Poker Punt a Mug Bet

Poker Punt a Mug Bet
Bookmaker Paddy Power should be praised for pricing up so many markets during the Irish Open. The odds offered on main-event hopefuls can hardly be described as generous, but, in mitigation, its odds compiler held his hands high when admitting he had made an absolute "Horlicks" of the Omaha side event, pricing up some of Europe's finest at 100/1+, believing the tournament would attract a field approaching 300 players and not the 106 that it ultimately hosted. More to the point, the Dublin outfit stood there like men and took chunky bet after chunky bet on the event.

It's well-documented that main-event winner Neil Channing backed himself to win at 100/1; just why he needed to top-up his €800,000 winnings by another £50,000 is best known to him, but full marks to the Londoner for backing his judgement with the most potent weapon of them all -- his money.

For me, however, the biggest mug bet of all time was staked -- a €10,000 wager at odds of 11/10 on Channing -- when the tournament reached its final table of six.
Foolhardy souls will be raging, "But he won, didn't he?" without consideration that he was indeed the most likely player to win, but the probability of his success was far greater than 11/10 (equating to a 47.6 percent chance) offered.

A look at the standings (below) when play reached the final six players makes interesting reading.



So, taken strictly on a percentage basis, Neil was a little less than a 6/4 shot. The way to imagine this is, a huge bag containing 6,661,000 balls (the amount of chips in play) and Neil Channing owning 2,748,000 of them. Similarly, for example, Thomas Dunwoodie had 544,000. Now, what was the probability of one of their balls being drawn out?

This is a simplistic example, but it is exactly how a random-number generator decides on the winner and the price (the probability plus a built-in percentage profit margin) of winners from Trapton Park, Brushwood, and a host of other animated races beamed into betting shops.

But this is poker, not balls in a bag, meaning that assuming victory is far harder. Not only did Channing have to win despite having only 41 percent of the chips in play, he had to overcome five opponents. Stop! Read that line again, and then consider if odds of 11/10 represented value.

There are those who would argue that a chip lead is a massive advantage, as the leader can make all the moves, and put a gun to his opponents' heads without the fear of being eliminated himself. But who can dispute that short-stacked players often employ a "to hell with it" attitude, making them very dangerous. Similarly, sizeable stacks will attack the chip leader, realising that he has everything to lose and little to gain, and can soon pass up enough hands to relinquish his advantage.

No matter how you look at it, four players have to fall by the wayside before the chip leader at the outset makes it to a heads-up confrontation, and even if doing so with a 60/40 chip advantage, only then would he represent some kind of value at 11/10.

National Disgrace
The bookmakers at Aintree should be marched before the Liverpool magistrates and given an Antisocial Behaviour Order, plain and simple. Not content with tourists queuing up to place hundreds of bets on every horse in a race, something that never happens not alone in a 40-runner field, they had to "extract the fluid" by returning a whopping 144 percent over-round on last month's Grand National.

There is a lesson to be learned there for next year, which is: (A) If betting in a betting office, avoid the queues by placing your bets on the day before the race, and (B) Take a price on your selection with your firm, because at that point, they will be betting to around 120 percent, and all but a few horses will return a smaller SP the following day.

Gold Cup Number Three a Penalty Kick for Yeats
Yeats will win the 2008 Ascot Gold Cup, plain and simple; 5/2 was available when the betting opened, and should he make it to the starting stalls in his attempt to claim the 2-mile 4-furlong event for a third consecutive year, he will surely be an odds-on shot on the day.

The Irish-trained stayer, now a 7-year-old and a rare entire horse, thrives in the early summertime, winning a Coronation Cup as well as his two Gold Cups during the month of June.

He was better than ever last year, winning four consecutive races before getting stuck in the Longchamp mud in October, and it is conceivable that we have yet to see the best of him.

Added to that, Irish racing authorities will doubtless put on a preparation race for him with ideal entry criteria and condition -- something they did for another staying favourite, Melbourne Cup winner Vintage Crop -- and once Yeats wins that, his price will be prohibitive, so get stuck in nice and early and book your holidays for late June.