Formbook: horse racing and sports blog

Have you worked out who’s going to win the World Cup yet? Argentina have overtaken Brazil as favourites with Sporting Index, and pushed England in to third place. If you’re looking for a slightly different bet, check out the World Cup markets at Sporting Index. We’ve taken a look at some of their prices (see preview below) - new clients can claim a big free bet:

£200 World Cup Bet for New Clients

Open a Sporting Index account*, place five sports bets (each with the potential to win and lose £20) and claim a free £200 per goal bet on any live World Cup match.**

*Credit and suitability checks, **terms and conditions apply. See site for further details about an account with Sporting Index. Sports spread betting involves a high level of risk and you can lose more than your original stake. It is not suitable for everyone so please ensure that you understand the risks involved and only bet with money you can afford to lose. For full details of these offers, and apply for your Sporting Index account, click here

World Cup - Outright Winner

Unlike a fixed-odds Outright Winner bet, with Sporting Index you can still make money even if a team fails to progress beyond the last sixteen. At the time of writing, their prices for some of the top teams are:

Argentina   50 - 53
Brazil      47 - 50
England     38 - 41
Germany     36 - 39
Spain       34 - 37
Italy       29 - 32
Holland     28 - 31
Portugal    23 - 26
Ukraine     18 - 21
Sweden      17 - 19
France      18 - 21

Points are awarded for how far a team progresses:

Winner = 100pts, Runner-Up = 75pts, Losing Semi-Finalists = 50pts, Losing Quarter-Finalists = 25pts, Last 16 = 10pts, All Others = 0pts.

To bet on this market, you bet high or low depending on whether you think a team will do well or badly.

How it all works

For example, let’s say you want to bet on England’s chances in the World Cup. You have a choice to make:

Will England get more than 41 points (ie reach the semi-finals),

OR

Will England get less than 38 points (ie no further than the quarter-finals)

Let’s assume you think that we’ve not seen England’s full potential yet, and you want to back them to progress. In this case, you would bet high at 41 points, for a stake of eg £2 per point.

If you’re right, and England lose in the final, they would be awarded 75 points. As you bet high at 41 points, you would win (75 - 41) x £2 = 34 x £2 = £68.

Clearly, you would win even more if England earn 100 points by lifting the trophy: (100 - 41) x £2 = 59 x £2 = £118.

If England just make it to the semi-finals, then you’re still in the money as they would earn 50 points on this market. You would therefore win (50 - 41) x £2 = 9 x £2 = £18.

However, it can go the other way. Another key injury, or some bad decisions by Sven, and the team could be flying home early. If England fail to get past the quarter-finals, they would only earn 25 points. As you bet high at 41 points, you would lose (41 - 25) x £2 = 16 x £2 = £32.

Yellow Fever - how many more cards?

This tournament has seen a record number of yellow cards, as FIFA clamps down on a raft of measures. You can bet on bookings in a couple of ways with Sporting - either on a match, or the total for the whole tournament.

Match Bookings

So far, there’s been an average of approx 5.4 yellow cards per match. Interestingly, although the sample size is small, the matches involving Eastern European or African teams are averaging higher, at around 6 yellow cards per game.

Sporting Index award 10 points for a yellow card, and 25 points for a red card (max 35 points per player). So 5 yellow and 1 red card would be worth 75 points. This means that if there’s a match with plenty at stake and you think that both teams will really get stuck in, you would bet high on Sporting’s Bookings market.

E.g. Sporting Index quote 58 to 62 points, which is to say they think there will be 6 bookings. If you think it will be a “physical” match, then you would “bet high” at 62. Alternatively, anyone predicting a quiet day for the ref would “bet low” at 58. How much you win or lose depends on how right or wrong you are, as per the previous examples above.

So for Sunday’s match between England and Ecuador, bear in mind their form. England have picked up just 4 yellows in 3 matches, and Ecuador 6 so far. This would suggest a low number of bookings when they meet, compared to Portugal v Holland that evening. Both of these have picked up 9 cards each in their group matches, which suggests an average of 6 per match. With more at stake in the knock-out rounds, anyone betting high will hope for a repeat of the Ivory Coast v Serbia match - 7 yellows and 2 reds meant the bookings were worth 120 points!

Total Tournament Yellow Cards

At the start of this tournament, Sporting Index predicted the total number of yellow cards shown in all 64 matches was 270 to 280. As more and more have been dished out, this price has moved up and up, currently standing at 320 to 324 (205 cards shown after 40 matches). With 24 matches to go, there’s still plenty of time to take an interest in this market.

Hopefully that’s given you something to think about. For all the latest prices and to apply for your Sporting Index account, click here