24 hour betting in Oz

	The dealer seems unbeatable…'Hey kid, you know there's no 10s in the deck, don'tcha?'

It’s 5am and I’m desperately trying to stave off sleep, slumped in an armchair in one of the finest rooms that one of Melbourne’s plushest venues, the Crown Casino, has to offer. I’m a carwreck of a man, the glorious 18th-floor view of the sun rising behind silver skyscrapers wasted as my eyelids lose the will to live – the result of InsideEdge’s 24-hour Betting in Oz Challenge.

Less than 24 hours earlier, fresh orders from IE high command had stated: ‘You’ve got a couple of days to kill before the Aussie Millions. Your challenge, should you accept it (and you will or you’re fired), is to bet on anything and everything you can get on in Melbourne, non-stop for 24 hours. Sports, poker, casino but no internet betting. We’ve wired AU$200 (£85) into your account. £20 says you finish in the red. Get going.’ The tight bastards.

Since then my bank balance has had more swing than Stan ‘Dogger’ Collymore. I’ve cashed in on poker pros’ driving distance off the golf tee, been burnt by a Bulgarian fightback in the Aussie Open, hammered the slots and come out on top, doubled up milking pension money at the hold’em tables and lucked out betting blind on harness racing. I’ve learned plenty – such as playing pontoon with basic strategy is suicidal, Phil Ivey on the golf course ain’t no Tiger Woods and tilt doesn’t mix with sleep deprivation.

And I’ve learned that there’s a ton of gambling action to be found in Melbourne no matter what time of day it is. I’ve got on Premiership matches at Tote-style counters at 3am, made side-bets with fellow hacks and tried casino games I’ve never even heard of before.

And all for a total profit of $34.30. Not much of a return for an entire day’s gambling, but at least I’ve proved we Brits are more than a match for the Aussie way of punting. Here’s what happened…

8.35am

Top pros in town for the Aussie Millions are up for some golf action, so I head to the city’s swanky Capital Golf Club with Dave ‘Pan Hands’ Woods, editor of IE’s sister mag Poker Player.

9.22am

‘$50,000 you don’t par the first,’ says Phil Ivey, staring down Mike Sexton, who guffaws: ‘I’ll have your ass!’ Way out of my league but luckily sports-betting fish Woods is on hand to skin. Three holes in and I’m $50 up. Woods looks depressed.
BETTING BANK $250

11.30am

Off to Melbourne Park for the first day of the Australian Open Tennis Championships. Briefly consider taking golf buggy the whole nine yards.

12.30pm

Just in time for the second game of the first set in Venus Williams’ opener against 19-year-old Bulgarian Tszvetana Pironkova in the stunning 10,500-seater Vodafone Arena. Venus seems extremely dominant and dialled-in to win in two straight sets.

12.35pm

Discover the only way to get on is through the TAB which doesn’t do inrunning. (The Totalisator Agency Board – Australia’s version of our Tote – rules supreme here and it’s practically the only way to bet apart from bookies at racecourses.) Bah humbug. Decide now is the perfect time to explain spread-betting to Woods.

12.37pm

Desperate to win his golf money back, Woods offers 30-32 on total number of points scored by Pironkova.

12.38pm

94th seed Pironkova has already lost two of her service games and looks fairly helpless. Agree to sell her points at $2 a point.

1.15pm

After losing the first set to Venus 6-2, Pironkova takes the second 6-0. The Bulgarian has already racked up over 40 points and am now deeply worried about how much I’ll lose as there’s no tie-break in the third set.

1.25pm

Venus 2-4 down in the third set. Just hurry up and put me out of my misery, Pironkova.

1.36pm

The agony and the ecstasy. Six games all and neither player looks able to wrap it up. Deuce/advantage, deuce/advantage – they’re doing it on purpose now.

1.40pm

Bulgarians go bananas! 9-7 to Pironkova and, with 92 points to her name, that leaves a make-up of 62 and me $124 down. Begin to suspect Woods was a bit too quick to understand spreads.
BETTING BANK $126

2.00pm

Am seriously on tilt. Ordinarily, I’d lay off the betting for the rest of the day but this challenge means I must trudge on. Time to go back to what I know best: poker.

2.40pm

I’m in the Crown and have been walking for ten minutes now, passing hundreds of ‘pokies’. Pah, you wouldn’t catch me putting one red cent into a slot machine. Wait, the King of the Nile jackpot prize is a BMW 3 series. Apparently due a payout…

2.41pm

Woods wanders off. 2.45pm The pokie is my new best friend.
BETTING BANK $130

2.46pm

Still no BMW.

2.50pm

Look for Woods in the poker room. Over 40 tables to choose from! Pick a $60 cash game and my name gets scrawled on the white board. I wait to be guided to a table when a space becomes available. Worry other players will have monster chipstacks.

2.55pm

I’m duly sandwiched between two monster chipstacks. To my left, a French ex-pat called Dominic, with $300, and to my right, a middle-aged German tourist, Helmut, with $250 in green chips and a mountain of $5 reds. The rest are Aussie Million railbirds and card-room regulars.

3.00pm

Ouch – on the hour, every hour, the table takes a $5 rake regardless of how long you’ve been seated. Before I’ve played a hand I’m $7 down. Given my relative shortstack, I’m going to have to wait for a big hand before making a move. 3.47pm Fold K-Q after the flop hit K, 10, J, which I’d checked. Dominic had thrown a single $50 chip in, representing the straight. To his credit, he turns over Q-9. With a 10% commission on each hand and the hourly rake to come, I’m feeling the squeeze.
BETTING BANK $60

3.50pm

Aces! Pushing all-in, one of the Aussies at the far end of the table senses the wounded animal in me and calls. He has pocket ducks. No 2, no 2, no 2… and I double up.

3.54pm

Pair of 10s in middle position and I’m all-in again. Everyone folds except the button, a bespectacled old guy who’s just joined the table. WSOP rules requires you to ‘turn ’em over’ at the showdown but not here. Granddad chooses not to, the board comes 4, J, 8, 4, K and he leaves in disgust. Bonzer!
BETTING BANK $240

6.10pm

Top bloke David, our Aussie snapper, reckons I need to get myself over to Moonee Valley, Melbourne’s mecca for a national obsession – harness racing, aka ‘The Trots’. According to Vaughn Lynch, racecourse manager, there are 510 race meetings a year in the state of Victoria alone. Taxi!

6.55pm

Just in time for the first race. With no form guide, the tried-andtested method of ‘Which name do I like?’ puts me onto BendItLikeBekam at 6.2 – 20 bucks on the nose. The Aussies used to have fractional odds but in the mid-Nineties it was decided that showing punters how much they’d win for every dollar would boost the then-flagging market.

7.00pm

Begin to appreciate I’m a very long way from Cheltenham. There are no jockeys, only ‘drivers’, and there’s a sodding great truck on the 960m oval sand track – it’s a mobile barrier, a mechanised 20-metre wide white gate hitched to the back of a truck giving the horses a running start.

7.02pm

I meet racecourse manager Vaughn Lynch, who’s frantically busy but still finds time to invite me aboard the barrier-truck for the start of the race. ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ I’m assured.

7.05pm

Driving backwards feet ahead of a line of charging gee-gees. Wonder what Lynch’s definition of ‘dangerous’ is. Still, it is exhilarating.

7.07pm

From this vantage point, it’s hard to know what the hell’s going on, but I hop out just in time to see BendItLikeBekam finish third.

7.20pm

I’m $40 down and back to where I started 12 hours earlier. Bring on the next seven races!
BETTING BANK $200

10.30pm

Feeling smug. It’s all about the ‘Quinella’, a forecast bet allowing you to pick the first two finishers but not the correct sequence. $235 to the good. I’m a trots convert.
BETTING BANK $435

11.00pm

Back at the Crown and I’m feeling unstoppable.

11.05pm

The first table I see is ‘pontoon pandemonium’. I’m pretty sure pontoon is the same as blackjack, which I normally do all right at. Break one of my own fundamental betting rules – don’t play any casino game I don’t know inside-out.

11.45pm

My mountainous pile of $5 chips is fast becoming a molehill. I’m sure I’m playing basic strategy perfectly, but the dealer seems unbeatable…

11.46pm

An American lady on my immediate left, thick maroon lipstick, 35-ish, whispers, ‘Hey kid, you know there’s no 10s in the deck, don’tcha?’

11.46pm

I look to the dealer for confirmation – he nods – and adding insult to injury, hands me the ‘How to play pontoon’ leaflet. Thank God no one knows I work for a gambling magazine.

11.51pm

Conclude that it’s possible to lose just as much money going on-tilt from a big win as it is from a big loss
BETTING BANK $275

12.00am

Remember to eat.

12.05am

What’s this ‘casino war’? Intriguing. Like hi-lo, you get dealt a card face-up, then the dealer gets his. Highest wins. If it’s a tie, you can surrender half your stake or double down (as in blackjack) and both you and the dealer get another card.

12.36am

The fight isn’t going well. At $5 a pop, those trotting winnings are fast evaporating. This is the silliest game I’ve ever played, yet its simplicity is strangely addictive. Must… get… away.
BETTING BANK $195

2.36am Still here.

The losing streak and exhaustion are making me delirious. That ‘Huh, war, what is it gooood for?’ song is on repeat in my head.

2.45am

I’m desperately searching for something to take me away from this game. So I head to the pub. In the corner of my eye is a familiar face – Frank Lampard. And there’s John Terry. All right, boys?
BETTING BANK $165

2.46am

Chelsea are playing Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on the big screen. Kick-off 4pm UK time, 3am here. Perfect. And, hang on, there’s a bookies in here!

2.58am

I get some cheeky bets on the TAB – which opened its doors in Perth on 18 March 1961 with a starting capital of $10,000 and today boasts a turnover of over $10 billion.

3.02am

I’m rocked up next to Aussie Troy who’s flown in from Sydney for the weekend. ‘I didn’t bet till they put a TAB counter in my local pub. Now they’re everywhere,’ he says.

3.12am

Chelsea surprisingly go a goal down, but they can come back. They better had… I’ve got all $165 at 1.42 riding on it.

4.50am

Somewhere in the back of my head I hear a voice: ‘Paul! Paul – they won, mate! They won! Wake up.’

4.51am

Troy shakes my hand. ‘Gotta go, mate’ he says. That’s a helluva lot of Aussie notes he’s waving around. ‘What happened?’ I ask. ‘Crespo headed in before half-time and Robben drilled it to seal the win.’
BETTING BANK $234

4.57am

It’s been the longest 22-and-ahalf hours of my life, but I’m in profit – and that’s surely all any gambler could ask for.

4.59am

Bed! Can’t seem to keep my eyes open. No-one will know I didn’t go the full 24 hours, right?

5.00am

The bedside phone goes. It’s InsideEdge. Rumbled. I’m £20 down before I even speak a word. Goddamn.