By: Samantha Williams
Watching sport on TV or live is entertainment in itself, and billions of sports fans do this, so extending this natural course of events, we find sports betting too. Virtually everyone who takes a wager on the outcome of a sporting event is doing this for additional entertainment and very few take it too seriously. It is a specialized form of betting and wagers take the shape of very simple, low cost bets to more complex and expensive permutations. But there is a place for all levels of expertise, and you do need to know a little about the sport you are betting on.
I must confess, rather than read all about the horses in the Kentucky Derby before placing a bet, I kind of like to close my eyes and stick a pin in a potential winner. This however is not the technique to use to get an edge on the house. So please “don’t try this at home!”
Because there is no direct competition with the house or casino and odds are published for bettors to take advantage of, this form of betting can be quite lucrative. It is very possible to have an edge on the house if you guess right and the bookies guess wrong. Like for example when an outsider comes in on a horse, or any other race or event you wager on.
Sports betting takes place on any type of sporting event, if there is a demand for players to place wagers a bookie will advance odds. Even novelty bets come under the heading of sports betting even though a wager placed on whether life will be found on Mars or not, may not be very sporting, or paid out to you in this lifetime. You could always will your ticket to future generations; hoping against hope the same betting shop will still be around.
Placing novelty bets is a lot of fun and as we were saying, can be lucrative too. One betting individual who remains unnamed walked into a Welsh betting shop on 1989 and placed a handful of novelty bets, the bookies took him on and gave him some keen odds.
The bet was of long standing duration (11 years) but relevant to the New Millennium. All of them came in, and paid odds of between 3 to1, to 8 to 1. He bet on three specific British TV shows still being active, that singer Cliff Richards would be knighted, and that Irish pop band U2 would still be together as a group. The odds of all of these specifics being correct were 6,479 to 1. A few days into the year 2000, this betting gent walked into his local Ladbrokes bookmaker and picked up a check for £194,400. This is the largest novelty bet won in history, although we know for a fact a few private proposition bets have been bigger.
