Important TellyBetting Announcement

I am very pleased to announce a new poster on this blog - see below.

Zoomraker is one of the United Kingdom's foremost TV betting experts who also takes the highly analytical approach to his TellyBetting with highly profitable results.

This is a real honour for this site and I am hoping his superior knowledge of statistical analysis will open new doors for us all.

Surely The Most Dodgy Poll Of 2009

This is why I am trying to ignore all Internet polls (except the occasional Digital Spy poll) when TV betting!

Talk about rigged. This is just an embarrassing attempt.

How reliable are Youtube views?

I thought I would repost this for the benefit of people who joined the blog recently.

Recently, I have been wondering about the validity of Youtube as a pointer to a persons popularity while betting on TV shows. Although it is good,I have suspected it was easily manipulated - much like a lot of internet polls. However, I don't believe people are doing it yet, although that may change on reading this!

This is the tool to do it. It is relatively slow, but left on overnight it could play havoc with view numbers on certain videos.



Is it wrong to mislead people in order to win cash?

I am seriously thinking of having a go with this in the next year. Don't say you weren't warned!

Christmas Top Rated TV Show 2008 [Edit]

This is a market I enjoy betting on, if mainly for the fact that every year people try to construct an argument why Eastenders won't win it and then Eastenders wins it!

First up, the graph on the left shows viewing share per channel. This in my opinion narrows it down to BBC1 shows only - goodbye Coronation Street and Dancing On Ice.

This leaves us realistically with Eastenders, Doctor Who, Strictly Come Dancing: Christmas Special and The Royle Family.

Doctor Who is a dark horse and came close last year - missing out by less than a million. I think it will come second this year and is possibly worth a cover bet. Strictly Come Dancing never attracts big, big audiences with it's 'specials' and is worth a lay on Betfair.

The Royle Family is second favourite in the betting. I think it is on 1/2 hour too late and possibly it is a show whose time has passed and is no longer attractive to all and sundry. Another lay.

This leaves us with 'Enders. It has topped four out of the last five years (Vicar of Dibley being exception) and suspect it will top again. The odds are not brilliant but good enough. Try to use a company which lumps both shows as one (eg Betfair).

EDIT

Christmas Day 2008 Overnight Ratings

1 …. 14.3 (53.3%) …. Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (20:30) BBC1
2 …. 11.7 (50.5%) …. Doctor Who (18:00) BBC1
3 …. 11.5 (44.9%) …. EastEnders (21:00) BBC1
4 …. 10.0 (41.7%) …. The Royle Family (21:30) BBC1
5 …. 9.9 (40.6%) …. EastEnders (20:00) BBC1
6 …. 9.5 (47.1%) …. BBC News (17:45) BBC1
7 …. 8.6 (35.0%) …. Strictly Come Dancing Christmas Special 2008 (19:00) BBC1
8 …. 7.4 (30.0%) …. Coronation Street (19:00) ITV
9 …. 7.2 (39.8%) …. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (16:30) BBC1
10 … 6.4 (42.6%) …. The Queen (15:00)

Well done to Wallace and Gromit backers who backed the clay northerner at 14-1. A very comfortable win with a massive amunt of viewers. I didn't take into account the competing shows enough and paid the price. Annoying but hey, thats bettting. Incidentially, the odds on Eastenders also shifted inwards a lot and by Christmas Eve represented very poor value and probably a lay at around 1.39 on Betfair.

The First Commandment: Expect the Unexpected

Reality TV is about two things - Ratings and Money. It is not like sport which has rigid rules and a level playing field. This is crucial to understand. The more the entertaining the show, the more viewers. Viewers will not switch on to Big Brother to watch the house getting along swimmingly - they want conflict and lots of it. Failing that, they want love, lust and hopefully, sex! So the shows will often swing a lot - especially on commercial channels.

So as gamblers how can we use it? The first thing is protect yourself against the 'Black Swan' that if occurs will wipe you out (or give your betting bank a bloody nose). Looking closely at the shows and trying and predict how things will pan out is normally good but you will miss things - being late to things is usually as bad due to the market having shifted - you can't sit in front of Big Brother for twenty hours a day (unless you are a student).

So the point is to not leave yourself overexposed on a single possibility - no matter how unlikely. If Manchester United go a goal down at home, laying 1-0 at 1000-1 is sensible because it won't happen due to very fixed rules. It TV betting it may happen at a producers whim - Nikki Graham re-entering the house, for example. Recently, the phone vote scandals and crackdowns have seen a reduction of these spontaneous and random rule changes that cost the viewers money but it still can and does happen.

Laying Sylvia to go as third eviction of Big Brother, as someone did last summer at 1000-1 cost someone badly - fine if you have £100,000 in your account but risky if you have £2000.

Diana Vickers getting Laryngitis is another good example of how fickle fate can be to the gambler. It killed her chances stone dead.

So in summary, if possible, prepare for anything.

The Ten Commandments Of TV Betting

I thought it would be nice to put together a list of rules that if followed should give us the best chance of winning on TV show betting. Once created, I intend to keep the rules in a prominent place in the sidebar to constantly remind us what to do and what not to do.

Ten rules should be enough, although we may need less. Please leave your suggestions below as you will no doubt have other ideas which work well for you. A lot of the rules will apply to general gambling as well.

One rule, I will ignore is below is:

'Don't publish your betting research on the web and give away your edge.'

First Commandment coming soon!

Merry Christmas

As Noddy Holder once said:

'Ittttttttt's Chrrrrrrrrrrrristmas.'

I would like take this opportunity to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Enough of the niceties. I am not happy about the lack of a live feed on Celebrity Big Brother this year. I suspect it will be more unpredictable than ever - but from a betting point of view it's good, I suppose. It is becoming even more acceptable to be as outrageous as possible in order to gain notoriety and as a result, cash.

As an aside, I intend to start my TellyDatabase in the next few weeks. It will be a page(s) with relevant data for all TV betting shows. It should help betting on these shows enormously.

Merry Christmas

This would be nice on your desktop!

Harvest Media is the company behind the voting on most of our TellyBetting shows. The website is as expected but it does show a screenshot of the software that handles the phone votes. You could make some serious cash with that installed and working.

Interesting results

That's why I love TV betting, the unpredictability. Laura was a big shock to go at the time, although on reflection her performance was very poor. A lot of the contestants were very weak, especially Rachel who was probably saved by her mauling from the judges. Daniel, JLS and Eoghan were the only ones who were any good in my opinion.

Strictly Come Dancing was less surprising. Heather finally got put out of her misery losing to Rachel in a dance-off - confirming my view that Rachel isn't very popular. I suspect next week will be Operation Get John Out, we shall see.

Not too bad a weekend for myself. X Factor was poor, neither Rachel or Alexandra made the bottom two netting two losers there. However, JLS looked good and confirmed my belief they will make the final. I suspect Eoghan's internet traffic may rise in the next few weeks - we will spot it here first.

However, the two big bets of the weekend were better. Heather to get over 26.5 scraped in (Boylesports moved the line to over 27.5 later on friday - do they read TellyBetting?) with a 27, but hey, they all count.

Rachel Stevens to be bottom two was also a big winner. I had some 8/1 earlier in the week (see below) and some 20/1 last night as a top-up.

Finally, Jodie Kidd. She was terrible last night. I don't know what happened. The fact she was not in the final two having danced second and scored so lowly suggests she may be quite popular after all. Maybe, it will be a good bet after all - although I will probably trade out of it on Betfair in a week or so.

Hope you did well. I am aware I have not been analysing past results enough in order to predict the markets better, I will get onto it this week.

Mixed results

A funny weekend.

Strictly Come Dancing continues to be the easier show to read, although Craig's harsh scoring nearly cost me large when Rachel scraped past 31.5. The laying of Lisa and Christine was also easy money. Andrew scraping by was annoying especially as the 6-1 for him to go was looking a good bet.

X Factor was also annoying despite predicting Rachel's odds drop. I hope you got in and out as recommended. Daniel probably deserved to stay but I am uncomfortable about his morals in so flagrantly using his wife's passing to stay in (although I predicted it may happen - using Unchained Melody though)

Still, profit is profit.

X Factor betting aids

An important tool in X Factor betting is looking at the official X Factor website 1 hour before the show starts. This will tell you who is singing what song and allow you to hazard a guess at how the contestants will do.

Unless you are directly involved with the show or know someone who is, you won't get better information for betting on.

Strictly Come Dancing has the informative It Takes Two which gives a decent preview of the upcoming dances along with a judges opinion on it. This is in my opinion, essential if you want to make big, consistent money on Specials betting.

We will explore more complex ways to get ahead in the coming months.