What to bet on
More and more of us are turning to the net, where sites let you bet on everything from horse racing to the results of the X Factor TV programme; a few years ago, Forrester Research reported that 7% of internet users have had a go at online gambling. The numbers have increased ever since, and the range of options is dizzying: sports betting, political betting, online poker and even online casinos promise untold riches, and they’re all available in a matter of mouse clicks.
What’s so good about internet betting?
Graham Sharpe, media director with William Hill (www.willhill.com), says: “the great thing about online betting for us was that it immediately made our product accessible to a worldwide audience… we have clients in over 190 countries, and it also brought us into the homes of those who didn’t have a betting shop of ours on their doorstep. It also made betting more attractive to the computer literate, and enabled us to trade twenty four hours a day.” Although bookies have spent large sums of money upgrading their premises to make them more inviting, real-world betting shops are still associated with the flat cap and roll-up cigarettes brigade, which can be intimidating. On the net, of course, there’s no such stigma: betting sites are stylish, high-tech and go out of their way to make you feel welcome.
What to bet on
If you’ve tried gambling on horses or dog racing in the past, you’ll know it can be confusing, with lots of talk about form, handicaps and other jargon. In our experience, that usually means going home (or logging off) with empty pockets.
Bookmakers realise this, and as a result you’ll find lots of bets that you can enjoy without owning a flat cap or being a subscriber to Sporting Life. You can bet on the results of Big Brother, Pop Idol and so on, or take a flutter on the results of the US Presidential Election. As Graham Sharpe of William Hill points out, such bets can be more lucrative for non-experts than letting their money go to the dogs. “If you take the bookies on at horse racing, football or other major sporting bets you will not know more than the bookies; bet on what you know if you want to have the best chance of making a profit.”
If you know more about Big Brother or X Factor than you do about horses, betting on the results of TV competitions could be more likely to make you money than attempting to decode the often-confusing world of more traditional betting. As a rule of thumb,if you’re looking at a bet and can’t make head or tail of the available information, risking your cash is a very, very bad idea.
That doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t bet on sports, though: as Sharpe points out, “if you want a bet because there’s a football match on the box that you are going to watch then the enjoyment factor of the bet is as important as its potential to make a profit - but also remember that every football or sports match must have a result… there is no law of the universe that says you are not able to pick that result.”
Online casinos, poker and lotteries
You’ll also find that lots of sites enable you to bet on card games such as poker, or on various countries’ national lotteries; you’ll even find online casinos such as www.ladbrokescasino.com that enable you to play digital versions of fruit machines, or real-time poker against opponents from around the world. On the internet, it seems, if you can imagine it then you can bet on it.
Click on the Where to Bet link at the top of this page to see the sites we think you’ll like.
