I was reading yesterday about Joey Barton's 18 month FA ban for his
dodgy football bets. Here's a flavour of some of the bets that got him into trouble:
A couple of things struck me about the whole sorry affair. First, I would have expected the bets to be larger than this. Although some of them are for a few hundred quid, the majority are for pretty small amounts, down to a couple of quid in some cases. I mean, if you're going to risk your career for this sort of thing, you might as well make it worthwhile, surely?
The second thing - and the point that I really took away from this story - is that Joey Barton has got to be one of the most inept gamblers in the world. Even with (presumably) some inside knowledge, his winnings in the period above were Β£5 from nearly Β£2,000 staked! At first I wondered if this was some sort of tax loss thing, but I think he's actually just
really, really bad at betting on football. They must really love him on the betting exchanges!