I don’t believe so. Spread betting companies are regulated by the FSA (or whatever they call it these days) in the same way as merchant banks, stockbrokers and so on. Regular bookies are not.
I wonder if he’ll lend me his time travel machine 
30p? Grow some cojones, Mick, and have a fiver on at least! 
Would a bookie take a bet of £200 on a 1,000,000:1 shot?
A chap I play tennis with quit his day-job a couple of years ago, and now is a full-time internet gambler.
He’s done OK - paid off the mortgage within 2 yrs! He bets on football and cricket, although American Football is his biggest earner.
He never touches golf or horseracing though - says they are too “unpredicatble” (which is shorthand for utterly rigged).
My favourite “crazy wager” story is this one:
Is it legal to bet on just anything in Nevada? There might be a reason why the bookies there only do sports.
I find Mick’s staking plan difficult to comprehend.
In 1999 he wins a reported £157K for an outlay of £2.50. With this in the kitty he can only bring himself to risk 30 pence the following year. Whatever happened in between he can’t have gambled the money away at those levels of investment.
Why do the gods always seem to smile on the shop owner?
Betting shops are horrible and they seem to be multiplying in these parts. Fast food joints, pubs and bookies are the only shops that thrive in my town!
No it’s not. For example there is no betting permitted on any game in which a Nevada university is a participant. (You might wonder of course what purpose is serrrved by newspapers publishing the “line” on those games.)
Many times you will see articles like “Nevada oddsmakers make Elizabeth Taylor (well not lately, of course) the favorite to take home this year"s Oscar.” I think those are just for fun. I don’t think it is legal in Nevada to place a bet on anything where the outcome might be known in advance (someone has to type up those little cards in the envelopes.)
So if you live in the US but not in Nevada, there is simply no way to legally bet on the outcome of, say, a sporting event? There must be a lot of people who would like to bet on things. Is illegal betting widespread? [ETA] And if so, who are the bookies?
Illegal betting is a multi-billion dollar industry in the US. The bookies are also known as your friendly local criminals.
That said, there are legal sportsbooks outside Nevada. Several Indian casinos run them, for example. And lots of states have horse racing – in New York, there are state-owned “off-track betting” stores that let you bet on the ponies without actually going to the track.
Right. So presumably they don’t have premises. Is it all done over the phone, in alleyways, in bars?
To be fair, and as Szlater alluded to, bookies will normally only take small stakes on these whopping accumulators. Also, a lot of bookies have a maximum payout in the small print (often £100,000), so it would be a waste of money to stake more, as your winnings could not get any higher!
I’m surprised the bookies paid out the full winnings from 30p at 1.6 million to 1… but I suppose it’s all good publicity for them.
Personally I steer clear of the bookies and their ridiculous overrounds, and do all my betting on Betfair. Apart from offering much better odds most of the time, they also offer most sports markets “in-play” so you can hedge your bets and trade your position, just like on the stock market.
E.g. let’s say you’ve had a bet on Team A to win a football match. They’re underdogs, and you put £10 on at 5/1 with a conventional bookie. Midway through the first half they go a goal up. You’re praying for them to hang on so you can collect, but despite valiant defending, their opponents equalise with 5 minutes to go and the match ends 1-1. You swear, lob an empty beer can at the telly and throw away your betting slip.
Let’s say, instead, you backed them on Betfair. First off, you’d probably have got closer to 6/1. But the best part is, you can sell your bet at a lower price after they score. 1-0 up after half an hour, they might be trading at 3/2 instead, so you can sell your stake back and keep a free bet on the team in the lead. At the moment your position is:
Team A: +£60
Team B: -£10
Draw: -£10
so by laying £10 at 3/2 (for a £15 loss) you’d now have £45 profit on Team A and no loss on the other results:
Team A: +£45
Team B: +/-£0
Draw: +/-£0
Now, as they hold on to their lead, their price gradually drops. After 80 minutes, they’re trading at 1/2 (i.e. 2/1 on). You’re watching the match and it looks like their opponents might grab a late goal, so you sacrifice a bit of your profit so you can actually win MORE on the draw, as Team A are now odds-on favourites. You lay, say, £40 at 1/2 (for a £20 loss), and you now have:
Team A: +£25
Team B: +£40
Draw: +£40
All from a £10 stake. Now you watch the equaliser go in, crack open another beer and collect 40 quid. If they don’t score, you still win £20, and if Team B score a second you also win 40. Neat, huh?
(Of course, if Team B scores first, you’re still screwed, but less screwed than you would be if you placed the bet elsewhere, because you could still lay a little bit to level your losses out, and maybe lose £8 instead of £10.)
Yep.
See, this is where puritanism gets you…billions of government funds lost through not being able to legally tax bookies, billions spent by law enforcement having to track down and prosecute illegal betting operations and billions of money going to organised crime.
William Hill doesn’t send people round to break your legs, the Chancellor gets his money and the orgnaised criminals don’t get (as much) money. Better living through legalised gambling!
Betting is certainly bigger and more visible in the U.K. than the U.S., but the Aussies are way ahead of the Brits when it comes to the amount of money spent on gambling. The CEO of Internet bookmaker Sportingbet Plc said in October that Australians spend about 5.5% of gross domestic product on betting, versus about 1.5% in the U.K.
Perhaps you misunderstood me, by “them” I meant Rochdale FC.
FWIW they are playing crap at the moment, another £10 to the bookies 
Are they still called ‘Turf Accountants’ in the UK?
That used to make me chuckle.
Yes.
It baffled me as a kid, I couldn’t understand why there was a need to count grass.