There's a solution for everything!

Before leaving money at a bookmaker’s office, you need to think carefully and consult with your friends. And then rejoice if you are lucky. (Photo by Pavel Gorshkov )

I made my first mistake before the start of the championship. I set it to England. It was rated equally throughout Moscow; the English's chances of winning the European title were estimated at 1:10. By the way, the bookmakers of our capital in this case were no different from, say, the famous British William Hill: they accepted exactly the same bets on compatriots. Of course, two hundred rubles could have been spent more wisely, but passion is stronger than common sense. The achievement in this field of one of my colleagues, a passionate player, was all the more fresh in my memory. Last December, five months before the UEFA Cup final, he bet the same amount on Galatasaray and not only was he known as a visionary, but he also returned his money with odds of 30. However, blindly believing in the British, I violated the golden rule - when assessing the chances of teams, one must forget about one’s own fan attachments. Or at least not try to combine them with mercantile interests. We must act calmly so that the grief over the failure of our favorites is not aggravated by the loss of our blood.

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This is not a problem now. Not to say that there are bookmakers on every corner, but those that exist are more than enough. There are those who huddle in tiny, shabby rooms or in the foyers of cinemas. You drop in, place a bet and go home to watch the fate of your invested money. There are places equipped with a dozen television screens. There, sitting more or less comfortably with a glass of beer, you can, in the company of the same happiness seekers, watch several matches going on simultaneously. At the beginning of spring, I had the opportunity to watch all four (!) Champions League quarterfinals at once in such an office. The most amazing thing is that all the games were remembered.

That's not what father was for
In general, having gone all-in once, I began to act smarter. A bet on the outcome of a tournament is the most risky; it is much safer to take a single match, especially with the participation of a clear favorite. The payments, of course, are small, but a bird in the hands is already something. True, a person experienced in gambling (for money) treats the word “knowledgeable” with a certain skepticism.

First, the Germans and the same British failed, although when they scored the first two goals against the Portuguese, I, along with a company of the same Anglophiles, began to rub my hands contentedly. As a result, I had to wipe my forehead. Disillusioned with the giants of European football, he switched to the Yugoslav brothers. They shouldn’t have let us down in the duel with the “younger brothers” - the Slovenians. But with the score 0:3, I could only restrain myself so as not to go beyond the normative vocabulary, and even the further exploits of Milosevic and the company did not calm my soul - I was betting on victory. I don’t even want to talk about the Spaniards, given how mediocre Norway played in the match against them, but the team of the would-be experimenter Camacho looked even worse.

When a fair amount of money floated out of the bookmaker's window irrevocably, a moment came that was known to almost every player - a desire arose to return everything at once.

This is called "express". The bet is placed on the results of several matches at once (you can also bet on the “1st half match” ratio, guess which team will score the first goal, etc.). In this case, the winning odds are multiplied. As the players say, “the express will arrive,” you can “take it big.” In one bookmaker's office, a printout of a unique winning in an "express" hangs as bait. Some guy in April of this year, apparently out of his mind, went and bet on the outcome of all 13 (!) matches of one game day of the NBA championship. It must be said that overseas championships, whether basketball or hockey, are treacherous things - outsiders there often “bite” the favorites. And here are 13 matches! The devil's dozen brought this lucky guy more than 50 thousand rubles per hundred invested. Needless to say, every player is confident that something similar will happen to him someday. They say that once a month, apparently on payday, a certain Moscow taxi driver comes to the office where this “bait” is displayed and “charges” a hundred (the minimum possible rate) for the entire “line” (this is the name of the list of dozens of sporting events , on which bets are accepted). I also hoped to hit the jackpot. Until a certain point, or rather, until the money ran out. This coincided exactly with the end of the group tournament.

Byaki "buki"
Bookmakers say that by how a person plays, whether he easily succumbs to general opinion, and whether he often changes his decisions, you can tell a lot about his character.

Those employees who determine betting odds in bookmakers are required to understand all types of sports without exception. They are guided not only by statistical calculations and their own ideas about the capabilities of the competition participants. If, say, the vast majority of players bet on one of the opponents, they quickly reduce the odds.

How do bookmakers live? Firstly, the percentage of bets. The basic payout coefficient for the victory of one of the parties is 1.8, that is, 18 rubles with a bet of 10. If two people bet 10 rubles on different outcomes of one match, then the office will pay the winner 18 rubles of winnings, and in any case will keep two for themselves. There is also the so-called “halves” rule. Often, when the teams are approximately equal, those playing at home deliberately underestimate the real result by a handicap of “-1” or “-0.5” of goals scored. This means that in the event of a draw, whoever bet on the home team lost. And the one who is on the guests just returned his bet one to one. Or, conversely, the team wins at home - 1:0, the goal is taken away, then its fans simply receive a refund of their bet, and those who risked for the guests leave with their noses. Due to this difference, profit is obtained.

From the tribe of the unconquered
In less than two weeks of the championship, I managed to make many friends (unfortunately) and compile an impressive list of enemies who swaggered over us on the green fields of Belgium and the Netherlands. It includes the Italian referee Collina, who awarded a fictitious penalty against the Czechs and deprived them of a well-deserved draw against the Dutch, the Frenchman Vessier, who similarly abused the Yugoslavs in the match with Spain, his compatriot forward Dugarry, who was supposed to score three goals against the Netherlands national team , but managed to do it only once, and many others. All these people robbed me of my honestly earned money. They are unlikely to repent. Oddly enough, I’m not too sad either.

In the middle of our century, the Dutch philosopher Joseph Huizinge, who wrote the book “Homo ludens” (it was published in our country in the early 90s), tried to prove that culture develops in and through play. That the game is older than culture, and Homo ludens, the man who plays, is no less important than Homo faber, the man who creates: “We play and we know that we are playing, which means that we are more than rational beings, for play is an extra-rational activity.” It's damn nice to feel like a creature that can overcome the shackles of the mind.

Moreover, the payday is coming soon, and the next Grand Slam tournament has begun on the courts of Wimbledon. I usually have better luck with tennis than with football.