Ice, Ice Baby

Bit of a dull week here at Star, with the all-weather dominating the racing as the icy weather claimed a brief grip on this green and pleasant land of ours. Having said that, this betting blog will furnish you with all the news and all the big bets from the week.

There was a little turf racing down south earlier this week, with action from Plumpton and Folkestone on Monday and Tuesday, but after novice hurdle wins for Akideau and Open Hearted we wished there hadn’t have been. A couple of big bets were recorded for both of those. We thought we had a good chance of getting Open Hearted beaten in running after it took a fierce hold, but alas the money left the satchel.

Most of the other action this week that got our punters juices flowing was on the green stuff, either the football pitch or snooker table.

The football action saw a couple of chunky big bets on Asian handicaps, the 1st of them being on Everton vs Man City, Everton getting a 0.75 goal start. If you could say the money-laden men from Eastlands have hit a flat spot this season, it’s about now as Everton had a fairly comfortable 1-0 victory. The game probably will be best remembered for the idiot who decided to handcuff himself to the goalpost during the 1st half. One can think of a few places where he would have been fairly safe, doing that maybe he noticed Everton’s lack of goalscoring prowess this season and though Joe Harts left hand post was as good as any!

The good people at the Liberty Stadium seem a much more sensible bunch and all managed to stay in their seats as the premier leagues pass masters took on Chelsea. The Swans have won plenty of friends this season with their attractive brand of football and one of our punters agreed by placing some big bets on Swansea +0.75 on the Asian handicap. Most observers would agree Swansea deserved a victory but were denied 3 points by Neil Taylor’s late own goal. However, our punter drew his wager, so it was no consolation to us here at Star Towers!

Saturday’s football was a little kinder. Fulham, despite their atrocious away record in the premier league, proved popular again on the Asian markets, with a £70k wager +1.75 recorded for them vs Man City. This time, however, City seemed a much more assured unit and the 3-0 victory was no real indication of the gulf in class between the 2 on the night. In fact, if it had been a boxing match, the contest would have been stopped during the 2nd half. The snow did lead to a couple of stoppages as the groundstaff cleared some the snow from the lines, though judging by the halfway line, the man in question may have had more than a few pre-match pints of Boddingtons!

The other decent football wager on Saturday came for basement boys Wigan +0.5 vs Everton; a 1-1 draw sent the punter home happy but probably wasn’t really what The Latics needed as they battle to avoid dropping into the Championship.

Not much else to report on other than a £30k wager on Stephen Maguire to beat Judd Trump in his German Masters ¼ final match on Friday evening. Now I for one never really have Germany down as a hotbed of snooker, famous German snooker players hardly rolling off the tongue! This event appeared to be taking place in the Pot Schwarz club, with all the games going on simultaneously and no screens between the matches. In fact I am sure I saw Maguire come back to the table with 2 pints of Hoffmeister and a packet of crisps and Ronnie O’Sullivan putting a tenner through the fruit machine during the mid-session interval, though I couldn’t quite see the sliding scoreboard on the wall anywhere or dodgy cues hanging up on the rack.

However, back to the match and, though Trump led 3-1, 4-2 and 54-0 in the deciding frame, Maguire managed to pull a victory out of the fire. The local cameraman though is obviously far more used to covering ski jumping or something similar this time of year as when Trump sunk a crucial colour he was far more concerned about showing his cue action and we were left to guess if the ball went in or not!

Which leads on to this Sunday’s action and a cracking match at Punchestown between Sizing Europe and Big Zeb. Our punters sided with the latter and, although it was hard to tell if both were keeping something up their sleeves for Cheltenham in March, you couldn’t have been more impressed by Sizing Europe’s win. As I write this we are with Chelsea big style vs Man Utd, so hopefully Torres can find his scoring boots that he clearly left on Merseyside and we can have a decent end to the week.

Happy punting and catch you later.