Bet of the weekend: HIK Helsinki to continue with great form against Jaro

After a long break I am back with this blog and I will continue picking some good value picks. The only change of tactics is that I will picking fewer picks, with teams or players in good form and only those whom I watched personally. I am also still running a blog at Blogabet.com, but as I have fewer time recently, it lacks some quality and quite often I’ve noticed that I have picked some matches, which are completely against the logic. I will improve on that, but that also means that I will have fewer picks posted there.

Jaro – HIK Helsinki. Betting preview (23/07/2011).  

Back to my pick of the weekend. There is one team that brought a lot of profit recently and it’s HIK Helsinki from Finnland.

Betfair trading: 2 successful results from yesterday

2 matches and both of them appeared to be successful in terms of trading @ Betfair. Both of them had similar patterns in the beginning, but completely different after the 1st goal was scored. Netherlands was a lucky overs result with 3rd goal scored with final touch. Brazil game made 2 quick goals, proving that one of my new rules appears to be the right one.

Basic rules for my yesterday’s trades were as follows. Pre-match bet – LAY of over2,5 goals. 15-20 min BACK of over2,5 goals. Then if the goal is scored in 1st half, then wait for 10 minutes and then LAY the bet. The reason for implementing such rule is simple – odds don’t rise that fast in first 10 minutes, especially when it is an early goal like in Netherlands game. But at the same time your trading can be destroyed by a 2 back-2-back goals, like in Brazil’s match case. I will develop this rules with time, but for the time of being it worked.

Here are the my moves in the Brazil – Chile match.

World Cup. Day 18. Brazil and Netherlands hot favorites to progress

Sorry for keeping quite for a weekend, had a football tournament to play, so I didn’t have a time to post my thoughts. Unfortunately whenever you don’t post your thoughts, all the picks come through. Uruguay win in regular time, Ghana (0) in regular time, Germany (0) in regular time + to progress and finally Argentina (-1) – almost all of those bets came through, only Ghana was pushed result as it finished 1:1 in regular time.

Today we have both Brazil and Netherlands as hot favorites in their pairs and both of them should come through into quarterfinals. Their opponents are both with some problems. Chile will have to deal without 3 first choice players (Gary Medel, nicknamed “Pitbull”, Waldo Ponce and Marco Estrada) who are suspended and Slovakia spend a lot of emotions in their final game against Italy. Both of the favorites had little trouble coming out of the group and last games played relaxed, saving some energy for the 1/8 finals. Dutch team has another massive boost in the face of Roben, who will be starting the game. While Brazil welcomes back Kaka, who comes after suspension. All the facts lead us to taking both team wins for a multiple or 2 single bets on asian handicap (-1).

World Cup. Day 14. When we will see real Dutch team?

Despite 2 wins out of 2, I can’t quite say that Holland have shown even 50% of their capabilities. They have great potential and I think that today we have a chance to see them in real action. I would tip Holland to go deep in the tournament, but they have 1 potential problem, in the quarterfinals they will most probably face Brazil team and that’s always a hard match for them. Italy will try to make sure they qualify, most probably from 2nd place. Paraguay will make sure today they will finish in 1st place, to book a meeting with Denmark or Japan in 1/8 final. Denmark – Japan always a risky match, there is so much at stake there.

I will post today only my picks for todays matches, those I’ve picked @ blogabet also.  Won’t have any time to make odd comparison, but believe me, I still can say that one of bookmakers will have them the best of all. Don’t even have to name it!

Cameroon – Holland

Pick:  Over 2.5
Stake:  8/10   Odds:  2.09
Bookmaker:  Pinnacle

World Cup. Day 13. Will England meet France in the airport?

Crucial day today for 2 pre-tournament favorites, Germany and England. Both are in the must win situation and both will play group leaders. I am not worrying about Germany, cause they played nicely in both of the matches, despite 2nd match loss to Serbia. But England showed absolutely nothing here in South Africa and if Slovenia will be able to build up on the performance against USA, then England can pack their bags and meet France in the airport on the way back to London. I doubt that this will happen and England will squeeze through, but still that was unthinkable situation before the World Cup began. 2 more interesting games, USA – Algeria and Serbia – Australia, with all the teams withing a chance to qualify.

Moreover I will offer a free bet on the 3 matches, including today’s Germany and England wins. 10 Euro Free bet @ Pinnacle for a Germany, England and Spain wins in their last games in the group.

World Cup. Day 8. Germany and England will try to avoid each other in 1/8

First big team down and actually I am glad that it was France. Domenech is really poor coach for French side and I still wonder how could he hold on to this position for so long. In 2006 it wasn’t him who brought France into World Cup final, it was the majestic Zidane, and experienced Makelele and Thuram, who completely closed Ronaldinho and Kaka in the semi-final against Brasil. So farewell, France, wish you good luck with new coach Laurent Blanc! But now let’s get back to Day 8.

Germany and England got to do everything to finish 1st in their groups. Otherwise they will be meeting each other already in the 1/8 finals stage.  Germans did what they had to do, won convincingly against Australians 4:0. But England managed to slip the victory through Green hands. Now they have to win and most likely have to win it with more then one goal advantage to secure good goal difference. In other match USA play Slovenia and football instinct tells me that USA should win, but I will probably will skip that match.

World Cup. Day 6. Vamos Espana, Vamos La Furia Roja!

We have seen all the teams in action and now, for the desert, we will see one of the most enjoyable to watch team in the world, Spain. Iniesta managed to cure his injury, Torres looks set to play, Fabregas is also ok… All leads to the fact that we will see the full strength Spain and that’s great. In other Round1 match we will see 2nd best in South America team Chile. How strong are they is still remains a question for me. But I do know that they have very talented players and very experienced coach Bielsa, so that’s should be enough for Honduras at least.

Now lets take a look on the today’s matches closer.  Here are my picks for today and the comparison of  3 bookmakers. One, Bwin, have brought a huge advertisement campaign here in Latvia (I guess everywhere in the world also, as they have global strategy). That’s I wanted to see how good/bad are their odds. Second one is our local latvian bookmaker Optibet , that’s for the local punters. And the 3rd one is the place where I place all my bets on this World Cup, its of course Pinnacle, best odds, great lines.

	Bwin	Optibet	Pinnacle
Chile win	1.55	1.63	1.667
Spain Over >2,5 goals	1.85	2.01	2.08
Uruguay (0)	1.65	1.68	1.725

All of them doesn’t provide bonus for the sign up and all 3 have different reasons for that.

BWIN. Spends all the money on the advertisement, therefore their odds are simply ridiculous. They do provide 30 euro bonus I guess, but due to low odds, the value of  bonus disappears quite fast.

OPTIBET. They are local bookies, so they don’t have much money for bonuses. Or perhaps they don’t have it as a business strategy. Yet without bonuses they have also low odds, especially on tennis events.

PINNACLE. Don’t have any sign up bonuses simply because they don’t need them. All punters who can calculate their profit from betting, will see themselves thats odds which are sometimes 30-40% better then at other bookmakers will give you much more profit. PINNACLE and Betfair are the places for the wise punters, for true professionals.

So its up to you to choose. I have made my choice and now I have 2 accounts – one at Pinnacle and the other one at Betfair (for trading purposes). My friendly advise would be to go to Pinnacle, sign up, make a deposit and enjoy the odds.

World Cup. Day 4. Netherlands in oranje-hot form start

About some of the teams we can say that they are in a red-hot form. About Dutch team that isn’t gonna sound quite right, they are surely in the oranje-hot form! Today is an interesting day of football with Netherlands playing an interesting fixture against Denmark. Eagerly anticipating Cameroon and Paraguay teams in action today, with a possible upset in the Italy – Paraguay match. So much more interesting football is expected today. Lets take a look on all of them.

Holland – Denmark

Pick:  Over 2.5
Stake:  5/10   Odds:  2.08
Bookmaker:  Pinnacle

I think what we can surely expect from this game is an attractive attacking football, perhaps even from both sides. Holland possess great players in every department. They have such a great squad that even the absence of Robben, doesn’t affect their strength, which would sound ridiculous for most of the teams. Schneider, Van der Vaart, Van Persie they are world class players and their performance in Friendlies showed that there is a perfect understanding between them.

England – USA match preview

I had 3 bets for today – unders in both Korea and Argentina matches and the one that I will be able to share with you is overs in England – USA game. England look like a real pretender to lift a Cup this year and they will be up for a bright start today. At the same time USA have a quality in itself and can surely upset England with at least a goal.

England – USA
Pick:  Over 2.5
Stake:  5/10   Odds:  2.08
Bookmaker:  Pinnacle

England under Capello looks dangerous. They’ve always had a descent squad, but this time they have also a descent coach. With the players they have, they will score today at least 2 goals, with Rooney on the scoreboard.

Live trading matches and some picks for sunday matches

Today the main football fixture will be Manchester united and Liverpool and I think that this is a perfect game to trade on. oth teams are without any major injury doubts, so at least some goals there will be. At the same time Liverpool are not in that kind of form to score a lot of goals and they are also coming after tough match against Lille. Shall see how it goes, I will start with 40 euro LAY of over2,5 goals. >>> Unfortunately was late for the match for 15 minutes and was already at the point when its 1:1, decided not to get involved in this match (although LAY at such point would be natural).

And now for some picks for Sunday matches.

Hamburger – Schalke04 >>> WON
Over2,5 goals
If Hamburger will start with Ruud in starting line-up then this is gonna be overs. Even if he doesn’t score a single goal, he still brings so much attention of the opponent defenders and makes free spaces for