Gambling Fun For The 2010 World Cup

Future golden boot winner

They say that the bookies always win when it comes to betting, but they don't have to if you end up having a laugh along the way. Skybet have a slogan which states 'it matters more when there’s money on it' and of course if you're familiar to betting on football matches you'll agree with this statement, as the chance to win big money is an exciting prospect that can mess with your emotions at times. I'm not a massive gambler myself, I do like to put £1 accumulators on for weekends and have the odd bet if I feel like it, but I do it more as a means of having fun rather than seeing it as a way of making money. In my first year of university, me and my mates watched Euro 2008, and with a lack of England to support on in the tournament we looked at other ways to make the tournament more meaningful. I'll come back to that later, but in the mean time, here are a number of bets you can put on to have a bit of fun:

Samaras and Greece?

That’s right. I put 10p on Greece to win the World Cup and Georgios Samaras to win the Golden Boot, with odds of 3000/1. People laughed, but I cite the 2004 European Championships to support my proposal. This basically means if Samaras scores in Greece's first game I’m going to be going mental and dancing around the streets. I'll be ringing every single one of my mates asking them if they think it's such a stupid bet now. I have faith in big Georgios, sure he failed in the Premiership and only has five international goals, but doesn't it just feel like this is his summer? I am slightly regretting it now I see Palermo is guaranteed a place in the Argentina squad, I’ll have to compromise by putting both of them up front in my World Cup fantasy team. Maybe I’ll win that cash prize as well.

The ridiculous accumulator:

There’s a tabloid in Britain that’s currently offering £100m to anybody who can correctly predict a win, lose or draw in every game of this summer’s World Cup. I tried to do this myself on skybet, but unfortunately their accumulator would only let me put a maximum of 15 games, but that means I have predicted the first 15 games of the World Cup and with my predictions I got odds of 33876/1. Some would say this is not going to happen, and I also had a bit of a bias with my above selection of Greece and Samaras, but the longer it goes on the more I will believe! I'll be doing this a number of times, and no doubt when I collect my winnings I can retire for life. If you can put on every group game then go for it, remember - you're a footballing expert.

The 'what’s next' game:

This was what we all did in Euro 2008. Basically I was watching games with my mates, and all the left over change we got from nights out we used to bet against each other. For example, I’d say to one of my mates 'I bet you 5p that Germany get the next throw in', which would usually be met with the reply 'you're on' and so we would watch in anticipation for the next throw in. I've never been so excited over seeing a throw in, it felt as good as seeing a goal for my team. You can do it with anything though, corners, goal kicks, yellow cards etc. So the first day I made a good 30p, but then I was down 10p. Don't let yourself get pounds into debt though, I’d recommend rehab for that.

If anyone has any other suggestions we'd love to hear them. Also, no need to thank me on the tip about Greece and Samaras.

Tagged as: betting, Greece, samaras, World Cup