subject: Exposing the ‘Dead Cert' Myth in Soccer Betting [print this page] Exposing the Dead Cert' Myth in Soccer Betting
If you are a keen football punter then no doubt you'll have sifted through multitudes of online soccer tipping websites to see what services are out there. Frankly, it's difficult to avoid misleading terms such as sure bet', banker', dead cert' or guaranteed winner'. Many tipsters actually incorporate these terms into the URL of their sites in the hope of increasing the number of sign ups. As a punter and tipster this hugely frustrates me. Without opening up the cans of worms that are the laws of mathematics and statistics, the simple undisputable fact is that there is no such thing as a sure outcome in soccer, or sport. If a dead cert outcome did exist there would be no bookmakers in business to cover our bets. Sometimes I read the introductory few paragraphs which insist that the professional tipster possesses a unique secret method for picking guaranteed winners. I believe that it should be illegal to make such misleading claims.
Having more than 20 years of trials and tribulations as a football or soccer' punter, I can categorically tell you that the whole notion of a dead cert is not only false, but is in itself a contradiction. If the outcome of a particular soccer match was a guarantee, then surely there would be no need for the teams to do battle for ninety minutes. Also, bookmakers would be clinically insane to cover bets on a game whose result was a certainty. I realise that I'm possibly being facetious in my last few sentences, but it's scary to note the amount of reasonably intelligent people that will believe anything that's written in print by a so-called expert'.
When I began providing tips to the public via my website, I incorporated a Banker Section' every week. Now, the idea of this section was to suggest that, having done hours of research and analysis on various games, I really couldn't see any other outcome than, for example, a home win. If a game from the Banker Section resulted in a shock outcome, I'd suffer as both a tipster and a punter. It effectively made my tipping skills seem incompetent to some my members, not to mention I'd also have personally had a sizeable bet on the game. Two games still stick in my mind and bring back uncomfortable memories.
April 10 2010, Scottish Cup: Glasgow Celtic 0 - 2 Ross County.
Premier League giants Celtic were unceremoniously dumped out of the cup by First Division side Ross County, completing one of the biggest upsets in Scottish football history. Many soccer accumulator or multi-bets were subsequently torn up in disgust by outraged punters.
This game had been priced as low as 1.09 by bookmakers for a home win, such was the certainty' of the outcome. PSV had won eleven league games in a row in Eindhoven and were facing a Sparta side who had already lost twelve of their away games that season, and who also went on to be relegated. To add insult to injury, Sparta scored their equalizing goal three minutes into injury time.
Huge upset results like these obviously ruin accumulator bets, but more significantly they highlight the fact that you can never ever be certain about the outcome of a soccer bet. Shortly afterwards I did away with the Banker Section' of my website and instead I use a ranking system between 1 and 10. The highest ranking I assign to any selection is 9/10, as 10/10 equates to 100%, and to predict a football contest with 100% certainty is, as discussed above, not realistic or possible. The more time and effort you put into invaluable research and analysis, the much better chance you have of picking a winner. There is, however, no magic formula for predicting huge upsets which happen time and again even in the most unlikely scenarios. To read more about my online soccer tipping service go to http://www.soccertips365.com.
