No.9 - Good Old Barry Benjani and Betting Links.

You may notice that the header is green this week, and I am starting the blog with the line of hope. Usually i reserve this disappointing feature till the end of the blog but things are looking up. I just need things to look up a bit more consistently, as a gloomy pattern seems to be emerging - if I carry on like this I will be on blog title No.684 - 'Still not past £130 but bought a new zimmer'. If this pattern is indeed a pattern by which i mean a regular manner of performance I could be in for a bleak weekend. But fear not surely there is a good punt out there that I could have another 64p on.

But why a good week this week. We'll my Saudi Arabian Premiership betting actually went well, I posted two teams last week that I thought were wrongly priced and the little beauties came in. £7 @ 4.60 = £32.20

In fact I have a new favorite Saudi Arabian player Mohammed AlSahlawi who plays upfront for Al Nasr, he chirped up with two goals in the game I picked out last week and then the winner in their next game away from home @5.50. When typing his name in google I found a lovely link to his facebook page so if you want to zombie poke Mr. AlSahlawi go ahead. Thank him from me for his goal scoring prowess.

I am not sure if this middle eastern gambling is something I could keep up, but whilst snow bums the living daylights out of England it provides an alternative means of betting.

I have found the best way to play these obscure leagues is to look for matches where you have a top three team taking on a team at the foot of the table. If they are playing away from home you can get really good value at about 2.00 for a match that is the equivalent to a Hull vs. Man Utd. If you fancy a go let us know your selections in the comments box at the bottom - to find the bets use bet365 rest of the world football and for league data http://uk.soccerway.com/.

I will have a look around and post any bets that i find.

My next bet of the week was £30 on Man City -1 goal @2.10 at home to Blackburn. This was one of those gut feeling full pot bets, so i put just £30 on because I haven't got the minerals for a full pot splooge. Scared of the full pot. Monsieur Tevez was on rampant form, and even Benjani looked half decent. I'm not sure if Mr. Robinho is a man of sincere reflection but i'd ask myself a few questions if Barry Benjani was starting before me. I'd then probably go out and buy a rolex, house or small country to get over it. But I would then sit in my Ferrari on Isle de Robinho probably checking the time again thinking wow this Man City thing didn't really work out that well. But take nothing away from Billy Benjani I thought he played really well and they won 4-1 and that was the important thing. I think away at Everton this weekend Man City could be a good bet to trade on @2.50 I might even have a Berty Benjani first goalscorer bet. Any one who puts Robinho on the bench has my backing.

I know that the season of goodwill is behind us, but kindness should not be seasonal. With that said i have pulled together all the good betting, blog and sports sites that I have found online and put them in one easy place for you to have a look at. I hope they help.

Bets for the weekend will be uploaded tomorrow. All the best for the weekend.

Steve Palmer - This is a brilliant betting diary in the Racing Post. Real man punting.

Cheeky Punt - Another great betting blog, using a point system for tips.

Bet365 - They have all the around the world markets, also good for watching horse racing you only have to bet £1 to be able to watch the race online.

Uk.Soccerway.com - This website has all the league and team data. They also have a head to head function for comparisons of team history and form for every game.

Sky Player TV - The best site of them all is Sky Player TV - finding this is like finding a tenner in a pair of jeans. It is a beautiful thing. Basically if you have SkyTV of know somebody who does ask them to lend you their Sky viewing card number and you are away. Free SkyTV on your laptop as i write this i'm casually streaming Barcelona vs. Sevilla in the background. Yeah in the background not even watching it, it's that casual.

Footytube.com - This site is cracking if you want to catch the highlights of pretty much any game. Little clips of all the goals you will ever need.

William Hill Radio - Great racing radio with the legend himself Lord Budden. I sometimes find myself listening not for the words but for the sound of his voice.

If you have any good links please send them in and we can add them to the list.

No.8- Snow stops play, but the punting continues

December is a month devoid of logic - that is all I can conclude from the last 4 weeks. My betting discipline and performance has been dragged through the mud recently with me at the end of the rope towing like a mug. I can’t even remember all the silly little punts from the last month all I do know is that I am most certainly down. Not down and out but down.

December is just so hard, the fiendish month of joy, celebration and goodwill means that you are so chilled out and happy that you don’t mind a naive speculative punt here and there. Tis after all the season of goodwill and bookies need to eat. As football teams cram in fixture after fixture, new players come in, team sheets change, and results contort from what one expected it becomes a very tough old month to work out. Even the Cornerman struggled so I was always going to be doomed.

A problem with going home for Christmas is the insatiable betting appetite of my friends - they do love a punt. From the top floor of our old school you can see Wetherby racecourse, I think this may have subconsciously tricked us all into thinking that we are racing gurus. We are not – or at least I am certainly not. It was pretty doom and gloom on the horses for everybody involved until one mate Luke, turned a near on 50 horse loosing streak into a handsome £1,500 with a lucky 15. Whilst another friend (we shall call him Martin as that is his name) somehow picked an obscure and ignored winner that romped home at 12-1, with the nous, conviction and cunning of a horse racing guru (note he didn’t go to our school).

But I did have a little bit of luck with thanks to ‘Lord Budden’ of William Hill Radio. He seems pretty consistent from what I have found, I am sure betting experts would argue otherwise but I have found him brilliant. Tipping up Wanchai Whisper and Athawab at Kempton on the 30th of December. I translated his posh musings as a forecast and had a cheeky £1 that paid £50. Even if you don’t like his tips and insights his voice is very nice as well. It's like being told how to bet by a king. But I will not make horse racing bets a habit, I think I may have said this several times. But new year new start and all that. Although Cheltenham is coming up and I have already put on an EW Ante Post lucky 15 that again was tipped up on William Hill Radio.

Alaivan – Triumph Hurdle

Diamond Harry - World Hurdle

Forpaddydeplasterer – Champion Chase

Starluck – Champion Hurdle

At over 12,000/1 I am not holding my breath in fact i intend on forgetting i put the bet on. But it provides a cheap interest for a fine competition that will no doubt lure me into more horse racing punting again in March. Ignore me when i do.

"Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow." Dean Martin said. You happy now Dean. Yes Dean, the weather outside is frightful, but the fire inside is not delightful as living in a flat i face a few health and safety hurdles.

As we are all quite now aware it has been cold and snowy recently which has been causing havoc with life as we know it. There is a great article on London's dramatic reaction to snow on the Daily Mash - you can click on the link here to have a look. Whilst the UK bends over for a good snow seeing to it seems football fixtures across the country have been cancelled as a result. How do we bet now. I fancied Man Uinted at 3.1 to finally put Man City to the test but alas it was not to be.

But thankfully I have the answer. There is no snow in Saudi Arabia at the moment, in fact it is a quite pleasant 25 degrees in parts of Jeddah.

On Monday whilst seeing what betting delights Bet365 had to offer I found a new market in the shape of the Qatar Stars Cup. Bet365 really do love an obscure league, do not be surprised if you see yourself on their one weekend priced up to score anytime in your Sunday league fixture. But yes, I did have too much time on my hands that evening. Using a cracking website uk.soccerway.com I managed to find a good little bet on Al Garrafa SC (away) to beat Al Ahli @1.66. uk.soccerway.com provides easy to use stats, results and data on almost every football team and league in the world, it really is very good have a gander. I found out that in the reverse fixture in early December Al Garrafa SC won 0-4. Al Garrafa are also second in the Qatar stars league and you could back them @1.66 to win with bet365 which I thought seemed like good value. It was, as they romped home 0-5.

This one little win was enough for me to have another look at some obscure middle eastern football bets. I may have a found a cheeky little double for Wednesday afternoon.

I fancy Al Wahda Mecca to win away at Najran @2.10. AWM have won their last two away games, and are 4^th in the league. Whilst Najran are bottom of the table without a win in their last 6. @2.10 this looks like good value.

I will then double this up with Al Nasr Riyad @2.20 to beat Al Quadisiya. AQ have only won once in their last 11 games and that was against bottom of the league Najran. ANR beat top of the league in their last game so 2.20 again looks like a great value away bet.

These games kick off today so be quick if you want to get involved I think 75p could be enough to shift the market, so pile in and fill your boots. Actually don’t pile in, I know nothing about Saudi football but if the stats are right these do look like good little bets.

A bit of snow and this is what it has come to.

But what about that target of £1500 - the line of hope has taken a bit of a battering to be honest. Christmas was a bad out of character betting month, next year i will avoid it and go to Saudi Arabia for my holidays.

From now on, so you can quickly see the state of the weeks punting I will change the colour of the Speculative Punt title to show if it has been a good or bad

week. Green is good, Red is bad. Note that it is currently Red.

But 2010 is a New Year, new start, new mentality, new discipline, new middle eastern footballing leagues and new New Year resolution. There is nothing better than the unquestionable needs of a wanting child to make you make a change. I have therefore made 2010 the year of the marathon – my dedication to this quest has been galvanized by the downloading of a 16 week training scheme that now sits proudly on my wall. I'm utterly determined to complete this so warning now, you may be approached for a kind token of sponsorship in the near future. But for the now just keep your eye on that Saudi Premier league.

Happy New Year and Happy Punting.

I will put my bets for the weekend and updates during the week on Twitter, and in the bets box at the top of the page.

No.7 - You are never alone in a bookies

A friend bet me that I couldn’t get the words ‘vestibule’ and ‘horticultural’ into my blog this week. Well that is that bet taken care of.

This betting week was a week of mixed punting emotions. Like all betting weeks it seems. Last week I decided I was going to only wade into the betting waters with the expert’s -thems who know best. Well it turns out experts are not that easy to find, especially when everybody with a name loosely associated to a sport becomes an expert when a journalist gets in front of them.

It’s how you interpret the expert that seems to be the trick.

On Friday night I went to the Prize Fighter boxing which was live on Sky Sports. Unable to watch a sporting event without some kind of small monetary attachment I looked for some ‘expert’ guidance online. I ended up having £5 EW on David Barnes at 7.0 thanks to some good vibes on the Sky Sports website and the Cheeky Punt blog.

I was in fact very optimistic. This optimism was ratified when David Barnes came out to the song "Tonight’s going to be a good night" By the Black Eyed Peas. I thought this suggested David must have some good feelings about the up and coming evening. But my optimism fell a victim to some very false advertising and hype. ‘Tonight’s going to be an all right, take it or leave it, happy to show up night” would have been more apt.

Instead the impressive pocket sized power puncher Gavin Rees romped home, much to a very merry Mr. Calzaghe's delight. I thought about backing him at 2.5 after the first fight but thought it too short. There is no such thing as too short I’m sure Mr. Rees would have informed me.

I didn’t have a drink Friday night, as the stewards feared we would all get rowdy and bottle the boxers if we took our drinks ringside. I did inform them that I had no intention of bottling a man whose job it is to fight other men. And that even if I did for some crazed reason launch an out of character air strike I doubted a plastic bottle would do much harm or in fact actually reach the ring.

Mr. Steward was not one for negotiation or humour. But I must thank him as I woke up Saturday morning with no kebab on my chin, no sewer mouth, no regrets, no rash late night cash receipts and a general positive outlook on the day ahead. “Today was going to be a good day”.

I rang the Cornerman for his bet of the day. I was having one bet and that was it. Thankfully he came through with a handsome 5 pointer.

Bet: Arsenal vs. Stoke – Arsenal -2 corners on the handicap with WillHill @ 1.66 and Arsenal -3 @ 2.1.

The reasoning was that Stoke take some breaking down. So with Arsenal pushing we were hoping for some Gooner corner action and we got it.

Result: Arsenal 10 vs. Stoke 2

£30 @ 1.66 -2 Corners = £50

£10 @ 2.10 -3 Corners = £21

I left this bet to sit, I couldn’t trade on it so just let it be and went to meet a mate to get some drinks, watch some footy and eat. For these are the ingredients for the perfect Saturday. The other ingredient is having a bet but that box had been ticked.

The said mate was running late. There is only so much time you can spend pretending you are doing something important on your phone before people in pubs just assume you are sat on your own. There was no assuming needed - I was sat on my own.

So I headed to Williams house. If you are comfortable in a bookies you are never far from friends, blue pens and opportunity. I made a mate in an old bald man who when asked which horse he had backed just said “Number 7, I don’t know the horse, I just always back number 7” We didn’t feel we had to take our relationship any further than that but I could tell he enjoyed our little chat. Number 7 lost, and the next race was a 5 horse race so my mate left. I had a time passing £1 EW here and there but nothing worth writing home about.

The mate turned up and then 12 hours later I woke up in another friends house the other side of London. This was the feeling usually reserved for Saturday mornings. Sunday was a water logged pitch, broken floodlight non-event of a day.

So £20 up for the weekend was not that bad. But bad things were around the corner, Leeds playing at home to Kettering in the FA cup replay. This is my number one rule that I always break.

“The if you support that team you should just be happy that they win, therefore do not bet in anyway shape or form on the event.”

I ignored this and had

£9 double on Leeds -1 goal against Kettering and Millwall -1 goal against Staines Town @ 2.69.

If you watched the Leeds game you will know how unlucky I was, going 1-0 up early doors I thought it was nailed on. Leeds then assaulted the Kettering goal with shot after shot, missing all 6,000 attempts. Leeds won 5-1 in the end, which would have been fine, but they decided to cram all these goals into the last few minutes of extra time rendering my bet dead. Millwall did the deed winning 4-0.

Leeds I wish you all the best but our betting days together are over. Until the next time.

So a small £10 up for the week and 90.6666% to go. But I am getting there just need to crank up the discipline and dig out them experts. I’m getting good vibes for this weekend though it needs to be an all pot, nerve jangling weekend. But its OK because in the spirit of lyrical optimism from Will.i.am, Apd.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie of the aforementioned Black Eyed Peas. Ive got a feeling...

Bets for the weekend will be uploaded on here on Friday night or Saturday morning. In the 'Weekend Punt' box at the top of the page. You can also follow them on twitter.

If your having a bet this weekend or have a tip you can put it in the comments section and share the love.