Beware the market move

It is great to be betting on live sport again with the English Premier League and Super Rugby back on our screens. I have also been tempted to dabble on a bit of horseracing as the build up to the Durban July begins.

Rugby betting is my bread and butter though and I settled down to watch the Blues take on the Chiefs in Hamilton. The Blues hadn’t won there since 2011, but I was really impressed with them against the Hurricanes and was happy to take 14/10 that they won the match with World Sports Betting.

They looked a bit shaky in the first half but somehow led at the break and kicked on to win comfortably by 12 points to get my weekend off to a cracking start.

Those who receive our free Friday morning betting mailer will know that we fancied the Crusaders to win by seven or more in Wellington against the Hurricanes.

We certainly weren’t alone and there was plenty of money for the Crusaders, although the Hurricanes also had their supporters and the handicap never shifted out as violently as I thought.

The big mistake I made in this game was at about 1m on Sunday. I had a look at the Totals Points markets and noticed that locally the line was at 51.5 but some overseas bookmakers had moved to 46.5 points. There had been some talk of rain so I assumed that conditions were bad in Wellington and took a bet on the under 51.5 based purely on the fact that the line had moved.

My alarm went off at 5.30am to wake me for the game and I was immediately concerned when I saw the sun shining and what looked like a perfect playing surface. That turned out to be the case and there were over 60 points in the match so sadly I gave back a lot of my handicap profits on the Crusaders -6.5 thanks to that rash total points play.

Being a veteran punter I should have considered that sometimes the markets lie and at the very least I should have done my own research before betting.

Brent Graham is a sports betting blogger at

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