If you are an avid soccer bettor then you will no doubt have looked through a multitude of online soccer betting websites to see what services are available. Frankly, it’s hard to avoid misleading terms like “sure bet,” “banker,” “certified dead,” or “guaranteed winner.” Many tipsters embed these terms into the URL of their sites in hopes of increasing signups. As a bettor and tipster, this frustrates me enormously. Without opening the cans of worms that are the laws of mathematics and statistics, the simple indisputable fact is that there is no such thing as a sure result in football or sport. If there were a dead certainty outcome, there would be no bookies in business to hedge our bets. Sometimes I read the few introductory paragraphs that insist that the professional tipster has a unique secret method of picking guaranteed winners. I think it should be illegal to make such misleading claims.

After more than 20 years of trials and tribulations as a football or ‘soccer’ bettor, I can categorically tell you that the whole notion of a dead certificate is not only false, but is itself a contradiction. If the outcome of a particular soccer match were a guarantee, surely there would be no need for teams to fight for ninety minutes. Furthermore, the bookies would be clinically insane to hedge bets on a game whose outcome was certain. I realize I’m possibly joking in my last few sentences, but it’s scary how many reasonably intelligent people will believe anything written in print by a so-called ‘expert’.

When I started providing advice to the public through my website, I added a ‘Bankers Section’ every week. Now the idea of ​​this section was to suggest that after hours of research and analysis of various games, I really couldn’t see any other outcome than say a home win. If a banker’s section game had a surprising result, you would suffer as both an informer and a bettor. Sure enough, it made my tipping skills seem incompetent to some of my members, not to mention that I personally would have placed a sizeable bet on the game as well. There are still two games on my mind and they bring back uncomfortable memories.

April 10, 2010, Scottish Cup: Glasgow Celtic 0 – 2 Ross County.

Premier League giants Celtic were unceremoniously knocked out of the cup by First Division side Ross County, completing one of the biggest upsets in Scottish football history. Many football combination or multi-bets were subsequently broken in disgust by outraged punters.

February 21, 2010, Dutch League: PSV Eindhoven 1 – 1 Sparta Rotterdam.

This game was priced as low as 1.09 by the bookies for a home win, such was the “certainty” of the result. PSV had won eleven straight league games in Eindhoven and were facing a Sparta side who had already lost twelve of their away games that season, and who were also relegated. Adding insult to injury, Sparta scored the equalizer three minutes into stoppage time.

Big annoying results like these obviously ruin accumulators, but more significantly they highlight the fact that you can never be sure of the outcome of a football bet.