A ‘Scorecast’ bet is a bet on the player who will be the first to score a goal in the match plus a prediction of the final score. Essentially it is a double bet which you place as a single bet.

One variant of this bet is an ‘anytime Scorecast’ in which, as before, you must predict the correct final score, but, as long as your selected player scores a goal sometime in the game, you will win the bet. In some markets you can also bet on a ‘last goal scorer Scorecast’ or alternatively on a first half or second half scorecast.

Here we will look in a little more depth at how these bets work and why you might find them both fun and potentially valuable. We will look at how bookmakers calculate the odds of these bets, some of the small print that goes with them, and show how easy it is to place them.

The attraction of Scorecast bets

Scorecast bets are one of the more popular of bets of its kind. Their main attraction is that they offer great odds, they are a great deal of fun as you can easily play around with them and, as we shall show, they are easy to place.

As with all double bets, while the odds can be excellent, getting the first goal scorer and the final score correct isn’t easy, but therein lies the challenge and the fun.

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How the odds are calculated

A scorecast bet is basically a double bet in which the return from the first section of the bet, that made on correctly predicting the first goalscorer, is used to stake the second section of the bet, the correct final score.

For instance if your scorecast was for Diego Costa to score the first goal for Chelsea in an away match to Burnley, the odds might typically be around 3/1, so if you bet £5 your potential winnings on that part of the bet would be £15 plus the return of  your original £5 stake. If the second part of your bet was a final score of 1-2 to Chelsea, then your total £20 fund would be staked on that final score with typical odds of say 7/1, winning you £140 plus your £20 stake; a total of £160 on a £5 bet.

With a Scorecast these odds are calculated beforehand, so you can see exactly what odds you are being offered.

The fine print

While there are likely to some minor differences between different bookmakers, the following rules apply across the board:

• Your selected player fails to start the game. In this case your bet will be considered as a single bet on the final score of the game.
• The first goal is scored before your selected player comes on the field. In this case after the first goal is scored, then your bet will be considered as a single bet on the final score of the game.
• Your goalscorer scores an own goal. This doesn’t count; your bet remains valid until another goal is scored.
• Somebody else scores and own goal. This doesn’t count; your bet remains valid until another goal is scored.
• The match ends 1-0 following an own goal. Your bet will be considered as a single bet on the final score of the game.

Placing a scorecast bet

Placing an online scorecast bet couldn’t be simpler. While there are some differences between different online bookmakers, they all essentially allow you to select the game, choose the first goalscorer of the match from a dropdown list of all players in both teams including starters and the bench, and the final score from another dropdown list.

For instance, you might select Manchester United versus Watford, Wayne Rooney as the first goalscorer, and a final score of 2 -1, a reasonably possible outcome. Typical odds for such a selection might be around 15/1.

If you want a little fun, you can easily place fun bets that have high odds. For instance if you stuck to Wayne Rooney being the first goal scorer but with Watford winning the game 1-2, typically you would be offered odds around 200/1.

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In one single six month period spent in Las Vegas, Archie Karas, with only $50 in his wallet, borrowed $10,000 stake money from a friend and fellow gambler, turned it into $30,000, repaid the loan plus 100% interest, and went on to turn the remaining £10,000 into $17,000,000.  

Over the next two years he went on to increase his bankroll to $40,000,000. Such stuff dreams are made of, but that wasn’t a dream. It has gone down in history as the biggest winning run in the history of gambling and has been mythicised as ‘The Run’

As you might anticipate from a man who famously said:

“You’ve got to understand something. Money means nothing to me. I don’t value it. I’ve had all the material things I could ever want. Everything. The things I want, money can’t buy: health, freedom, love, happiness. I don’t care about money, so I have no fear. I don’t care if I lose it”, he did go on to lose it. But that isn’t the point. This is a brief history of Archie Karas, gambler extraordinaire.

Early Days

Born in Greece 1951 with a violent father who christened him Anargyros Karabourniotis, a bit of a mouthful hence its shortened form. A fifteen year old run away, he worked his passage to Portland USA as a waiter on board a ship. He made his way to Los Angeles where he waited on tables at a restaurant next door to a pool hall where he spent his spare time perfecting his skills at pool and poker. Such was his success at both of them, by the age of 18 he had decided that he would never need to work again.

However, there were rough passages on the journey. Having amassed a huge bankroll, he went on to lose his $2,000,000 fortune playing high stakes games in  the local casinos. Such were his losses that he was reduced to his last $50. Undeterred, he drove to Las Vegas determined to get back in the game. That was the start of  ‘The Run’.

Having repaid his $10,000 loan with interest, he went on to win $1,200,000 playing pool against a fellow pool and poker player with stakes as high as $40,000 a game. The pair went on to play poker where over the next few days Karas won a further $3,000,000 playing to $8,000/$16,000 Limit 7-card Stud.

Three months later he had increased his bankroll to $7,000,000 but was running out of people willing to play with him. Those that dared included some of the best poker players in the world who he took on at Binion Horseshoe’s poker tables.

The first of these was Stu Unger, 3 times WSOP champion. Unger was soon down by $1,200,000. Next up was Chip Reese, widely acclaimed as the best cash player in the world. It took just 25 games before Reese had lost $2,000,000. A string of other players followed and by the end of that notorious six months Karas was up $17,000,000.

Now having run out of poker players willing to take him on he turned his attention to craps. His run continued. Playing for huge stakes against the casinos, he quickly increased his fortune my tens of millions of dollars. The logistics of moving that level of cash around became a problem; armed with two guns, he regularly carried $3,000,000 to $5,000,000 around with him.

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Too close to the sun

Soon he had made $40,000,000 but like Icarus he was flying dangerously close to the sun; his wings melted and he came crashing down to the ground. Over a three week spree in 1995 he blew $20,000,000 playing craps, $17,000,000 playing baccarat, then switching back to craps, he lost the rest, his final $2,000,000.

From then on in, it has been a bumpy road. A year subsequently he made $1,000,000 at the Desert Inn casino, then an additional $4,000,000 at the Horseshoe, but then managed to lose the whole lot the following day. The rot had set in and soon Karas’ reputation was in tatters. It became public knowledge that on several occasions he had been arrested for cheating at blackjack in numerous casinos. He had been accused of marking cards at Nevada’s Flamingo Reno in 1988; he was arrested in 1992 for cheating at River Palms Casino and at California Club in downtown Las Vegas in 2007. On each occasion he managed to plea bargain his way out of serious trouble.

Bankruptcy followed. With credit card debt in excess of $250,000 Karas filed for bankruptcy in 2008.

Found guilty for cheating and fraud

In September 2013, Karas was arrested for cheating and defrauding a casino after being caught marking cards at a blackjack game in California. Spotted by security cameras after winning $8,000,  he was charged with burglary, winning by fraudulent means and cheating. Found guilty he was sentenced to three years’ probation.

But probably the worse punishment was being placed on Nevada Gaming Control Boards List of Excluded Persons,  which means that he is effectively banned from all casinos in the state. He still lives in Las Vegas; his mother has even paid him a visit there, but he misses the action of high stakes gambling.

Epilogue

Now 65, Archie Karas has lived a different kind of life from most of us. Does he regret some of the decisions he made? We will probably never know. An admirable man in many ways, he was also the architect of his own downfall. But can anyone really judge him? We can only imagine what it might be like to win and lose $40,000,000 in such a brief interval; if, as he said, he never cared about money, losing it all was an irrelevance to him. Perhaps the story doesn’t end there; at 65 he has plenty of time for at least one more chapter. But for certain there won’t be another run like the last one; that was unique and is unlikely to be repeated by anyone. Maybe.

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A Placepot, often referred to as a Tote Placepot, is a popular kind of tote bet that provides an opportunity to win a significant sum of money for a relatively small outlay. If you are unfamiliar with Tote betting, it is a pool betting system in which a major proportion of the total money staked on the tote is shared out amongst the winners. Once government run, the Tote is now run by Betfred.  Here we will look in detail at a Placepot bet along with an easy to follow example.

The Placepot is just one of the Tote bests that are available. The bet covers the firs 6 races on the race card of the day and is available at every UK race meeting, which all have a minimum of six races. There are some exceptions, for instance if the meeting opens with a speciality race and there are seven or eight races in the day, the Placepot may cover races 2 to 7, ignoring the speciality race.

To bet on the placepot you must select at least one horse for each of the six races. You can select as many horses as you wish, but the more horses you select the more expensive your stake becomes, so let’s deal with this point first. First you select your basic stake which typically varies from 10p up to £20. For the sake of simplicity, in this example we will select £1.

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That is the amount you stake on each combination. If you select just one horse in each race then there is only one possible combination that will give you a win and your total stake is just £1 x 1 = £1. If you make  two selections per race, the total number of combinations will be 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x2 = 64, (in other words 2⁶) so your total stake will be £64. if you chose to make 4 selections a race, then there will be 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 x 4 (or 4⁶) = 4,096 combinations meaning an eye-wateringly high outlay of £4,096.  Even with a 10p stake your total bet would be almost £410.

In reality you might select just one horse for certain races and multiple horses for others, so Let’s look at a typical Placepot betting slip.

Walking through this: on the first race we have selected horses 7 and 11; on the second horses 4 and 22; on the third whatever horse turns out to be the favourite; on the fourth horses 8 and 9; on the fifth the favourite; and on the last race the favourite and horses 4 and 6.

Let’s assume that we have selected a stake of £1. The actual stake will thus be £1 multiplied by the number of combinations which is £(2 x 2 x 1 x 2 x 1 x 3) = £24.

To win, you must have a selection that is placed in each race. If you fail to achieve this in any race, then your bet has lost. As you can see, the excitement of the bet increases as each race progresses as long as you can stay in. This is why we have made three selections for the last race; we don’t want to get that far and lose at the very end.

Assuming we have won, what will be our winnings?

That depends on the number of successful combinations along with the size of the declared dividend. Consider the following results.

Here the number of winning combinations are 1 x 1 x 1 x 2 x1 x 2 = 4, so 4 combinations at a stake of £1 is £4.

Assuming that that the Tote declares a dividend of £35, then your total winnings are £35 x 4 = £140. It is possible for the dividend to be much higher than that, in fact anything from £10 to £200 is typical.

To finish: if your bet ends up a non-runner, the favourite will replace it as your bet. If a race has joint favourites at the off, then for the purposes of the Placepot, the favourite will be presumed to be the runner with the lower race number. In circumstances that favourite is withdrawn from the race then the next horse in the betting will take its place.

The Placepot is a great type of bet; fun, exciting and potentially lucrative so why not try it out?

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