednesday night's second State of Origin match they were again cashed up after the dust had settled from the weekend round of matches. No less than six of the seven favourites won and if that wasn't bad enough all six covered their respective handicaps so we lost twice! Cronulla started the favourites against the Roosters on Friday night, into 1.85 at game time after opening at 2.00. It was a terrific betting game and we took several $10,000 bets for either side to win but unfortunately the Cronulla money outweighed that of the Roosters. The Warriors played an 'away' game at Waikato and the late withdrawal of Ruben Wiki didn't help their chances or ours. All the big money was for Parramatta, led up by win bets of $40,000 and $21,000 at 1.55, as well as three bets of $10,000 conceding 4 ½ point-start. The 28-18 win by Parramatta has seen their title odds cut to 6.50. The only upset for the weekend came when Penrith continued the shocking run the Melbourne Storm have endured at home this year. Olympic Park in Melbourne has been a difficult place to win in the past but the Storm have now lost four of their last five at and are in danger of missing the finals action. Penrith are also up against it. Not good news for one client who place $40,000 on the Panthers to make the finals at 1.35 just over three weeks ago. The Roosters must win tomorrow night’s clash with Parramatta if they are still to be considered a finals chance and while we think they are suspect punters think they will deliver the goods. The opening quote of 1.75 was taken with bets totaling nearly $17,000. The Bulldogs are in a similar position to the Roosters and must keep winning. It won’t be easy for them when they travel to 'Fortress Brookvale' on Sunday. We envisaged seeing money for Manly to win the game at the opening quote of 1.80 but punters caught us by surprise, preferring the 2.00 for the Bulldogs with two of the biggest bets being $15,000 and $10,000. Brisbane have firmed in to 3.50 to win the title and once they can get clear of the Origin series, they should firm up again as they look set to win the minor premiership. RUGBY UNION The Lions tour has been camped on New Zealand’s South Island this week visiting tourist hot spots such as Dunedin and Invercargill. In Dunedin, we saw plenty of support for the Super 12 Highlanders team masquerading as Otago at the handicap of 15 ½ .The money came mostly from our New Zealand clients, whilst the Lions supporters kept their cash firmly in their pockets. The 11 point victory to the Lions was not enough for us and our Kiwi clients would have had a few beers on the bookmakers. On Tuesday we saw some genuine support for the Lions as they played Southland in near perfect conditions. As the prices went up on Monday afternoon, some eager beavers from the UK were waiting. Immediate support came at the line of 30 ½. Weight of money (Three large bets totalling a little over $30,000) encouraged us to shift the handicap out to 31½. South Africa played their “worst game” in 18 months to manage a draw against an opportunistic French team. The South Africans were well supported by all at both the handicap and win price. A confident South African client had $8,000 at the 1.33 and $6,000 on the handicap line of -9 ½ at 1.90. The All Blacks have been posted 10 ½ point favourites over the British & Irish Lions for Saturday’s Test in Christchurch. Within hours of opening, one of our smarter NZ clients had $20,000 on New Zealand giving 12 ½ points at 2.10. We’ve also written several bets (1x$8,000 and 1x$5,000) on New Zealand at 1.26. At this stage the Lions are untouched by punters but we do expect the Northern Hemisphere clients to get involved shortly. The Wallabies play the Italians in Melbourne and we are expecting a big victory for Gregan’s boys. South Africa meantime hosts France in Port Elizabeth. We expect South Africa to improve on their performance last week and have posted the home side 8 ½ point favourites. Small money for the French indicates that with the 8 changes to last week’s team we might see an upset late on Saturday night. GOLF The hype ahead this year’s US Open surrounded the ‘big five’ of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen. Woods, Els and defending champion Goosen had all won the event twice; Mickelson has been bridesmaid at the Open three times while Singh is the leading money winner on tour and a three time winner this year. The stage was set for an enthralling finish at Pinehurst No 2. It was Michael Campbell however, who was to emerge the unlikely victor. Campbell started the day four shots behind Goosen who commenced his shocking decent from the leader board with a bogey on the second hole to finish with an uncharacteristic 81. Woods, 6.00 Mickelson 8.50, Els and Singh 10.00 and Gossen at 17.00 were all well supported. There was also support for the likes of Tim Clark, $1000 each way at 126.00 and a punter from Queensland had $500 on Campbell to win at 41.00 at the completion of round two. Betting on Golf this week has been a little subdued. Vijay Singh again finds himself favourite at 5.50 over defending champion Sergio Garcia at 8.00 and an ever improving Jim Furyk at 10.00. Of the others Bo Van Pelt has been well supported at 41.00 including one wager of $1000 each way while Australian, Steve Allan also has admirers at 201.00 after finishing in a tie for 28th at last week’s US Open. FORMULA ONE I am sure by now that most people are aware that there was a formula one 'race' held in the USA last weekend and what a debacle it turned out to be. Whenever any betting disputes arise they nearly always come as a result of a F1 race and didn't we have some fun sorting this one out. It cost us plenty, well over $100,000 and unfortunately we did the money cold, there was no way we could win. Rules are there to protect both punter and bookmaker but in this instance they were all in favour of the punters. One thing we did do right was suspend the betting on the grand prix seven hours before it started. We all knew what had happened in the practice and that there had been dramas with the Michelin tyres right up until race time. The info coming out of America was that one of two things would happen, either the race would go ahead with the field in tact or there would be no race at all. When we started to see continuous streams of money come for the Minardi's and Jordan's to finish in the points (all at 34.00) and also to finish on the podium (331.00) we figured something was wrong, so closed it down. We were in big trouble when only six cars made it onto the grid and all of those who backed the four 'bolters' to finish in the points struck gold. The rules were clear once the warm up lap starts, we have a field and that the payouts will be based on who stands on the podium. End of story. BIG BROTHER It wouldn't have come as a surprise to many that Rachael was evicted from the Big Brother household on Sunday night and her demise means there are only four females left. Rachael opened as the shortest favourite we have ever had in an eviction but had drifted out to 1.14 when betting closed after we had taken nearly $800 in bets for Geneva at 7.00. Geneva is becoming a regular on the eviction list and is up again this week. She was the opening favourite at 2.75 to be this week’s evictee but following Vesna’s behaviour in the task during the week we’ve had to adjust our market. Vesna is now into an odds-on quote of 1.40 to go on Sunday and has been heavily backed this week. Hotdogs also hasn’t done himself any favours with his drunken antics and is 4.50 to be shown the door. Geneva 7.50 and Dean 11.00 appear safe according to the betting. Tim has come from nowhere to be our new favourite to win the series and the 2.60 this week has attracted about $1500. You can't be evicted if you don’t get enough nomination votes and that is why Tim, Kate (3.00) and the Logan’s (3.00) are at the top of the betting charts. Last week we took close to $1800 for the Logan’s to win at 3.50 and 3.00 and also a bet of $200 for Glenn at 26.00 after he was nearly an odds-on favourite five weeks ago. ELECTIONS The Northern Territory election was decided on the weekend and the Labor Party was returned in a landslide victory, winning possibly 18 of the 25 seats on offer. The bigger punters got it right but as we pointed out last week, the majority of the money coming from within the Northern Territory had been for the CLP. Close to $240,000 was wagered on the NT election with nearly $220,000 of that coming from the Eastern states. Labor firmed from an opening 1.33 to start at 1.10 on polling day while the CLP blew from 3.00 out to 6.00. On a national level, the Coalition has shortened up on the back of some negative polls for Labor Leader Kim Beazley this week. Although the next election is still three years away, Labor made a bad error in opposing tax cuts and that has seen nearly $4000 come for the Coalition to win the next election. They are now 1.45 with Labor at 2.50. 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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