Punting on Poker

A relatively new phenomenon to poker is the introduction of many online gaming sites offering betting markets on poker. The popularity of the game, thanks to increasing television coverage, has lifted poker beyond the players and on to a mainstream audience; hence, the introduction and steady rise of betting markets for poker tournaments. Poker betting is fast becoming a prominent feature amongst all the traditional markets, such as horse racing, greyhounds, boxing, and so on.

The online sites want to promote poker. It's considered cool and sexy, and poker-betting markets help tie poker in with other lucrative agendas. Many have their own online poker rooms, for example. Also, these markets help generate lots of new accounts for the site.

Poker betting, although popular in terms of discussion and interest amongst the players, is mainly a hindrance for the odds compilers. The large fields in poker tournaments produce as big and volatile a market as a bookmaker can face. The huge fields that take part in tournaments such as the World Series of Poker (WSOP) main event throw up countless problems for the bookmakers.

Neil Channing is a consultant for many gaming sites such as Ladbrokes, Betfair, Blue Square, and Stan James on their poker markets. He has been central in the inception of the poker markets, as we know them.

"Laying bets on a poker market is not similar to laying bets on a tight horse race, for example," he pointed out. "In horse racing, the odds are brought in and lengthened out accordingly to balance the books. Poker betting is different. With odds in some markets ranging from 100/1 to 1,000/1, no betting company in the world could balance the books. They would need hundreds of thousands of bets, and that is not feasible."

The process of figuring out which players are taking part, and on what days, is exhaustive. Even those on the tournament floor would find it difficult to get a completely accurate list. They would have to ascertain which players were non-runners for refunds, were there any late withdrawals, or were there any players' names spelt incorrectly? The administration of running a book on poker can be extremely challenging for the websites.

Balancing the Books
The bookmaker's money is earned through the over round established within the book. This is expressed as a percentage based on how much the bookmaker stands to make on a balanced book. As each poker market varies greatly, it can be difficult to gauge. For example, PartyBets.com can have over rounds of anything from 15 percent to 40 percent on its poker markets, sometimes more.

The bookmaker must tread carefully and factor in the element of uncertainties, such as a low turnout. It can be difficult to estimate how many entrants a tournament will get prior to the off. In fact, many bookmakers that were laying the 2007 WSOP had a whole market dedicated to how many runners the event would get.

Despite this over round appearing "ungenerous" to the punter in relation to other betting markets, poker betting is not a huge revenue generator for the bookmakers. The WSOP Europe main event held last September in London was a clear example of this. Despite sponsoring the event, little money was matched on the Betfair website. The problems don't cease there, either.

Even those who do have a flutter on a WSOP-size market can still get lucky, as PartyBets found out to its horror in the 2007 main event. Englishman Jon Kalmar, whom the firm had laid at odds of 250/1 to make the final table, surprised everybody, not the least the Party odds compilers, when he stormed to a fifth-place finish in the tournament. Ironically, the lucky punter ended up meeting Kalmar in a recent Late Night Poker tournament. The 22-year-old Swede, who had never met Kalmar prior to his win, claimed he doesn't normally bet, but after witnessing Kalmar's success online, thought he was worth a punt.

Sing When You're Winning
The same firm was also stung at the recent Dutch Open. Maud Mulder, a runner-up in Holland's Pop Idol, was quoted at 100/1 and proved popular as something of a fun bet for punters. In what was surely a mistake in such a small field, the firm was taking a risk. PartyBets was confident that having lost the singing contest, Mulder would continue her demise at the poker tables. With the likes of Rob Hollink and Rolf Slotboom in attendance, it would take a freak incident for her to win. Needless to say, there was no singing for the bookmakers when she did just that - much to the delight of her fans, especially those who took a fun bet at the bumper odds.

The Kalmar and Mulder incidents prove that although it may seem like a license to print money for the bookmakers, laying bets on these colossal fields can be a dangerous game. The books are so unbalanced, with many of the players not being fancied for a wager, it appears that the liabilities are huge for low rewards. Punters can be sure that anytime Messrs. Hellmuth or Ivey make a WSOP final table, the bookmakers will be taking quite a thrashing. In fact, nearly any poker superstar or name player is likely to spell a nasty result. Even a few small wagers can add up when you're laying at treble-figure odds.

That said, punters argue that picking the winner or even a player to reach the final table has got to be tremendously difficult, as Warren Lush of PartyBets explained: "With thousands of runners, a big chunk of luck is needed to back a winner, the fact of which is represented in the odds. Yes, the bookmakers do not expect to lose money on these markets, but that doesn't mean they don't lose. The bookmaker's biggest problem is getting as many players as possible backed. PartyBets, along with other sites, includes as many players as it can, along with all the aliases of its online qualifiers. Although, no matter how hard they try, odds compilers will be able to quote only a fraction of the field."

Beating Up on the Bookie
Poker players are not stupid. They can see that in a field of 300 runners, the average person has a 300/1 chance. Should the favourite be 66/1 and the biggest outsider be 200/1, the book has a heavy over round, and the players will know it. However, what the players lack in stupidity, they make up for in ego, it seems. Many players will attempt to "teach the bookmakers a lesson" by backing themselves or friends at what they believe is an incorrect price.

Even though the players know they are getting a raw deal, it does not prevent them from having a flutter. Jerome Bradpiece, having placed a bet for the last £50 in his Betfair account at 300/1, ended up winning the Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Walsall in February 2007 for a nice £15,000 bonus. Players will always argue prices in a market, but it is money, not opinions, that dictates how a market shapes. If the price is too big, the player will be backed. It is only through money wagered that a price can be cut, not as a result of an opinion.

Stan James has also felt the sting of poker markets in the past. The H.O.R.S.E. tournament in 2006 left a very bitter aftertaste when they created a market comprised of 100 name players. Punters were given an opportunity to bet on the highest finisher from that list. Phil Ivey - who we've already learned is one of the punter's favourites, not to mention arguably the greatest poker player in the world - was installed at a colossal 40/1 in a 100-runner field. Joe Beevers had also tipped him on the Hendon Mob's forum.

The shrewd punters were then treated to a pre-tournament gift with almost 30 from the list being non-runners. At this stage, the gamble was on, and Ivey had been backed to a 12/1 favourite. The biggest error of all, however, was the exclusion of the eventual winner from their list. The odds compilers didn't think the late Chip Reese was playing the tournament, a most costly error. With Reese winning the tournament, his exclusion meant Ivey won the market, costing Stan James thousands.

In-Running and Group Betting
One popular avenue of poker betting is the "betting-in-running" market. Pricing up a market that is always changing due to constant action and chip fluctuations creates added pressure. This is virtually impossible in big tournaments, with so much action and simultaneous knockouts. Having to rely on the accuracy of Internet updates would create problems for the punter, which all but makes the idea unfeasible. Betting-in-running markets have, however, been operated at some of the smaller TV events. The betting market on the live final of the Poker Million broadcast on Sky is the most popular of the year in the UK. This is one of the few working examples of a betting-in-running poker market in action. It succeeds only because there is only one table and every chip exchange is carefully monitored and accessible.

With the unpredictability of betting on huge tournaments, many sites try to create alternative, more condensed markets for punters to bet on. Group betting is a popular example. In most cases, players are broken down into small groups. The punter then has the opportunity to bet on who he thinks will last longest in the tournament out of the players within the group. The groups may be broken down under specific genres, such as nationality. One betting site suffered badly at a European Poker Tour event when it was persuaded to run a "Top Norwegian" market.

The firm was happy to book the market, with reasonable knowledge of the players along with several Norwegian contacts. Having based the market on 70 runners, Neil Channing made the solid pro Jan Sjavik the 12/1 favourite of the group. This was not giving much away, considering the size of the field, which turned out to be 73. The problem with the market was that not only did the favourite Sjavik win the market, but he was the only player they laid of the 50-odd bets. The firm lost big and subsequently gave up poker betting for good.

Markets Expansion
Bookmakers have been inundated with e-mail in the past from their customers to run such specials, with nationality continuing to be the most popular category. This in turn leads to a possible new market of "what nationality the winner will be." A bookmaker always encourages any market that allows for patriotic betting, especially when it could cloud judgements. This allows players to bet on a tighter, neater market rather than trying to pick the tournament winner. A market like this also creates interest for the country's customers, who feel more comfortable betting in a market full of players they know.

Specials come in other forms, too, and bookmakers will often use these markets to get creative. Punters like markets such as match bets: two players pitted against each other based on contrasting or comparing styles, reputations, origins, and so on.

The "time of first elimination" was surprisingly quite an affluent market at this year's Irish Open. Interestingly, many of the railbirds were found staring at the tournament clock following the first elimination rather than the player eliminated.

What hand will win the tournament? This is another popular one with the bookmakers, as it has a fixed-odds element. Overall, the special bets are favoured more by odds compilers, as they have more control. They are less unpredictable, less big and volatile, and overall easier to administrate.

Bookmakers accept that generally they are going to win from poker betting. Stan James went almost a whole year without paying out a bet from poker. But after the Phil Ivey disaster, years of profit went out the window.

Boutique Betting Markets
A recent addition to poker betting has seen the inclusion of betting markets for small live tournaments. Stan James has taken bets on the Gutshot Series in London, and Irish firm Paddy Power has done similarly with €1,000 tournaments at the Sporting Emporium in Dublin. Layers must, however, be careful with the integrity and liabilities of bets on these smaller poker tournaments. Such events create new problems that would not have existed at the WSOP due to the greatly increased prize pools.

Now, this creates integrity issues with those involved in the tournament. If a player has €200 on himself at 100/1 and gets to the heads-up stage with perhaps only €8,000 difference in taking first or second position in the tournament, this will obviously affect any deals. This makes bookmakers quite cautious when it comes to booking such events.

Blue Square, for instance, came in for criticism when laying the World Heads-Up Championship, as it carefully and strategically allowed bets of only under £300. The company argued that it needed to make the bets small enough so as not to affect the outcome of the game.

It's clear that the pitfalls are everywhere for these gaming sites booking poker tournaments. It is not an easy betting market to construct, shape, or administrate for these bookmakers. In theory, the layers should be winning comfortably on these markets, but in reality, it's often high risk for low rewards. Despite this, it would seem that poker markets are here to stay. They draw attention to poker and create hype and discussion. This brings new clients and new poker players, and helps market poker on an alternative level.

Betting on poker is not just about winning on the market's balance sheets. It is about marketing poker as a whole to both potential and existing clients.