Antepost

Review Your Sportsbook
Value. Every serious punter should seek it out, because in gambling, tiny percentage points make all the difference. Of course, finding a value price and getting a serious bet on, other than a token £10, is a different matter altogether.

Regardless, www.CardPlayerOdds.com is an excellent tool for checking out the markets and identifying where the best price for your section can be found. Here, the prices offered by 20 or so reputable UK and Irish betting firms are displayed and compared, and it is easy to navigate yourself directly to the site that is offering those sought-after best odds amongst them.

However, in the big picture, just 20 firms within the domain of the World Wide Web is no more than a token representation when you consider that there are thousands of gambling websites out there.

But now you enter a new minefield, as while outstanding punting value can be found amongst their number, dubious dodgy outfits are in their midst. This can mean that getting paid out can be harder than finding a 33/1 winner.

Let me introduce you to a brilliant comparative gambling site portal, www.sportsbookreview.com, which has assessed more than 1,000 betting sites, giving each a rating from A, which it terms "the elite, top 1 percent of all sportsbooks, with guaranteed safety and quality," down to F-, which it classifies as being "outright scams," or being on the "brink of failure with no chance of recovering funds."

Worryingly for punters, over 525 of the sportsbooks featured fall into the "avoid" category, and another 350-plus are blacklisted. Therefore, when you spot a price that's way out of line with rival firms and competitors, I'd suggest checking out sportsbookreview.com before you go sending your money through cyberspace to them.

Buywize in Playwize
Ladbrokes' announcement that it signed an agreement with Playwize to develop and licence "an exclusive version of its innovative online 3-D poker for use by players on the Ladbrokes poker network" took many people by surprise. In fact, the share price of the London Stock Exchange Alternative Investment Market (AIM)-listed company [Playwize] rose more than 300 percent within 36 hours of the news.

It has to be said that Ladbrokes, the Harrow bookmaking outfit, has never put a foot wrong when it comes to poker decisions. Not a tiptoe was set foot in America, and as we know, others that did ply their trade on the other side of the pond had their legs, arms, and torsos bitten off as a consequence.

Yet, for a company that tends to play things safe, Ladbrokes was also the first UK bookmaking organisation to offer online poker nearly six years ago. Its site has always been "stand-alone" and not part of a network, making its progress and standing in the online poker community all the more impressive.

Therefore, Ladbrokes' decision to do business with Playwize, based in London and employing just 30 people, is likely to prove prudent.

Playwize was formerly known as Bits Corp. and listed on the AIM in 2000, and traditionally designed and developed video games that are played through several popular home entertainment systems, including Nintendo's Game Boy, Super Nintendo, and Sega's Mega-Drive.

However, a shift in strategy has seen it produce poker software that will integrate with Microgaming's existing software, meaning the door is open not only for Ladbrokes, but the entire Microgaming network of 45 or so skins, to also take up the Playwize 3-D option. And why wouldn't you want a product that your rivals have, especially when it is quite exceptional, featuring real-time statistical calculators, interactive tutorial, live voice chat, and stunning graphics.

I can see only one outcome here: The Playwize share price will rise and rise on the back of the revenue stream that Ladbrokes' business will give it, the new licence agreements it can attract within the Microgaming poker network, and the plinth on the pantheon - fresh licensing agreements with Ladbrokes and beyond to provide casino software. Should the latter - only a hunch, but surely a natural progression - come to fruition, Playwize's market value can and will rise exponentially.

I Sense a Joyful Time
Back at the start of October on my blog at CardPlayerEurope.com, I put up 16/1 shot Sense Of Joy for the 2008 1,000 Guineas. You can read my reasoning there, but such is my enthusiasm for John Gosden's unbeaten filly that I'm going to also tout her here, especially as I've now gotten word that the French-trained third-favourite Proviso, owned like Sense Of Joy by Khalid Abdullah, is a doubtful 1,000 Guineas runner and will be targeted elsewhere.

It's not that I fancied Proviso at all; it has been 15 years since there was a French-trained winner of the race, meaning Zarkava and Natagora, who has already raced seven times, are also doomed. It is the indication that the owner and his knowledgeable racing manager favour the English-trained filly ahead of what many consider a very strong candidate for the race.

Not for the first time, joint champion jockey Jamie Spencer has failed to impress with quotes attributed to him in the press. During his titanic struggle with Seb Sanders in the race for the Jockey's Championship he openly moaned about the hardship of both travelling and riding so much, whilst announcing he would not be chasing the title in 2008.

I recall when he lost his job with Aiden O'Brien a few years back and proclaimed shortly afterward, "There is more to life than racing." It may be true, but there are those, most notably owners and trainers, who will see this as a lack of commitment and dedication. Therefore, we have two very clear reasons why he can be scrubbed from calculations for the 2008 title race.

Conversely, Seb Sanders, who shared the title, jumped off his last ride of the season and immediately announced he was ready to do it all over again. Under the circumstances, along with his 190 winners from 1,121 rides (between the championship period of March 31, 2007, to Nov. 10, 2007), odds of 4/1 about him retaining the title in 2008 look extremely fair.

The bookies' favourite is former champ Ryan Moore, who netted 126 winners from 667 rides during the season, with his campaign curtailed by a broken arm. I declare that odds of 2/5 are ridiculous. His stats equate to a strike rate of 19 percent winners-to-runners, and although Sanders scored on only 17 percent of his mounts, Moore is most unlikely to get or take more than 1,000 rides during the season.

Why would you expect him to take fewer than 1,000 rides? Well, his father, former jockey Gary Moore, recently told The Racing Post: "I don't think he [Ryan] has great aspirations to be champion again. He said to me he certainly wouldn't do what Seb and Jamie did last season. It's hard work, and for what? He won £1.5 million more than Seb in prize money last year."

That quote came on the back of a story linking Moore with a contract to ride all of Sir Michael Stoute's horses in 2008, which is a great job for big race winners, but little use at Bath on a midweek afternoon and Wolverhampton that night when poor-quality races are out there to be won.

Now, here's a 33/1 long shot, Richard Hughes, who finished fourth in the championship last year with 118 winners from 769 rides. Admittedly not getting any younger - although I know 34 certainly isn't old - the Irishman has been restricted by a retainer with owner Khalid Abdullah for the past seven years, meaning he has often been forced to take rides on long shots and travelled the country to take just one fancied mount whilst he could have taken a full book of short-priced rides elsewhere.

It's the problem Moore and his agent will have in 2008.

Ah, Moore's agent. He just happens to be Tony Hind, who also books the rides for the now freelance Richard Hughes. Make the connection. Hughes will pick up all the rides Moore cannot take due to his relationship with Stoute. That includes a stream of winners from Richard Hannon, for whom Moore rode 33 winners last season.

Thirty-three winners represent a quarter of the jockey's successes during the season, and that's some head start to hand to your rival if his odds of 2/5 are going to be justified in 2008.

Ironically, Stoute had a fallout with Hughes a few seasons back, but beyond that, Hughes seems to have an endless stream of quality horses and prominent owners to ride for. Owner Maurice Sines, who has horses in training with three trainers and can be expected to have 20 winners during the year, has already pledged Hughes his full support.

Now to the jockey himself. Is his heart in it, or is he the Walter Swinburn of his time? I think his enthusiasm for the game has been confirmed by him taking out a jumps license for the winter.

With a host of fresh opportunities open to him during 2008 and an awareness that the next few seasons will be his best and only chance of championship glory, he has to be the best "double carpet" bet of the decade.

Roy's Racing Certainties
In recent weeks, Roy Brindley has correctly tipped: Dylan Thomas for the Hong Kong Vase - 6/4 lay (lost), Dylan Thomas for the Japan Cup - 7/2 lay (lost/non-runner), Lewis Hamilton for BBC Sports Personality of the Year - 1/4 lay (lost), and Joe Calzaghe for BBC Sports Personality of the Year - 10/1 (won).

Stay updated with Brindley's Betting Blog at CardPlayerEurope.com.

Enter the Matchbook
By Thor Henrykson

When it comes to innovation and trendsetting, America is generally considered to be on the cusp of a breaking wave. Having had the pleasure of living extensively on both sides of the pond, I can honestly say that there is no place on earth that values and encourages innovation and entrepreneurship more than the Yanks (and no place that values it less than France).

That being said, there are those instances where America lags far behind places like Europe. The early adaptation of the GSM network is one such example, as is the widespread use of the economical diesel engines in automobiles, and most strikingly, online gambling, especially as it relates to information markets like Betfair (arguably one of the most significant innovations for the Internet).

One can argue that America is one gigantic information market already, and that Betfair's time to conquer the colonies has come. But Betfair is understandably frightened of the U.S. government and its saber rattling. As such, there exist difficult obstacles to joining and betting/laying on Betfair for punters in the U.S. (though none that can't be remedied by a shrewd punter and a proxy server).

Capitalising on Betfair's conservative stance toward the biggest gambling market in the world is Matchbook.com. Over the past few years, this "American Betfair" has been growing in size and popularity, especially during American football. When compared to its English cousin, Matchbook offers better prices and 60 percent lower commissions (2 percent vs. Betfair's 5 percent). It also offers tremendous opportunity in arbitrage, as prices can often differ by up to 5 percent between the two sites (the markets are inefficient).

Think of it this way: It's as if the stock markets in London and New York offered different prices for the same exact stock, or currency-pair. One could buy in London and sell in New York, or vice versa, pocketing 1 percent-5 percent for each trade. Do this over and over and over again, and the tax-free profits start to add up. Employ a computer program that does the work for you, and now you also have time: the last luxury in the Western world. Happy arbing!