British people love politics. They love to talk about it in the pub, be actively engaged in it, and… bet on politics. The best political betting website out there is undoubtedly PoliticalBetting.com, Mike Smithson‘s blog about political betting markets. As a former Liberal Democrat politician and a BBC News journalist, few people have the experience that qualifies someone to be an expert on political betting more than him. He’s also the “33rd most influential over-50 on Twitter in 2014”, according to the Daily Telegraph. He also wrote a superb book “The Political Punter: How to Make Money Betting on Politics“, a must-read for anyone wanting to take a punt on politics.

What’s your opinion on political betting? Do you bet on politics?

Useful links:
+ Political Betting News & Tips from Betfair Politics
+ Ladbrokes Politics betting page
+ Political Betting & Election Betting from Paddy Power
+ British Politics Odds by OddsChecker.com
+ William Hill’s political betting section
+ Victoria University politics betting site gets temporary reprieve – if you haven’t heard of PredictIt yet, now may be the time to check it out
+ MeridianBet Tanzania Political Bets you can place political bets on UK or even US political events

What is Courtsiding?
According to the Wikipedia article on courtsiding, courtsiding is “the practice of transmitting information from sporting events for the purpose of gambling, or of placing bets directly from a sporting event. It has been observed as occurring most prominently, although not exclusively, in tennis”[1].

Is Courtsiding legal?
It is neither legal, nor explicitly illegal in most countries (Australia being one notable exception, for instance), but it is definitely what one would call “immoral”, as it is simply cheating, and it is defnitely a thorn in the eye of both bookies and sports event organizers, around the world.
There have been a few legal cases, occasionally with some hefty fines, but – in comparison to the scale & magnitude at which courtsiding must have been “performed”, the number of court cases is really negligible. “Beating the bookies” (which is the ultimate objective of any punter) is one thing, but it is simply not fair. Courtsiding is like “insider trading”, in a way.

Does Courtsiding still work?
While this may be a logical question, first of all, let’s be clear on something: you should not even think of doing any “courtsiding”, anywhere! Second, if you watch the video below, you may get the idea of how “fresh” a technique courtsiding can possibly be, if there is a BBC mini-documentary on YouTube, watched by millions of people already. (It’s a highly interesting interview, by the way – definitely worth watching!)

Match fixing (also known as “hippodroming”) in deed does happen in real life, and it is illegal in most jurisdictions. If you don’t believe us, you can watch documentaries about this topic on YouTube.

While there is huge demand for so-called “fixed matches” and there are plenty of websites and mobile applications offering advice on the possible outcome of sports events based on some top secret “insider knowledge”, please consider two things, before paying money for any such “bulletproof” information.

1) If those match results were really as “bulletproof” as the seller claims, then why would anyone give away this information for a relatively small amount of money (or let alone: for free?), instead of just betting a chunk of money on the game and cash in big time? It’s not very logical, is it? In fact, it is a rather fishy contradiction in itself.

2) There are completely clean, legal, and honest ways to obtain accurate football predictions that can help you win your bets – just check out any of the football prediction sites we list in our directory.

Long story short: this site does not aim to provide you with fixed match results or anything similar. But if you still insist on spending time and risking money on the topic, search in Google to find a list of “fixed match” sites.

Good Luck & Gamble Responsibly!

Recapping on our blog post covering gambling genius Billy Walters, here is a short (less than 3min) extra footage of Billy Walters’ analytics tips.

Definitely worth watching – more than once!

What did you learn, after watching the video?

In 2011, then-64-year-old professional gambler Billy Walters (Net worth: US$100+ million) sat down with CBS 60 minutes for an interview, for the first time during his long and successful sports betting career. One of the reasons he did that, was to prove that “the gambling world is not as shady as most think”.

Watch this super interesting, 12-minute-long video to gain insights into the early life, the daily routine, the lifestyle and the wits of sports betting legend Billy Walters.

Have you ever heard of Billy Walters before?

A) Are you one of those punters who opened an account with several different betting operators?
or
B) do you stick with one betting operator only, and go for their odds, when you bet on a game?
or
C) are you an oddshunter already and this post isn’t going to tell you anything new? 🙂

Intead of “Oddshunting”, the title of this post could also be “Why Comparing betting odds is worth your time and effort?”, or rather “Why opening accounts with different betting operators is recommended (apart from oddshunting)?”

Here are a few practical reasons:

+ There can be substantial differences between the odds offered on the same game by one operator or another – why would you leave money on the table?

+ Cash in on a welcome bonus wherever you can – why not? – bonus hunting is legal! 🙂

+ If one operator shuts down your account (for example: because you win too much), you have other operators to fall back on.

+ One day you will come across a big opportunity – and you will want to have multiple accounts in place, at your disposal, immediately.

Any other reasons you can think of? Please let us know in the comments!

An update: one of our readers pointed out that betting while travelling can be problematic. E.g. if you are trying to access your betting account from a different country, some online betting operators might not let you use their service – another reason for having more than one account before you hit the road! 🙂 [thanks for the input]