LilDave Thinks

I love the Olympics, I love it for several reasons, firstly I like watching competitive sport, it’s just sick fun. Secondly, I really enjoy watching all the random sports you could never see on TV usually, like badminton, archery, cycling, or my favourite, based purely on the athletic merit of the competitors, women’s beach volleyball! However the reason I really love the Olympics is it provides endless opportunities to bet on stuff!

 

Never one to shy away from a potential gambling spot I dove head first into London 2012 with a tasty little bet on the men’s doubles in badminton. I was using the well-honed system of looking down the scorecard for any team that didn’t sound like they were from Asia and piling on whoever they were playing. It really is amazing how the Asian countries are so dominant in the sport, one guy (called KK Koo) held the world record for fastest smash at 240Kph! That’s a man hitting a shuttlecock! Amazing stuff.

Jump to it

My next piece of Olympic betting took me to the men’s archery where I attempted to shark the immature nature of the Betfair markets, placing a lot of small but well thought out bets. But after five or six of these I soon realised I was nowhere near clever enough to do any of this and just piled on Italy because I fancied the price. Feeling ridiculously degenerate following a nice coup on the cycling, I then elected to press on Italy in the final vs USA for no other reason than I just straight up wanted to punt. I got insanely lucky and the USA just didn’t show up and I shipped a nice profit!

 

Next thing I know I was out for lunch with my old boss, whose son is heavily involved in the show jumping world where he competes to a decent standard himself. I got given what I believed to be a solid tip on the show jumping so I obviously then went straight to the bookies to get on the coup. I was struggling to get action on the bet, then finally got a better price than I expected so I went ballistic and wagered fi ve times the amount I was planning on. As a result I ended up with a needlessly huge sweat on the show jumping. Why do I do these things?

Diving in

Next up was the swimming, where after exploring the Betfair markets for a good hour I realised I was completely clueless so looked at a way to gamble without having to gain any knowledge at all. For what it’s worth swimming is a great sport to sweat, as it’s very fast moving. I was briefly going to take Dave ‘Dubai’ Shallow’s bets on the swimming, but had an inkling he might be clued up so bottled it, eventually deciding to gamble on Odd/Even lanes with James ‘Flushy’ Dempsey, with some bonuses for outside lane winners.

 

Unfortunately my naivety led me to have odd lanes, which on day one in the qualifiers didn’t seem to matter much. By day two in the finals, when every odds-on favourite started in lane four, I got totally crushed. The only race I can remember when lane four didn’t win was when my bonus lane one was crushing before lane two (Flushy’s bonus lane) came crashing through and won. So I lost all my Olympic’s profit and some extra to a smug James Dempsey.

 

Aside from the gambling, which is an obvious highlight, I’ve been really enjoying the camaraderie of the nation. It seems like the whole country is excited about the Olympics, and I think we should be. It’s a pretty exciting thing! For me it was three weeks of constant sport on the TV and relentless chances to bet, and occasionally win, on random sports. We need to have one of these every year.