The Perfect Punter: Chapter Four - Know all the factors, reap all the rewards

The Perfect Punter / Perfect Punter / 26 August 2009 / Leave a Comment

The temperature at the Artemio Franchi was an energy-sapping 34 degrees as Siena hosted AC Milan but it was Ronaldinho's performance that really turned up the heat on the home side.

"To Gianluca Vialli the goals at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome always seemed smaller to him than elsewhere, whereas the ones at Highbury always seemed larger than the usual."

The Perfect Punter travels to Siena to watch them host AC Milan in the opening day of the Serie A season and learns that the closer to the action you can get, the better you are prepared to bet on any given sporting event.

Siena on Saturday night was quite a place to be. Serie A rarely starts in August, as the Italian weather at this time of year screams words like vacanze and gelato, and certainly not calcio.

But next summer's World Cup means that the league got underway two weeks earlier than usual, and that the tiny Artemio Franchi stadium just on the edge of town was full of people who wished they hadn't worn that extra layer. The temperature in Tuscany was in the 40s all day, and clocked at 34 just before kick off. I've covered Serie A for ten years now, and punted on it for nearly as long, and this was exactly the sort of game that I would have had an armchair bet on.

I'd be armed with as much knowledge that I could possibly gather, but no research that I could do would possibly compare with what I gained from actually being in the stadium. I'd have known that it was hot, but not how searingly hot.

I'd have known that Siena had a great home record, without understanding just how much noise 15,000 fans could make in this strange little valley of a stadium and I'd have gone into the game thinking that Milan were vulnerable with Ronaldinho as playmaker. But the moment that I saw him at the team hotel, I would have realised that he had lost his excess weight, and looked bright eyed and ready for the challenge.

Those three factors all contributed massively to the outcome of the match. The heat kept the score down as players wilted late on. The crowd kept Siena in the game after Milan opened the scoring. And Ronaldinho was man of the match by a million miles. And yet I'm not sure that I would have picked up on their significance if I had been commentating on the match from a studio in England or just watching on TV. It was my little road to Damascus moment: from now on, every time that I have a bet on a football match, I would try and place myself pitchside and consider every possible angle.

Now, I'm not suggesting for a moment that you have to attend every football match that you punt on, or that you employ people at every ground to shout "danger, danger!" into a mobile phone every time the ball goes near the goal. But I am saying that, when we bet on football, we're often guilty of not getting as many angles as we possibly can.

A proper punter wouldn't think of placing a bet on a horse race without knowing the going, nor would they gamble on cricket without having a clue about the weather or the pitch. I follow James Eastham's French football tips on betting.betfair.com pretty much religiously, and make money as a result, but after betting on the "overs" in the Le Mans v Nancy match on Saturday night, it dawned on me that I had no idea about the conditions in Le Mans. It could have been pouring with rain, blowing a gale, the Le Mans midfield could all have been hungover for all I know. As it happened, the bet came in, and James kept up his usual excellent record, but as I sat there and punched the air when I saw the result, I couldn't help but feel that there was just a little bit too much luck involved.

One of my most significant gambling lessons came before the Cheltenham Gold Cup two years ago: I interviewed Graham Cunningham of Timeform Radio, of betting.betfair.com, and of many others, and asked him who he thought would win the race.

What Graham did wasn't to give me a tip, but to describe in passionate detail how he saw the race unfolding. He described Denman taking an early lead, winding up the pace and then breaking Kauto Star's heart on the second circuit. And he was right, almost disturbingly so. What Graham does, like many excellent tipsters, is read the way that the race will unfold and come to a conclusion having taken every single piece of information on board.

We have to apply that sort of rigour to every single bet that we have if this Perfect Punter conceit is going to work. Collate as much information as you can about the ground where the game is being played, check the weather conditions, the length of the grass, the way that games are normally shaped when these teams meet.

And read players' opinions about the grounds. Gianluca Vialli once said that, because of the running track around the pitch, the goals at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome always seemed smaller to him than elsewhere, whereas the ones at Highbury always seemed larger than the usual. If you went into battle with that information, then you'd never have taken a short price on Vialli to score against Roma or Lazio. And the information is all there if you look hard enough. Use every resource possible to ensure that, when the whistle goes to start a game of football, you are as near to sitting in the stadium as you possibly can be without physically being there. Because if you don't, you'll be relying too much on luck, and in the long term it will be goodnight Siena. Or something like that.

You can follow the Perfect Punter on Twitter and get betting angles, advice to take on board or ignore, and share any betting information that you want. With reference to today's article, if you read something that you think will make a difference and will help us to be closer to the action, then share it with the rest of us, and help us all feel like we're sitting pitchside, armed with all that we need. Go to www.twitter.com/perfectpunter and get involved.