It was the US Masters last week, my favouritest (sic) ever golf tournament. I love it! Stunningly beautiful course, generally speaking a clear blue sky and hot sun, the noise of birds caught on the mics…I can lie on the sofa and pretend that it’s not still -1 degree in what is supposed to be Spring and that it’s hail stoning outside, and just enjoy some top quality golf.
It’s even better of course, when you’ve backed a golfer in with a shout, and although Weekly Golf Value had Tommy Fleetwood who ultimately finished in a tie for 3rd, he was never in with a shout of winning. I ended up a sliver below break even with WGV for the week, being dragged below the P&L line by the fact I couldn’t get all of my stake on Cameron Young with the ideal 10 places for the place part. So I had to split the stake, and the second part of it went on at a bookmaker paying Top7 only. Young finished in a tie for 9th.
Mind you, that was a much better tournament than for Golf Betting Club, for whom not much went right.
All the figures, etc., in a post later in the week.
In other news, have you listened to the latest The Barstewards Enquiry podcast. If not, why not? It is always a good listen; funny, informative, interesting. Anyway, this week they had on Rishi Persad, the broadcaster often on our screens for ITV Racing (although he’s covered a multitude of other sports for the likes of the BBC, too). Rishi comes across as being a really decent bloke who has his head screwed on. Not a luvvy-entertainment type at all. In fact, I would go so far to say that Rishi appears to be a thoroughly good chap!
It was interesting to listen to Rishi talk about the nonsense of affordability checks and the ever nefarious ways our “great” bookmaking industry use to generally mistreat their customers. I also found it a little reassuring that the awareness of these issues is perhaps, even just an incy wincy bit, growing.
I appreciate I am (very) naive, but I live in hope that the situation with the bookmaking industry will sink to such a low, dire level, that there will eventually be forced upon it a full root and branch review, a proper regulating body formed, and some sort of return to the “good old days” when a bookmaker will take a bet. I can dream, eh?
One of the nefarious methods used by BetFred was to “palp” it’s 6/4 pre tournament price on there to be no hole in one in The Masters. There wasn’t, and clearly the firm had been hit by those who, perhaps after seeing Bookie Bashing’s Tom Brownlee’s video, had taken advantage of the value on offer. To make their actions even worse, if that is possible, BetFred had actually cut the price to 6/4 from 9/5. What was the discussion at BetFred HQ?
“Woops, that 9/5 was waaaay too big. Let’s palp it.”
“But, Boss. We got stung at the 6/4 we cut it to, an’ all.”
“Well, we’ll just say that was a clear and obvious error, too. Works for VAR”
Finally for today, the Aintree Festival was a far from lucrative one for me this year – more on that later in the week – but I have to admit that the Grand National knocked me back a bit. I watched it this year, for the first time in many, and it is unrecognisable from the race it was when I was growing up! And l0ok, I’m not one for animal cruelty, and perhaps the race as it was might be considered a little bit too much of a test for the horses, but what I witnessed on Saturday was just “another” long distance steeplechase. It just lacked any sort of real jeopardy, or drama. A sad shadow of the event it was.
And on that cheery note I shall leave you.
PS. If you think that’s miserable, wait until you see the betting figures for last week! Ouch.
