Читать книгу Rise of London Gambler. Second edition - Serik Jumanov - Страница 8

The following month John spent all evenings and nights checking odds, reading statistics, players’ and football managers’ interviews. Many times when Mike saw him, John was either smoking in a backyard or watching football with his earphones on. “What are you listening to?” asked Mike once just to have a chat with John since he started to worry about him. “It’s trance, best DJ’s compilations,” replied John, showing that it is the end of the conversation but Mike wasn’t leaving.

“C’mon, please, one more corner, please…” murmured John.

“What are you watching?”

“It’s a match I found online on this bookie website. They accept in-play bets during the match so I checked them and decided to bet on a total number of corners in the match. They seem to have lots of corners – the match is intense, attacking football, and the pitch looks relatively small,” replied John with a concerned face. “It’s the 93rd minute, the match is about to end, and I need one more corner, please…” said John.

Mike joined him and started to watch too.

“Did you say ‘size of the pitch’? How is that related to a number of corner kicks?” asked he.

“Well, this is my theory only but it works well. Since the size is smaller, it takes less time to get from one box to another and earn a corner kick. It also depends on the character of the game so I need to spend some time watching the match to see if it’s worthwhile,” replied John.

“How much is your stake?” asked Mike after a while.

“£44, it’s a half of my current balance. My tactic is to bet half of my balance every time, just for safety so you keep your balance active as long as possible. The odd is about 5, which is cool for such game, I think. They had 5 corners in the first half, and another five by 60th minute – so I decided to bet that there will be more than 16 corners in the match since usually, the teams in such intense games tend to earn more corner kicks in the last 10 minutes of matches.”

“Look, look!” exclaimed Mike impatiently. Attacking team was approaching the opponents’ box. Striker shot on goal but the ball was blocked by a defender. The ball bounced from the defender and crossed the goal line.

“Corner! It’s a bloody corner!!!” exclaimed John and smiled. “Ref is giving a corner kick! Yeah!!!”

A player who was now going to take the corner kick placed the ball and raised his hand to signal his teammates. At this moment, the referee whistled for the end of the match.

“Cool, man! Let’s have a tea!” said John happily. “Would you like some tea, Mike?”

“Yes, sure!”

“Great! Where are my cigarettes…?”

They had few sandwiches, made tea, and went out to the backyard garden where John liked to smoke.

The same evening John got a message from bookie saying that as soon as the last corner kick wasn’t taken, it is not counted in the match statistics, so his bet lost.