Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

In Defense Of Illegal Bookies

I am so sick of the government whining about illegal football betting.

Why don’t they f87king get it?

Let us review why any punter with half a brain would want to place his bets with a bookie as opposed to Singapore Pools

1. Opening Hours
Experienced punters know that the starting lineup for a football team will change before kickoff. Any sequence of events may occur before the whistle is blown for the kickoff.

For an example, Posh Spice sends a fax asking for a divorce from Beckham 3 hours before the Man Yoo vs Liverpool showdown. What kind of influence do you think this would have on the match results?

Nobody wants to place their bets until 5 minutes before kickoff. Singapore pools wants you to place your bets min 3 hours before kickoff. Asshats.

2. Asian Odds
Also known as Hang Cheng. This differs from normal betting when you buy a win-lose-draw ticket because asian odds ensures a 50-50 chance of you winning or losing. Let’s say you buy an asian odds bet on England (-0.5 goals) to beat Portugal (+0.5 goals) and the final score is a draw. Which would mean you have lost the bet because you gave half a goal away. Any moron knows this reduces the house odds giving you better returns.

Illegal bookies offer asian odds in the following flavours: +- 0.5, +-1/4, +- 3/4, +- 1, +-1 3/4, +- 1.5.

Singapore Pools offers you a take-it-or-leave-it +- 1.5 on all bets.

3. Convenience
Nobody wants to drive/walk to a Singapore Pools outlet and then be subjected to a long queue to buy a bet from a disgruntled employee. Illegal bookies are just a phone call away. You only need to meet with them once a month to pay your losses or collect your winnings. Some illegal bookies have websites that load faster and look better then the ultra lame Singapore Pools website.

4. Real-time betting
Illegal bookies will take bets as the game progresses. Allowing you to dream up all kinds of wild-strategies to recoup your losses or double your winnings. Another major draw is half-time betting - games can be divided into 2 halves which allows you to treat a game as 2 seperate games.

5. More options
Singapore Pools seems to be in denial because last I checked, football was being played in the Bundesliga, Primeraliga, Seria A, Africa, Holland, France etc. C’mon, let us bet on everything.

6. Value-Added Services
Illegal bookie will sms you the results, odds and have coffee with you if you so desire it. And of course, they will extend you credit if you want it. While this may be dangerous, it’s a big plus.

Conclusion
Singapore Pools has to start listening to what the customers want if it wants to compete with the illegal bookies. It’s not the only fish in the pond, and it’s definitely not the biggest fish in the pond (I think the Jakarta bookies are the biggest fish) but it has the infrastructure in place so it definitely can compete on the same level if it wants to.

Some of you may be wondering how you can get an illegal bookie to place your bets with. Answer is - you can’t without an introduction. They don’t trust new fish.

So how like that???

My suggestion

1) Get a Visa debit card. Mastercard is no good because you cannot do chargebacks.
2) Open an account with www.ladbrokes.com or www.betfair.com
3) Deposit some money there
4) Refer to www.asianbookie.com for tips on which team to bet on
5) Place your bets 5 mins before kickoff. The good tips only come 10 mins before kickoff anyway.
6) Seal your fate.

Good luck and may the force be with you.

Readers anybody rememeber Caleb’s soccer betting tips website (which was hugely popular)?? It has mysteriously disappeared. Hmmm.

that’s because

1) The server crashed eveyrday. 2 thousand ppl trying to access the site at the same time. The server couldnt take the load and we didnt want to pay the bandwidth bill.

2. The main guy giving out tips has gone awol in Medan, Indonesia after losing hundreds of thousands sometime last year.

Actually, I think people mostly buy Goals from Singapore Pools.

the guy losing thousands was you?

mandrake > just because you buy doenst mean alot of ppl buy. Goals is for beginners.

Actually, I didn’t buy lah. Like you said, 1 1/2 kind of odds is really odd.