Wednesday 3 July 2013

Affiligate And Homer Bailey

We have a few more comments on the Affiligate scandal.

First, in response to Al's observation that the affiliate links had been removed in the dead of night from Mark's blog, Mark counters that they have not been removed. A case of 'he said, he said'.


For what it's worth, they are there as of right now. They slow the loading of Mark's pages down quite considerably as the "Waiting for imstore.bet365affiliates.com..." takes a while to process. Not only is integrity diminished with these links, but so is site performance it seems.


The second comment is a little bizarre, but part one is this:
Personally I see using your blog to constantly promote XX Draws via the biased FTL table as a lot worse.
Presumably a justification / explanation for this ‘personal’ opinion will be forthcoming in the next few days.

Danny continues in part two:
Your attitude to bookies is equally baffling, how can you claim to know they limit everyone’s accounts when the only bookie you joined was Ladbrokes in 1976? If you bothered to do any research you would learn there are ways to stay under the radar.
Has it ever occurred to you many of these chains have shops?
I’ll save pointing out the funniest part of that comment for last, but to start - please show me where I have ever claimed that bookmakers “limit everyone’s accounts”? Of course they don’t and of course I have never said that. They limit some and close the rest! (That was a joke Danny). I've also never claimed that Ladbrokes was the only bookie I have ever joined. Before commenting, might I suggest that it would be a good idea to bother to do some research before making wild assertions. There are only 1,553 posts and 2,964 comments to read through, and it's a good read.

Anyway, bookies are quite happy to keep many accounts open, and we can only speculate why you are not experiencing any issues with account limits or closures yourself.

As I wrote just a few days ago, the accounts that are limited and closed by many bookmakers are those where the account holder appears to have the nerve to want to make a profit. Only a few hours ago Secret Betting Club (I have no affiliation with them) tweeted:
“Just 10%”? I wonder what percentage of profitable accounts remain open with these businesses? I doubt that many more than 10% of gamblers are profitable, so do the maths.

I don’t have a problem with this. Bookmakers have every right to do business with whoever they want, and successful punters have to accept this. They are not utility companies denying us water. They are businesses there to make money, and if they identify accounts that are likely to be (for the bookie) losing accounts, then they will.

It would be nice for bookmakers to be a little more transparent on this topic, but they won’t be for obvious business reasons. When having an unrestricted account at a bookies is seen as the mark of a loser, why would they advertise along the lines of "Losers Welcome".

Having accounts closed is why I had nothing to do with betting for many years. There was no point knowing the combination to the safe if I couldn’t get through the front door.

It was only the arrival of Betfair that let me in again to play, and while Betfair do not (at least for the time being) close accounts, I have certainly run into their equivalent of having my account limited being hit first by the 20% Premium Charge, and currently the 50% Super Premium Charge. As a result, my activities are now much reduced. It’s hard to stay under the radar when you win consistently, and it would not be a surprise to see Betfair and other exchanges close accounts or raise their charges even higher. And if the front door closes again, I’ll move on with my life.

Perhaps Danny or Mark will grace us with a guest post on how staying under the radar with Stan James is a long-term proposition? Stan James PR guy Rory Jiwani wrote just yesterday: 
It's amazing how 'shrewdies' are so naive as to how bookies operate 
but we are told that there are ways to beat their sophistication.


As for “chains having shops”, let's think about that for a moment. Danny certainly didn't. How can you have a chain without shops?
Chain: A number of establishments, such as betting shops, stores, theatres, or hotels, under common ownership or management
Perhaps Danny meant ‘bookmakers’ rather than chains, in which case yes, I am well aware of that. For example, the much discussed Stan James has a whopping 87 shops across the entire UK. This includes one in Scotland, one in Somerset, none in Wales, none in Northern Ireland, none in Devon, none in Kent, one in Cornwall, one in Sussex, two in Surrey and a whopping 5 in the capital city of London.

So your point is what exactly?

As I said, bizarre. Hermes, wildly speculating himself, says:
Looks like Al should’ve gone to specsavers. Yet another case of Cassini not checking his facts and just copying whatever info suits his agenda.
Think we’ll have to disallow that goal and award a penalty J
Cassini 1, Iverson 2
If Hermes reads my blog often, he will be well aware that the comment from Al was published verbatim, as is often my wont. The statement was his, not mine. "Yet another case of Cassini not checking his facts"? Absolutely. Since when am I, or any article publisher for that matter, expected to check every 'fact' in every comment before publishing them? The only comments that don't get published are Anonymous / negative comments - all others are published as is. No one should be naïve enough to believe that every comment they read is factually accurate. Believe it or not, but not all comments are from the sharper minded.

In other news, there have been 237 no-hitters thrown in the modern era (since 1901 and the American League). In this millennium, there have been 32, including one thrown last night by Homer Bailey of the Cincinnati Reds, who just so happened to have thrown the previous one back in September last year.
With close to a full slate of baseball games played pretty much every day for six months from early April to late September, the chances that any one day will see a no-hitter are pretty slim - let's say 1.7% of days, 57-1 at the least. 

The odds offered by William Hill (US) (no affiliation)? 40-1, and apparently one Las Vegas bettor had $400 on such an outcome yesterday. 

Trivia note: Only one MLB team has never thrown a no-hitter. Answer tomorrow, if I remember. 

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Cassini,

Your remark 'it was only the arrival of Betfair that let me in again to play' is just so risible. You like to characterise yourself as a Patrick Veitch like fgure, a punter so dangerous bookies throughout the world wouldn't entertain his business.

It's so obvious you have no idea what you are talking about because at the time you are referring to, the early 2000's, the bookie scene was a goldmine for those with the knowledge (not me sadly). Just because you didn't work it out and become a part of it doesn't mean it didn't happen. Someone with your skills and abilities would have made a lot of quick easy money. People did.

Before 2006 there were good amounts to be made from US facing bookies and then there was a slew of european outfits.

I understand you enjoy Betfair and were in it for the challenge as much as the money. But the fact is there was a lot of opportunity elsewhere at the time and to deny it is factually incorrect. You could have made a lot of money from online casinos had you got into that, I think people tended to gravitate to what they enjoyed.

Listen I could give the talk about account preservation but SBC will do a far better job than I could.

Cassini I know you reside in the suburbs but it wouldn't hurt to leave the house once in a while and visit Londinium. I don't know what the shops are like now but again a few years back it was a good opportunity. I know guys were hitting them quite hard so they did react eventually. Naturally it's all got tougher as the betting/gaming industry has matured in recent years, with few new entrants now.

fizzer555 said...

That punter who bet on a no-hitter may actually have felt 40/1 was good odds last night, but lucked in by getting Homer Bailey's no-no.

Some great match ups last night with ace pitchers facing weak teams: -

Medlen against Miami
Price against Houston
Strasburg vs Milwaukee
Lackey vs San Diego

Then add in Kershaw was starting against the rockies and in the LAA/STL game either Lynn could have a great night against an LAA team that can really suck some nights, or Weaver can have some big nights and STL are in the doldrums.

So personally I think 40/1 last night was probably value.

fizzer555 said...

The bit in Affiligate I haven't got my head round is Mark's comment that

"the banners are just there to make the site look pretty and fill some space."

Well, most people would say that these affiliate banners make a site look tacky.

I manage a website for a non-league football team and I'm constantly being approached to put these banners up on our site, but if you look around at all the teams that do, they really detract from the look and feel of the site.

The defence that they don't earn any money doesn't mean that they were not originally put there to try to make some money.

It reminds me of when I noticed my neighbour's builder was creating an arched gateway leading on to my drive. When I confronted my neighbour about it he said he wanted it to look pretty and he never intended to use it - it was just an ornamental gateway! - Try telling that to your kids. Once confronted, he decided he didn't want to spend the money on an ornamental gateway after all.