Expert Bet

The Footy 15 game from The New Football Pools website is offering its registered players the chance to win their share of £260,000 this week for correctly picking the outcome of 15 select soccer games.

Footy 15 challenges players to predict whether 15 games taking place in the UK and Europe will end in a home win, away win or draw and has already paid out over £850,000 this season alongside in excess of 16,000 prizes.

Equally as challenging as the Footy 15 game, Premier 10 from The New Football Pools asks competitors to correctly predict the outcomes of ten Premier League games. It has so far awarded over £500,000 in prize money to take the tally for the season for the two games to in excess of £1.215 million.

If you want to compete for the attractive award, you should be acquainted with the general rules and conditions required by The New Football Pools website. In order to compete for the challenging prizes provided by The New Football Pools, contestants will have to put in a stake as low as £1 Sterling per line. That means that, if you want to play 3 doubles, for instance, you would have to put in a £8 stake (3 doubles actually means 8 lines).

The New Football Pools also offers players the chance to benefit from the weekly insights and predictions of soccer legends Alan Hansen, John Barnes and Tony Cascarino along with former referee Graham Poll.

“These games were designed to allow football fans to test their knowledge, have fun and also make some money in the process,” said Ian Penrose, Chief Executive Officer for Sportech, owners of The New Football Pools.

“This season we’ve already given out over £1.25million on our new games, which really is an incredible amount to have paid out.”

In order to enter either game or to read the views of the pundits, you can visit FootballPools.com. The competition can also be played at many PayPoint locations in the UK across a network of 17,000 retailers and through over 1,750 Ladbrokes outlets.

Some people bet on sports, some on blackjack, or any other casino games.

Nevertheless, every year there is always a large betting market for the highlight of the cinematic year, the Academy Awards, that is the Oscars.

William Hill’s film expert has been making odds on the awards for years. Moreover, he is right more often than not. The living proof is that he has successfully predicted who the Best Director statue will go to before it is announced.

“The biggest prizes have never looked as settled as they do this year,” a spokesman for the company said to a major London newspaper. “There are normally at least two contenders for each award but this year the favourites are all nailed on.”

“Slumdog Millionaire” is matched at 2/7 to take the Best Picture award while 13-times-nominated “The Curious Case” of Benjamin Button is matched at odds of 4/1.

Kate Winslet is a 8/15 favorite to pick up her first Oscar for “The Reader”. She broke records at age 22 for being the youngest actress to pick up two nominations so for her, a win is long overdue.

Kate Winslet has attracted 10 times more money than her nearest rival in the betting for the best actress Oscar, it was announced today.

The 33-year-old British actress has already won both a Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice award for Best Supporting Actress for “The Reader”, in which she plays a Nazi concentration camp guard who has an affair with a teenager.

Winslet also has a BAFTA nomination for the part.

British bookmaker Ladbrokes has moved her Oscar odds from 5/4 to even money as backers have flooded in lately.

Her closest competitors appear to be Anne Hathaway at 6/4 and Meryl Streep at 5/1, with outsiders Angelina Jolie at 12/1 and Melissa Leo at 14/1.

Spokesman Robin Hutchison said: “We have seen bits and bobs for Hathaway and Jolie but Winslet is the one they all want to be with at the moment.”

It is believed a victory for Winslet could cost bookmakers as much as Helen Mirren did when “The Queen” was successful in 2006.

Mickey Rourke is now 4/5 from evens to claim the Best Actor gong after he also came in for strong support.

The Oscars take place on February 22.

By its very nature, Internet gambling might be considered as a semi-underground industry, as online gambling defies precise analysis of its global and national scope. But several organizations have developed estimates that seem to exist within a similar range.

It is generally accepted that the first Internet gambling site came online in mid-1995, some have come and gone since then, and several thousand sites now exist.

Christiansen Capital Advisors, a firm that tracks online and other forms of gambling, estimates that the industry currently accounts for about $22 billion a year in global revenue, a number that will grow to nearly $25 billion a year by 2010.

About half of that will be wagered by Americans, the company says.

The U.S. General Accounting Office, in a December 2002 report, provided similar statistics, saying that “U.S. customers are reported to constitute anywhere from 50 to 70 percent of total operator revenues from Internet gambling.”

Those who support federal regulation and taxing of Internet gambling - rather than its ban - cite a December 2007 study by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The above-mentioned study found that taxes on the industry could pump $8.7 billion to $17.6 billion into the U.S. Treasury during the next 10 years, depending on which - if any - states opt out of a regulatory plan. If sports leagues agree to participate, $42.8 billion could be produced, according to the PricewaterhouseCoopers study.

If you are new to sports gambling, you could pick a great time to start. The Super Bowl 2009 is less than two weeks away but Super bowl odds are heating up as we are getting closer to Super Bowl XLIII and Super bowl betting fans are getting ready for the action.

Super Bowl odds are always the most popular betting odds of the year. Super Bowl 2009 can be seen on NBC television this year which should increase the popularity since Al Michaels and John Madden are thought to be the best football announcers in the business.

The Super Bowl is by far the busiest event of the year, with estimates of $8 billion in cold, hard cash exchanging hands worldwide. A lot of this money will be wagered by people who are betting for the first and only time in 2009. Most of the people gambling on Super Bowl are not necessarily professional gamblers, but they are having fun, that’s for sure.

By picking up some of the basics of Super Bowl betting, you could increase your chances of getting paid while enhancing your appreciation of the NFL.

Super Bowl gambling bettors will look for the big payoff in Super Bowl odds and take the underdog on the money line. They will almost never take the favorite on the money line, instead choosing to lay the points in Super Bowl betting.

Gamblers will also look to bet the over in the Super Bowl.

If you take a close look at Super Bowl odds you should notice that the favorite, the over and the underdog on the money line will be the most popular wagers in terms of Super Bowl lines.

Now let’s take a look at the betting line.

The Pittsburgh Steelers opened as 7-point favorites over the Arizona Cardinals at press time. The Cardinals got some early support, so the linesmakers have adjusted by lowering the juice on the Steelers from “110 to “105. The total is 47, with the over priced at “105.

These small line movements speak volumes about the Super Bowl. Early bets are often made by sharp handicappers, who always want to get their team at the best price they can. Some were able to get Arizona +7 at the standard “110. Others who waited had to pay “115, but that™s still a bargain compared to the possibility of the line moving to Arizona +6.5.

On the Pittsburgh side of the ledger, the betting public generally prefers to bet on the favorite, and the Steelers are one of the most publicly adored teams in the NFL. Square money tends to come in closer to game time, especially after the Friday workday is done. These market trends are important to follow; if you prefer the Steelers in this matchup, you might decide it’s in your best interests to wait and see if you can get them at “6.5 instead of “7.

People are motivated to bet on the Super Bowl because of the implied entertainment. The sports pages will be filled over the next two weeks with stories about the two teams and their players, mostly of the human-interest variety. But stories that matter to the game itself do hit the newswires, like when Oakland Raiders center Barrett Robbins was spotted drinking and despondent before the 2003 Super Bowl against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. These are the kind of developing stories you want to follow and make use of this sort of information before you gamble as we get closer to Feb. 1.

When Real and Barca play at home in La Liga the majority of punters place huge amounts of money on the big two, Real Madrid and Barcelona.

The majority of money wagered on each week’s Primera Liga matches is centred around the big clubs: Real Madrid and Barcelona.

Many Betfair traders will get heavily stuck into their respective matches this coming weekend against Numancia and Deportivo.

Both Real Madrid and Barcelona are playing at home and both are fully expected to win.

Punters are backing the result, the correct score, the HT/FT or playing in the over/under market.

This coming weekend both sides play at home. Barcelona host Numancia on Saturday evening and their nearest rivals Real Madrid entertain Deportivo on Sunday.

The popular view be of these games would be that both sides will win and they’ll probably end up doing so by a couple of goals, and by keeping a clean sheet along the way with three or more goals being scored to the delight of the crowd enjoying a very entertaining match.

According to statistics, Barcelona have played 106 home matches at the Nou Camp. They have won 76, drawn 22 and lost just 8 times. Likewise, Real Madrid have played 106 matches at the Bernabeu, winning 77 times with 12 draws and 17 defeats.

That gives you an average of 76.5 wins from 106 games each or a 72% success rate.

In other words, the sides should be about 1.38 to win any given home match. In actual fact, this coming weekend Barcelona are 1.19 to win and Real Madrid are 1.43. These final result bets on home wins don’t really look like value bets to me.

Looking back over the past five seasons, the most popular results of home matches for Barcelona have been either 2-0 or 3-0. And that feels about right for a game against struggling Numancia.

With a 2-0 result happening in 10 of the 106 home games you’d be looking at true odds getting on for 11.00 for that score to be repeated whilst the 3-0 (found in 14 of 106 matches) should be nearer 7.50.

But the exchange offers a bit short at a fraction over 8.0 for a 2-0 home win and 3-0 appears to be a more tempting option at tempting odds of  12.0.

As for Real Madrid, they should win but it won’t necessarily be an easy home win. The 3-1 scoreline has most readily appeared for them over the past five seasons. Moreover, their last match against Osasuna ended in a 3-1 home win.

Appearing 14 times in their last 106 home games that’s another bet which comes in at true odds of 7.50. But Betfair offers the punters
the thick end of 13.00. So this might be considered a value bet if you decide to risk your money on the Galacticos!

You can still make money out of betting on the big two but following a gut-feeling bet might not be enough for the regular punter to win.

It takes some analyzing, proper use of information and good judgments to win big with the big two.