England vs Sweden Betting Preview

England can qualify for the 2nd round of the World Cup as group winners with a draw against Sweden on Tuesday. England haven’t beaten Sweden in over 30 years, which makes the draw a very tempting bet at best odds 17/10 with VC Bet. England can be backed at best odds 6/4 with Bet 365, whilst Sweden are best odds 5/2 with Blue Square and Sporting Odds.

It seems that England get drawn alongside Sweden is every major football tournament, and in 2012 it was the first time England managed to beat Sweden in a major tournament for over 30 years. On that occasion, it was enough for England to qualify ahead of Sweden.

In the first goal scorer markets, Bet 365 have the following odds available on an England player scoring the first goal:

Owen 6/1
Crouch 7/1
Rooney 6/1
Lampard 9/1
Gerrard 10/1
Joe Cole 10/1
Beckham 14/1

With Wayne Rooney likely to return for England, many punters will be tempted by Bet 365’s price of 11/2 about Rooney being awarded the man of the match award. For all the latest betting previews ahead of key matches, make sure you visit the football betting section of our site that covers analysis, tips and odds.

Click here to view the best free bets for the World Cup

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England vs Paraguay Betting

England open their World Cup campaign against Paraguay, and are best odds 8/15 with Sporting Odds to start with a win. Bet 365 and Coral both offer 11/2 on a Paraguay win, whils the draw is available at best odds 13/5 with Sporting Odds.

In the first goalscorer market, Michael Owen is the strong favourite to open the scoring. The Newcastle striker is available at best odds 9/2 with Ladbrokes. Peter “Robot” Crouch is best odds 6/1 with VC Bet, whilst midfielders Frank Lamaprd and Steven Gerrard are both available at odds of around 7/1. For all your football betting requirements make sure you check out our football news section that covers betting tips, match previews and the lastest odds.

Bet 365 are running a man of the match betting market on the game. The odds are as follows:

Michael Owen 5/1
Peter Crouch 7/1
Steven Gerrard 7/1
Frank Lampard 7/1
David Beckham 8/1
Joe Cole 12/1
John Terry 20/1

England vs Paraguay special betting offers:

Have a bet on the First Goalscorer and if your player fails to score the first goal but scores at any other time in the match VCBet will give you a free bet to the same value on a match of your choice

Place a 1st Goalscorer Bet on any England match and if your player fails to score first but scores second, Sportingodds will refund your stake!

Paddy Power will refund all losing first/last goalscorer singles on England v Paraguay if Steven Gerrard scores the last goal of the game. For more promotional offers and free bets from bookmakers, check out the bookmaker index of our site.

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World Cup winners are bookies

Leading online bookmaker William Hill say the World Cup has smashed all betting records, “The tournament has produced the biggest betting turnover for any sporting event ever staged, with £1 billion gambled on the outcome’ said Hill’s spokesman Graham Sharpe.’This is double the previous record, gambled on Euro 2004, and was helped by a worldwide interest thanks to the internet.”

The tournament was very profitable for the bookies, largely due to the fact that the two heavily backed favourites England and Brazil were knocked out at the Quarter Final stage.
‘The two best backed countries were England – a huge patriotic gamble took place – and the hot favourites, Brazil,and when Portugal knocked England out they saved bookies from their biggest ever football payout of over £30 million, while the French win over Brazil confirmed that bookies would be coming out on top’

Eventual winners Italy could have been backed at odds of around 10/1 at the start of the tournament, and were not fancied by many punters. The last serious gamble of the World Cup was on Italy to beat France to lift the trophy and William Hill cut their odds from 4/5 to 8/11 after a string of huge bets, including one of £111,000 from a London-based businessman. It wasn’t all winning results for the bookies, though, and Hills paid one client £800,000 after he staked an accumulative bet on teams winning their first round Groups.

Bookmaker Paddy Power paid back over €1 million to their customers in refunded bets. The Irish online bookmaker refunded bets on certain games if a nominated player scored the last goal.

Blue Square must be one online bookmaker thankful that England were defeated, as they were refunding all losing World Cup bets had England won the tournament.

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African Cup of Nations betting preview

Outright tournament winner

The African Cup of Nations was first held in 1957. Since then it has always taken place between the 10th and 31st of January. In the first month of 2010 the 27th edition of the tournament will take place.  The qualification for this edition of the African Cup of Nations began in October 2007. Fifty three African National teams turned up, out of which only 16 nations have qualified to go to Angola, the country that will host the tournament.

The nation that has won the African Nation’s Cup the mostis Egypt, winning the tournament an overall of 6 times. Ghana and Cameroon have won the Cup four times each.  This year’s favourites are Ivory Cost at odds of 9/4 with Bet 365 – click here for £100 in free bets

In recent years the Ivory Cost team has gained quite the selection of players. Worldly renowned footballers from clubs like Barcelona, Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City. However, the team has had only one win dating to 1992. Since 1965 the Ivory Cost has appeared in 17 editions of the African Cup of Nations.

Other teams to lookout for this year are ever strong Egypt, Cameroon and Nigeria. Whilst Ivory Coast are a very strong team, we feel they are too short to back outright, and there may be some vaule in taking a chance on Nigeria at 8/1 with Paddy Power. Nigeria boast a strong squad packed with recognised Premier League players such as Jon Obi Mikkel, Obafemi Martins, Yakubu, Kanu, and Joseph Yobo to name but a few.

Click here to view all free bets from online bookmakers

African Nations betting news

The African Cup of Nations has now reached the Quarter Final stage, and Cameroon have been installed as the tournament favourites. Totesport offer the longest odds on Cameroon at just 9/4. Hosts Egypt are 2nd favourites at best price 3/1 with Blue square and Bet 365. The full Quarter Final draw is:

Cameroon vs Ivory Coast
Egypt vs Congo
Guinea vs Senegal
Nigeria vs Tunisia

The full prices for the tournament are:

Cameroon 9/4 Totesport
Egypt 3/1 Blue Square
Nigeria 7/1 Betfred
Tunisia 7/1 Total Bet
Senegal 9/1 Stan James
Ivory Coast 9/1 Total Bet
Guinea 14/1 Stan James
Congo 40/1 Sporting Odds

Cameroon Striker Samuel Eto’o is strong favourite to land the tournament Golden Boot ward, having made an impressive start to the tournament. He is currently best price 8/11 with Betfred to claim this honor.

For independent reviews of all bookmakers featured on this site, and a complete list of free bets and other promotional offers, click here

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Tote betting guide – how to place tote bets

Quite simply the tote is a pool of all the money bet from which winners are paid, similar to the way the National Lottery works. Totepool is a unique range of horseracing pool betting products offered by totesport online bookmakers. Whenever you visit any of the 59 racecourses in Britain you will see totepool betting windows. For many people on-course betting is their first introduction to betting and can add extra enjoyment to a great day at the races. You can get a free £10 bet when you place tote bets with Totesport.

There are many different totepool bets offering a range of fantastic betting opportunites. Below we explain how each tote pool bet works:

Tote Win:

totewin bet is the simplest off all tote pool bets. Simply pick the winning horse. This is very similar to a fixed odds bet, except tote win pays more than starting price odds 62% of the time, meaning it is usually more profitable to place a tote win bet than traditional “SP”.

Tote Place:

Pick a horse to be placed in the race. Minimum bet £2.Your selections needs to be placed as follows:
Up to 4 runners ? no place betting 5 ?7 runners ?1st & 2nd 8+ runners ? 1st, 2nd & 3rd
Handicap 16+ runners ? 1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th

Tote Eachway: A very popular way of betting, this is simply a totewin bet and a toteplace bet on the same horse. Minimum total stake £4.

Tote Scoop 6:

Pick at least one horse in the six nominated televised races each Saturday. Get all six winners to scoop a potentially massive dividend AND qualify for a big money bonus. Even finding a placed horse in every race pays an average dividend of over £500 to a £1 stake. Use a totescoop6 play slip to place your bet. Minimum spend £2 per line.

Tote Placepot:

This is racing’s favourite bet ? and it couldn’t be simpler! Just pick a horse to be placed in each of the six toteplacepot races (normally the first six races on the card). You can choose more than one horse in any of the races to increase your chances of winning. Use a toteplacepot play slip to place your bet. Minimum total spend £2.

Tote Jackpot: Pick the winners of the six totejackpot races at the nominated totejackpot meeting each day. Not easy ? but the potential rewards are huge! You can choose more than one horse in any of the races to increase your chances of winning. Use a toteplacepot play slip to place your bet. Minimum total spend £2.

Tote Quadpot: Another popular bet ?especially if you’ve missed the start of the toteplacepot or it has fallen by the wayside before the 3rd race. As before, just pick a horse to be placed in each of the four totequadpot races which are normally races 3, 4, 5 and 6. Use a totequadpot play slip to place your bet. Minimum total spend £1.

tote Exacta: Pick the horses to finish 1st & 2nd in the correct order. Try a reverse toteexacta or a combination toteexacta to increase your chances. This is obviously more difficult than just picking the winner, but the rewards are potentially much greater! Minimum total spend £2.

Tote Trifecta: Pick the horses to finish 1st, 2nd & 3rd in the correct order in a totetrifecta race. Get this right and you could win big!  Minimum total spend £2.

Sign up to Totesport and get a free £10 bet.

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VC Bet launch Poker Betting!

Victor Chandler, the leading online gaming company offering sportsbook, casino and poker, have added another game to their games site. Poker betting is the latest revelation, a game based on Texas Hold’em but instead of playing a hand of poker, you bet on which of the six hands is going to win. So if you love playing Poker and you love having a bet, PokerBet will be right up your street. It’s quick and easy to play and makes the perfect addition when you’re playing at the VC Poker tables waiting for your turn

Although poker enthusiats may feel that the fixed odds element of poker takes away the skill, they are still urged to give the game a try, as it is more skillful and much more fun than they might think.

With online poker becoming such a popular game, VC are one of only a handful of companies to try and bridge the gap between sports betting and online multi player texas hol’em.

Poker Betting is also a nice game for newcomers to online poker to learn the basics of texas hold’em. VC Bet have increased their new player sign up bonus to coincide with the launch of Poker Betting. VC Bet now offer all new customers a free £20 bet when they bet £20. To qualify for this great offer click here.

To find out more about Victor Chandler, and read independent reviews of VC Bet, VC Casino and VC Poker click on the links below:

VC Bet Review – click here

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Useful Web Directories

Free directory listing at Search4i.com under Sports category

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Cricket Betting

Cricket betting is extremely popular with online bookmakers because the lead can change back and forth numerous times during a game. Cricket betting offers a number of excellent betting opportunities due to the number of variable when betting on cricket, such as numerous different locations on various types of wicket.

There are a huge variety of cricket betting markets available, form top batsman, top bowler, outright winner of a match or series. When it comes to betting on cricket, we rate Stan James the number one bookmaker. Stan James offer numerous cricket betting markets including Test Cricket, The Ashes, Twenty Twenty Cup, and the Cheltenham & Gloucester Cup. Cricket betting allows you to bet on just one game, or an entire series.

Odds on cricket make the sport very competitive when it comes to betting. Online bookmakers often find punters have the upper hand when it comes to cricket betting due to the unpredictability of the sport.

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U.S. Golf Open betting preview

Tiger Woods is unsurprisingly the 6/1 best odds favourite at 6/1 with Betfred to win the U.S. Open. Tiger has described the course, Winged Foot in Mamorenek , New York  as “the toughest members course I have ever seen”. The last time a PGA event was held here back in 1997, when Davis Love emerged victorious. He can be backed at best odds of 50/1 with Blue Square to repeat this feature.

European player’s have an awful record in this event, the last European winner was back in 1969 in the shape of Tony Jacklin. With this in mind it is not surprising to see a number of top European players at long odds in the betting market. Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington can all be backed respectively at best odds 28/1, 40/1 and 50/1 with either VC Bet or Sporting Odds.

2013 US Open golf odds

Due to the poor performance of European players in this event, Americans such as Phil Mickleson are attracting a lot of support at best odds 7/1 with Ladbrokes and Bet 365. Top players from the rest of the world Vijay Singh and Retief Goosen are available at best odds 14/1 and 20/1 respectively with Stan James.

Skybet have offered a special market, betting without Woods and Mickleson. Without the two favourites, Tim Clark could be an interesting each-way bet at odds of 28/1. The South African has some impressive Major results over the past three seasons, including the 2003 PGA Championships where he finished 3rd, and his 2nd in the US Masters earlier this year. With Sky Bet offering 5 places on this market, it looks a cracking each-way bet.

Read more about golf betting online in our golf betting section which provides previews of all major tournaments, expert betting tips and of course the latest free bet offers from bookmakers.

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