Here we take a look at the Betting Zone, the tipping section of the Sporting Life website.

What is the Betting Zone?

The Betting Zone is a completely free tipping website that offers free tips on everything from horse racing to football, golf, tennis, cricket and even darts and snooker!

They have a team of tipsters who tend to concentrate on one or two sports each and offer tips for just about every sporting event going on.

Having been around for quite a few years now, they have established a strong reputation as one of the top tipping sites around.

Here is their annual record over the last few years:

• 2012: +347.16
• 2013: +320.24
• 2014: -30.67
• 2015: +33.41
• TOTAL: +670.14

So after very strong years in 2012 and 2013, things have somewhat stood still for them over the last couple of years. Although their full record before 2012 is not available, they state they have made over 3,000 points profit since the service started in 2003. Not bad going!

Value Bet – Ben Linfoot

One of the premier tipsters at the Betting Zone is Ben Linfoot, who provides his “Value Bet” tipping column, which is based on providing selections mainly for the big races on weekends and at festivals.

From its inception in January 2010 up to the end of 2015, the Value Bet column made +335 points profit. Very impressive stuff for just a few bets per week on average!

Betting Zone Golf

For many years the Betting Zone’s golf tipping was headed by Dave Tindall with assistance from Dave John. These days it is headed up by Ben Coley. Here is their golf tipping record by month since December 2011:

2015:

Dec	-9.16
Nov	116.12
Oct	-45.12
Sep	-57
Aug	21.63
Jul	-69.76
Jun	-27.69
May	-3.19
Apr	4.75
Mar	1.5
Feb	-58.64
Jan	-26
Total	-152.56

2014:

Dec	-12.4
Nov	-48
Oct	-23.5
Sep	36.18
Aug	17.72
Jul	-59.2
Jun	-59.8
May	-54.5
Apr	-35
Mar	196.23
Feb	-9.63
Jan	-12.78
Total	-64.68

2013:

Dec	6.75
Nov	61.5
Oct	-59.96
Sep	103.35
Aug	-40
Jul	-41.13
Jun	-37
May	-40.37
Apr	46
Mar	43.8
Feb	44
Jan	-36.5
Total	50.44

2012:

Dec	-28
Nov	76.5
Oct	98.63
Sep	55.3
Aug	125.08
Jul	-56
Jun	-39.3
May	31.93
Apr	-71.75
Mar	-50.23
Feb	111.62
Jan	25.75
Total	279.53

2011:

Dec

75.41

Antepost profit since Dec 2011: +26 points

TOTAL OVERALL SINCE DEC 2011: +214 points

So a good return of 214 points profit over the last four years for Betting Zone Golf, but as you can see most of that profit was made in 2012 and it has been a tougher ride for them since then. In particular, 2015 was a difficult year with over 150 points lost. 

As we often say in golf betting, you can have very long losing runs because you are tipping at high odds and you can wait for what seems like an eternity for the next 100/1 winner. 

So perhaps the next big winner is just around the corner for them, but it is probably best to keep an eye on things for now as it has been a couple of years since they made any profit on their golf tipping.

Betting Zone Overall

As you can see, of their 670 points profit over the last four years, 335 points of that has come from Ben Linfoot’s Value Bet and 214 points comes from the golf, making up a combined 549 points profit, or 82% of their profits.

So if you are going to follow the tips, these are probably the two to focus on – although as we said above, the golf has had a tough time over the last couple of years so might be best to tread carefully with that for a while to see if they can establish the form of old. 

 

Other Betting Zone Features

Market Moves

The site also contains sections on market moves section, which includes information on byoth the top “steamers” (i.e. odds that are reducing in price) and “drifters” (odds that are increasing in price). This can be useful information for those interested in “following the money” and seeing where bets are being placed. Clicking on the various steamers and drifters takes you straight through to the oddschecker market page where you can see the odds in full.

Bet Calculator

There is also a bet calculator for working out a variety of bets including patents, trixies, yankees and all those other exotic bets you might have in mind. You can enter the type of bet, odds and stake and the calculator will tell you your total outlay and potential returns.

Cheeky Punt

A popular column that sadly seems to have ceased, Cheeky Punt was a kind of betting diary-cum-blog of one hopeful punter that often made for amusing reading. Hopefully they will bring it back soon.

News and Previews

In addition, there are also news articles on the latest happenings in the world of betting as well as previews of upcoming sporting events and possible punting angles.

 

 

As we continue our series demystifying betting jargon and terminology, we turn to the Goliath Bet, the second largest of the named wagers. The Goliath is a daring proposition which is usually only seen among experienced gamblers, but one which is available on most betting software platforms.

There are no fewer than 247 bets in the Goliath, placed on eight separate events.

Here is how a Goliath Bet is constituted:

• 28 doubles
• 56 trebles
• 70 four-folds
• 56 five-folds
• 28 six-folds
• 8 seven-folds
• A single eight-fold accumulator.

The Goliath is a type of full-cover bet. Full-cover bets are a way of hedging. In an ordinary multiple bet, all of the selections you made must win if you are going to get a return. But because, for example, you place twenty-eight double bets on the first event of a Goliath, there is a much higher chance that one of them will pay out. So the smallest number of selections that need to win in order to guarantee you a return is two. The Trixie Bet, which we’ve explained previously, is also a full-cover bet.

As big as the name implies, the Goliath is a bet for the consummate gambler, a huge risk with the potential for a huge reward. It requires the punter to set up 247 lines, which is a serious ante – even if you only bet £1 per line, that’s still an initial outlay of £247. However, if all of your selections win, and if (to keep things simple) you made each bet at three to one odds, you can walk home with no less than £390,592 in your pocket. Furthermore, being a full-cover bet, the Goliath is relatively safe. If only half of your selections win at the same odds, you come away with £608, or more than twice what you set down.

No, if you’re wondering, we didn’t do that math in our heads, nor do we recommend that you do so. Here’s a handy calculator. Just plug in the stake, the odds, and the terms of the bet, and the website works out your return and profit automatically.

We said earlier that the Goliath is the second largest named wager. The largest is its close cousin, the Goliath Flag. A Flag Bet (not to be confused with a Union Jack Bet, which happens to be something completely different) consists of an existing wager type with additional up and downs added. An up and down, in turn, consists of two single bets; if the first selection wins, then its original stake is added to the stake on the second selection, and if both selections win then both stakes are raised. So if both stakes win, then the punter receives twice the winnings, but if only one wins, then both stakes are lost. You can find flag bets on most betting apps, although you usually won’t be allowed to make them or any up and down bets ante-post. In a Goliath Flag wager, there are twenty-eight single stakes about up and down pairs, which raises the total number of bets to a whopping 303.

If you’re wondering what the return on the earlier Goliath wager – £1 outlay, three to one odds across the board – would look like if the bet had been a Goliath Flag, then we’re a step ahead of you. It would have been £390,984. If only half of the selections had won, it would have been £740. Here is the calculator again.

For more on the Goliath Bet, specialized wagers in general, and betting systems, please click through to visit our website. If you have questions about this or any other topic, don’t hesitate to contact us.

Fancy some risk-free profits to wager on your favourite type of event? Then check out our review of Profit Accumulator, where you can make £500 per month risk free.

Today we continue our series of articles looking at great professional gamblers of past and present with a look at Alan Woods, considered by many to be among the top three gamblers in the world.

Murwillumbah, Australia-born Alan Woods has much in common with American Bill Benter. Like Benter, he showed an early fascination with blackjack and professional gambling. Like Benter, he was also youthfully obsessed with the book Beat the Dealer, which applies mathematical and statistical probability to games of chance. Indeed, Woods is said to have observed that he regarding horse racing as “nothing more than a mathematical equation to be solved.”

The many similarities between Woods and Benter drew them together in the mid-1980s, and they became partners, sojourning in Hong Kong. Woods in particular has told interviewers that he was drawn to Hong Kong because of the overwhelming popularity of racetrack betting there and the relative transparency provided by the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Woods was also drawn by the idea that Hong Kong’s gambling culture, which was imbued with ideas of fortune and luck, was ripe for a change. (In addition, of course, the tendency of gamblers to rely on superstition or subjective factors makes it that much easier for gamblers with a more objective focus to win big.)

The partnership began developing computer programs by which horses, races, jockeys, and tracks became items of statistical probability. Although the partnership broke up soon after it began, both men continued mathematical-probability based betting and became very successful. Woods has been deemed one of the top three horse race gamblers in the world. When he died in 2008, his net worth was approximately A$670 million.

Yet there were significant divergences between the two men as well. While Benter became a fixture in the Hong Kong racing community, Woods was said to have never gone to the track. Unlike Benter, who split his time between Pittsburgh and Hong Kong, Woods lived for years in a gated compound in Manila, more than a thousand miles from any track.

Nonetheless, the computer-generated gambling he helped to create had a huge impact on Hong Kong horse races. One profile of Woods, for example, focused on a Triple Trio with a purse of $26 million. (In a Triple Trio, a bettor must choose the first three finishers in the fourth, fifth and sixth races.) In this race, Woods’s team had actually analyzed 1.77 million possible combinations. They were responsible for nearly 15% of the $13 million bet on the Triple Trio.

Although Woods found great pleasure in mathematics early on in life–“I could count to a hundred before I ever went to kindergarten,” he told Australia’s The Monthly magazine–he was by no means a gambler. He tested off the scale for mathematical abilities when tested during an actuarial course while attending college in Australia.

However, also at college, he did bet the horses, and remembered his first race vividly, telling Australian reporter Tony Wilson: “I picked the third-favourite, a mudlark, to beat the two best horses in Australia at the time, Sky High and Wenona Girl, on a very wet track. And it won. So unfortunately my first experience on the horses was a winning one, because then I thought: ‘Hmmm, I’m pretty good at this.’” He was also an excellent poker player and bridge aficionado.

Weighing and exploring all the factors that go into a race is a huge part of the computer programs that Woods and his group, called Libertarian Investment Limited, do. Along with the standard variables—horses, jockeys, tracks, owners, past records, present expectations—they have tried out categories called “bad rides” and “premature speed” to handicap horses.

Weighing and exploring all the factors that go into a race is a huge part of the computer programs. One of the primary methods for computer syndicates such as Woods’s, for example, is to troll the numbers for a convergence of events that the team calls an overlay. This is a horse that has been overliked by the public, in a sense—one whose odds are therefore too high.