Become a professional gambler?”
“Come on, this is too early to talk about it. This is only one bet! When I get home, I’m going to see the odds and use my intuition. Oh God, please… If I am same lucky again, in a month I’m gonna be a millionaire!”
“H… How is that??”
“Look, my balance increased by 10 times today, and I started with £10. Now I have £100, okay? Next week I’m gonna win £1,000, and in two weeks it’s gonna be 10,000! In four weeks I will have £1,000,000 if everything goes fine. But this is in theory only.”
“This would be amazing,” said Mike after a moment of silence. “I’d wish to have such money-making ideas too…”
“Don’t worry, Mike, your old buddy will help you,” smiled John.
Last corner kick
The following month John spent all evenings and nights checking odds, reading statistics, players’ and football managers’ interviews. Many times when Mike saw him, John was either smoking in a backyard or watching football with his earphones on. “What are you listening to?” asked Mike once just to have a chat with John since he started to worry about him. “It’s trance, best DJ’s compilations,” replied John, showing that it is the end of the conversation but Mike wasn’t leaving.
“C’mon, please, one more corner, please…” murmured John.
“What are you watching?”
“It’s a match I found online on this bookie website. They accept in-play bets during the match so I checked them and decided to bet on a total number of corners in the match. They seem to have lots of corners – the match is intense, attacking football, and the pitch looks relatively small,” replied John with a concerned face. “It’s the 93rd minute, the match is about to end, and I need one more corner, please…” said John.
Mike joined him and started to watch too.
“Did you say ‘size of the pitch’? How is that related to a number of corner kicks?” asked he.
“Well, this is my theory only but it works well. Since the size is smaller, it takes less time to get from one box to another and earn a corner kick. It also depends on the character of the game so I need to spend some time watching the match to see if it’s worthwhile,” replied John.
“How much is your stake?” asked Mike after a while.
“£44, it’s a half of my current balance. My tactic is to bet half of my balance every time, just for safety so you keep your balance active as long as possible. The odd is about 5, which is cool for such game, I think. They had 5 corners in the first half, and another five by 60th minute – so I decided to bet that there will be more than 16 corners in the match since usually, the teams in such intense games tend to earn more corner kicks in the last 10 minutes of matches.”
“Look, look!” exclaimed Mike impatiently. Attacking team was approaching the opponents’ box. Striker shot on goal but the ball was blocked by a defender. The ball bounced from the defender and crossed the goal line.
“Corner! It’s a bloody corner!!!” exclaimed John and smiled. “Ref is giving a corner kick! Yeah!!!”
A player who was now going to take the corner kick placed the ball and raised his hand to signal his teammates. At this moment, the referee whistled for the end of the match.
“Cool, man! Let’s have a tea!” said John happily. “Would you like some tea, Mike?”
“Yes, sure!”
“Great! Where are my cigarettes…?”
They had few sandwiches, made tea, and went out to the backyard garden where John liked to smoke.
The same evening John got a message from bookie saying that as soon as the last corner kick wasn’t taken, it is not counted in the match statistics, so his bet lost.
Moving to another flat
October was approaching so John and Mike had to make payment to a landlord. Mike needed to talk about it with John who never delayed any payments due. It is why he was very happy to see John when he entered his room.
“May I? Look, we have to pay rent soon; here is my part, but… I am afraid next month I am moving to…”
“Why? How are your bets going? You didn’t make money?” asked Mike, starting to worry.
“No. The things did not go so well. I tried everything, but the things went crazy. It’s like a spell on me, I don’t know. I did everything according to statistics and match expectations, but I always needed either one more goal scored or one more corner taken. All shit like that. I decided to stop,” said John sadly. “It was a nice try anyway.”
“Sure, John. You will make it, I feel it.”
“Thanks, mate. We’ll see. Maybe some day… I am planning to place small bets, just for fun and experience. Listen, I am sorry for causing these troubles you’re gonna have – you know, finding a new roommate etc – but now I cannot afford £500 per month to rent a room.”
“I see.” sighed Mike. “Come on; tell me, how bad is your situation? I can lend some money…”
“No-no, it’s all right.”
In fact, John’s situation was pretty bad now. He lost not only the money he won at the beginning but also a significant part of his savings. Now, he had only about £1,000 which would let him survive for a couple of months if he finds a cheaper room, plus he was expecting to get back his £750 security deposit from a landlord. He had 6 months remaining till the graduation, so his budget was pretty tight now.
“Okay, man, let’s have some tea. We did not talk lately; I saw you were busy and nervous, so I kept leaving you alone. By the way, Darren also asked me why you changed recently, and I said you are busy with your studies.”
For a tea, they had milk, toasts, jam and chocolate cream. That was their usual ration.
“Sometimes I was so close to winning big money. Sometimes even up to £100,000. I made double, triple, four-fold, and even fourteen-fold bets sometimes. And every time there was one bet or two bets which lost. Damn, I started to feel the matches are fixed!” said John desperately.
“Fixed? It’s against the law, isn’t it??”
“Yes, it is, but it doesn’t mean there are no fixed matches, right? Remember few cases in Italy when Juventus and Milan were relegated for fixing matches? Or in Turkey? Some clubs were fined in Turkey for fixing their matches! And I am sure there are many small clubs which fixed their matches too, but they are not on the news.”
“Are you sure??”
“Well, not really sure but I have a feeling that there is something which looks like if some matches were fixed. If I feel the match is not fixed, almost all my bets win. But sometimes match goes just the opposite way I expect, and I can’t explain why. For example, when we play in Saturday League, the matches are pretty clear and simple, right? I just dream they allow us to make bets on those matches! You can see which team is stronger and whether it can win. Usually stronger team wins more corner kicks and gets less yellow and red cards. I checked our games we had – they all are in line with my theory. Well, maybe I made mistakes in my predictions a couple of times, but when I bet with bookies, results were catastrophic!”
“Well,