Slicer And The Holy Grail

I wrote several months ago about a wind-up merchant on the Betfair forum who goes by the name of Slicer and claims to have found the “Holy Grail” – a method guaranteed to result in a profit on all qualifying football matches.

The method consists of placing two bets before the game, and a third which is placed at Half-Time if the score is 0-0. Bet 1 is lay of this HT score, and Bet 2 is a back of the 0-0 Full-Time score, but the mischievous Slicer would have everyone believe that there is a Bet 3 that guarantees profits every time. There isn’t.

Unfortunately, any method worthy of being called a ‘Holy Grail’ can’t rely on a price being available on the exchanges after the event has gone in-play. That uncertainty alone is enough to raise questions, but nevertheless, it appears that he has fooled a lot of people who should probably know better, into thinking that such a Holy Grail exists.

It doesn’t. The football markets are the most studied and efficient of the non-horse racing markets on Betfair, and any guaranteed method would have long ago been identified, and any advantage long gone.

His claims must also have come to the attention of a Betfair employee or two, for whom it wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to research and identify any Bet 3.

His admirers have also apparently failed to consider the likelihood that any one individual brilliant enough to have achieved the impossible would be the type to advertise such a ‘fact’ on the Betfair forum.

It’s somewhat more likely that there actually is no Holy Grail, and that the Slicer character suffers from a low EQ.