Trading Up

	The ugly side of betting has been exposed, with people rushing to lay dead horses

The past month has simultaneously exposed the very best and worst of the gambling world. The ugly side of betting has been exposed time and again in recent months, with people rushing to lay dead horses in ante-post betting markets on the exchanges. If you are the first person to rush to an exchange when a horse suffers a serious or critical injury, there will often be long-term unmatched bets in ante-post racing markets waiting to be laid. A dead horse clearly won’t be winning April’s Grand National. It has seemed distasteful, though, to have less scrupulous punters making a fast buck if they react quickly enough to serious injuries to horses.

A clean slate

Betfair’s racing team have decided enough is enough, and are now voiding these callous bets. A longshot will have bets laying it voided if it dies, while with a fancied horse (a ‘material’ runner) all bets laying it will be wiped. Other runners having bets on them (losing a main rival will see all the other horses’ prices shorten) will be scrubbed off the slate too, from the point at which it was clear the news of a death had become public knowledge (identifiable through betting patterns). Well done to Betfair Racing – this is a welcome step in the right direction.

Murray minted

The highlight of the month has been Andy Murray’s maiden ATP tour title in the SAP Open in San Jose. Putting both Andy Roddick and Lleyton Hewitt to the sword, at just 18 years of age, is no mean feat. Until Tim Henman’s emergence, and Greg Rusedski’s change of passport, the British public have by and large had a fairly meagre diet of success in men’s tennis to feast on. While a player like Jeremy Bates could whip the nation into a frenzy if he even reached the second week of Wimbledon, Andy Murray has conspicuously been the real deal for some time now, and will have his sights set far higher. I wouldn’t advise Edgers to back him at the current 25/1 for Wimbledon 2006, but his hard-court game will see him as a much greater threat in the US Open, where 25/1 would definitely be value.

Greg Rusedski won Sports Personality of the Year in 1997 by reaching the US Open Final, and I’m hoping that the £200 I took at 20/1 on Andy Murray being 2006’s SPOTY will still be looking pretty juicy come December. SPOTY is decided on a phone/text vote now, and I imagine that should he be in the final two with, say, an England footballer who has done well at the World Cup – then the entire population of Scotland will have the phone on redial to help their man beat an Englishman!