Sunday Morning

After no strong draws at all for Saturday, there's only the one today which is Sunderland v Liverpool. Home picks are Monaco (2.1) v Nancy and Sporting de Gijon (2.02) v Almeria.

I mentioned earlier in the week that this is the time of year when certain leagues tend to have strange draw prices, and while it's not hugely out of line, the draw price in the Bologna v Genoa match is lower than might be expected at 2.92.

Bari v Chievo Verona is of interest too. Chievo have underperformed for five games in a row, but Bari are pretty poor with just one win since September. If they are to win a second, this is their chance, and they can be backed at 2.8. I have this as a weak draw, which is at a short 3.15. I have the Under 2.5 goals priced at 1.71.

The first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament a year ago cost me over £3k, and while there are still eight games to go today, so far this year has not seen a repeat performance. A small profit ensures that the rolling 52-week average took a nice jump. On the subject of my post on the NCAA tournament, Ferenc wrote:

I apologize to the ugly comment, I do not know why I wrote it, was written in the heat of passion. Forgive me.

No apology is necessary. Presumably the comment in Croatian was the offensive one, because I didn't see anything ugly about the two I understood! Questioning the liquidity was certainly a valid comment. It's not been as good as I would have liked, but when the field is down to 16 next week, the games should be more competitive - although the beauty of the tournament is that games are often a lot closer than the market expects pre-game. Already one of the four number one seeds (Pittsburgh) are out after losing to last year's runner-up Butler.

A stupid loss on the Rugby for me yesterday. Betfair's commission free outage apology offer was pretty useless to me since Cheltenham does nothing for me, but I did use the Ireland v England game for a PC reducing bet. Unfortunately, I don't know much about Rugby apparently, and the bet was a bank reducing bet instead. An offer from Betfair to refund all Premium Charges since their inception would have been much better.

While one winner from two in the Bundesliga gave me a small profit there, Aston Villa were a big disappointment in losing to Wolverhampton Wanderers. Football Elite had my two German picks as well as Lorient who I had already discarded. I traded the Manchester United v Bolton game for a profit, as I felt United were too short at 1.44. I had them priced at 1.61, with the Under at 1.62.

You would think Getafe would have enough problems with the NATO attacks to concentrate on football, but they put up a good performance at Barcelona, going down by the odd goal in three.