The rollercoaster

Not the rollercoaster in the "standard" gambling sense of the word either.

Had one of my famous "ideas" earlier this week. I thought I was really on to something, so spent a little bit of time on it. I thought I had found a potential middle situation - a situation where I could get a bet on, place some clever hedge bets, and win either way - but also, in a rare situation, win on all bets placed, both the original bet and the hedges - hence creating a massive (potential) win.

Even better this bet was available regularly at the asian bookmakers, and was available in volume. It looked too good to be true - but not so good that I dismissed it out of hand.

As it goes, I was in a game situation tonight where I could have won 32k on the game. I also mistakenly thought that my worst result was +220 on the entire game. Looking more closely at the rules of the bet I was using, I could infact have been "polish middled" on the game and lost both sets of stakes (which would have been around -31.5k. And indeed I was only one goal away from doing so.

I am thankful that I didn't realise it at the time, otherwise there would have been major panic in the camp, I'm sure. A very close look now reveals that only extremely occasionally will this bet be viable, and then only as a value bet, not a bet to be hedged or middled pre-off.

The holy grail is back in the cupboard for a little longer then.

Next time, gadget.....