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16 April
2008 Just Tell Us
Who Is Playing William Hill's
Media Relations Director, Graham Sharpe, rants
about TV football coverage. Have the TV
companies taken leave of their senses? All of a
sudden, it appears that they no longer want their
viewers to know which match is being
broadcast. Whilst
channel-hopping recently I arrived at a live
football match between, it seemed, CH and HU,
according to the display in the top corner of the
picture. I watched idly
for a few seconds, trying to work out who was
playing, and realised it was a game between
Charlton and Hull in the Championship. But, hang on
a minute, hadn't Charlton been on drawing with
Watford on Saturday evening - surely they weren't
playing again, just two days later. Of course not,
idiot that I am, I was, of course, watching a
League One game between Cheltenham and Huddersfield
- ah, well, I'll watch this one as my own team is
also down among the dead men in the relegation zone
of this division so let's see what our rivals are
like. Hold, on though -
what if this game is really in the division below,
League Two - and is between Chesterfield and
Hereford United? I settle down
again, hoping that the commentator might eventually
mention the name of one or both of the teams. At
last, he does - yes, Chesterfield versus
Hereford. But why on earth
do broadcasters want us to have to ransack the
memory banks in a desperate effort to work out who
is playing and, perhaps, become so irritated that
we continue channel hopping and watch the far more
entertaining re-runs of Whose Line Is It Anyway?
Currently being broadcast on, I think, Dave -
perhaps the most preposterously named of tv
stations - almost as preposterous as trying to name
football teams in two letters. Deal Or No
Deal The crucial thing
about Noel Edmonds' smash hit quiz show, Deal Or No
Deal is that it generally comes down to a climax
which sees the competitor confronted with a stark
choice. He or she has two
amounts of money which can be won - for example, in
Box A there is £5 to be won; in Box B, there
is £100,000. Obvious, you cry
- they have to go for Box B. Well, yes, but of
course it ain't that simple - because although they
know that those two amounts are in those two boxes,
they don't know which amount is in which box - and,
to confuse the issue, they also then receive an
offer from 'the banker' which they can accept
without having to make the choice. If the two
amounts on offer are the £5 and £100,000,
the offer may be, say, £35,000. So, what do you
do? Gamble on going away with almost nothing or, as
Noel, says, a 'life-changing amount of money', or
take the guaranteed, but not as glamorous amount
being offered at no risk. Leaving aside all
considerations such as character as current bank
balance, in the instance illustrated here, the
competitor MUST opt to go for the £100,000, as
he has an even money chance of getting it.
If you look at it
as though he was being offered the chance to stake
his £35,000 on a potential profit of
£100,000 - he is effectively being offered
almost 2/1 about an even money shot, so has to go
for it - in theory. The mental
misgivings of the competitors when faced with this
type of decision arew the main appeal of Noel's
show. But they can also
confront punters as a couple of cases I have come
across recently have illustrated. In the first
instance a punter who had had a football
accumulator, had seen his low stake bet build up to
the point where he had one game left, with some
£10,000 going on to it. If it won he would win
£28,000. If he stopped the bet at that point
he could just take the ten grand. He opted to go
for it. And Hull striker Dean Windass duly scored
the goal which won the punter his twenty eight
grand. To celebrate, the punter , not a Hull fan,
bought himself one of the club's shirts with
Windass inscribed on the back. Why did he go for
it? I asked him. 'Well, I'd only have lost a quid
if they hadn't won' he said. Then along came
Alan Scott from Sheffield. He found an incredible
THIRTY ONE consecutive football winners, selecting
teams from an amazing ELEVEN countries. His stake was
only a quid but he had £6800 after those
thirty one had won. But, the next
day, his final game, Gretna, 1/3 at home to Morton,
was being played. This punter
played things differently and asked whether he
could halt his bet at this point, even though
Gretna looked like good things. He was allowed to
close the bet - and Gretna lost! Yes, both of
these punters could have hedged their bets by
staking big money on the alternative outcomes to
the games and ensuring that they would make a
guaranteed profit whatever the outcome. That option
appealed to neither of them, they had enjoyed the
thrill of the bet thus far, which had only cost
them a small amount of money, and wanted the
satisfaction either of seeing the bet through all
the way or of winning that big payout. Of course, in
terms of the battle against the bookie, they were
both wrong. They should have hedged and locked in a
profit. Racing
Post
editor Bruce Millington and I have had our moments
over the years, but we usually get on okay - so I
was surprised when he had an outright go at me in
his column recently. It may have been
in coded language - bit he was definitely having a
dig, claiming that most tv football commentaries
were aimed at '57 year olds named Reg'. That might sound
innocuous enough to you - but then you are probably
not of that particular vintage - I am exactly. Nor,
I should imagine, have you been saddled with the
less than glamorous name of Reg - I
have. It is Reginald
actually, and I acquired it as one of two middle
names, courtesy of my late godfather, so I suppose
that's fair enough, particularly as I don't often
use it - but for Bruce to somehow find out and then
deliberately have a go at me is a bit
much. Or am I just
getting paranoid? Whatever - coin of the realm paid
for anyone who can find out Bruce's middle name for
me. I'm thinking along the lines of Cuthbert,
possibly Archie or, as he is a Palace fan,
Crystal! Out of the blue
and from someone I had never heard of before, I
receive an unsolicited email offer - no, not that
sort, I'm used to them - to purchase the number
plate 2BET for the knockdown price of fifty grand.
I turn it down - well, I mean, I've never been to,
nor am ever likely to go to, and have never met
anyone from, Tibet, have I!? Off to the
Doctors to have a 'top-up' jab against the many and
varied diseases which lurk abroad for unsuspecting
travellers. Walking into the
surgery I have to queue up with a selection of
walking cadavers, barely breathing bodies and
characters who look as though they would struggle
to walk to the supermarket three hundred yards down
the road without having to call an
ambulance. The receptionist
deals in an entirely efficient but unsympathetic
manner with all of these declining
creatures. Then it is my
turn. She takes one look at me, visibly pales, and
asks with a concerned look in her eyes: 'Are you
feeling all right?' I suddenly don't
feel as healthy as I did when I walked
in. 'Yes. Why
shouldn't I be?' I ask. 'Well, we don't
get many cases like this in here' she says,
pointing towards my head. 'Like
what?' 'Well, hopeless
cases who support Luton Town' she says, laughing
heartlessly at the badge on my woolly hat. 'It's
almost certainly terminal.' Reading
Up As ever I've
found you a couple of worthwhile gambling-related
books. L Jon Wertheim's 'Running
The Table:
The Legend of Kid Delicious' is a contemporary
update of the pool-hustler-on-the-road genre, and
tells the tale of one of the least likely of
hustlers, an overweight, bi-polar oddball, who
becomes obsessed by pool and determined to be the
best. Plenty of colourful, readable
yarns. The acknowledged
king of all things Grand National , the late Reg
Green, would, I am sure, have been quick to pay
tribute to 'A-Z
Of The Grand
National'
by John Cottrell and Marcus Armytage, which is a
really comprehensive history of the great race,
over 500 pages stuffed full of stats, records,
folklore, anecdotes, and much of the atmosphere of
this long-standing piece of racing tradition. This
is a must-buy. Perhaps one of
the most unusual racing titles we've ever plugged
in these pages - The Blood Horse 'Kentucky
Derby Glasses Price
Guide'
from Eclipse Press, does just what it says on the
tin and offers photographs of specialised Derby
memorabilia, together with a current
price-guide. William
Casino Casino
currently offer an unlimited new player and monthly
free money bonus (£10 to £10,000 free
every month). Visit
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