uh ohhh! my tired eyes :) <SloVice> welcome and thanks.

while waiting for the next salvo, may we hear victory speech (and their betting strategy secrets - optional) from the top ten winners of 2012 Winter Leg please? :-)

1. Never bet on draws
2. Bet to win on any GM paying 7 to 1 or more
3. Play a bunch of pick 3's, especially longshots

<I found it interesting it was very easy to find value in open tournaments. Especially with the pick-3. So it wasn't too hard to grind a profit. But those won't close 20 or 30k gaps. Sure, sometimes you hit hard and make a 7k profit or something - but those are few and far between.

So instead over the course of this 11-round Open Tournament I did some tries to get a larger chunk of cash in. And I noticed something very odd.

Odds. Barely. Settle.

You'd assume people look at the pick-3 and see something like 3:1 for the DDD option, and think 'I like the DDD, but no way there is value with only 3:1'. And they'd be right. Instead, there is a steady cashflow to high-probability outcomes with terrible odds. Which perhaps I should have expected as there is a lot of value in p-3 in any case. This also goes, for a lesser extend, for normal bets. Either people pay really poor attention to odds, or they overvalue draws by a lot.

Which leads to the following conclusion:

It's quite do-able to find value. It's easy to get a lot of money in. It's almost impossible to get a lot of money in with any value whatsoever.>

--

Yes I would. I will bet on any GM where the odds are 7 to 1 or greater. Greater in the sense of paying more. I will not bet on a GM at 5 to 1 or less. And maybe, just maybe, I'll make an exception for 6 to 1.

I treat the pick three without regards to my straight bets. Sometimes on a straight bet I'll bet on white and in the pick three I'll bet on black.

Yeah, I do pick-3 seperate as well. Pick-3 often functions as a nice safety net.

Tata Steel

Total Wager: 1,318,484
# of bets: 110
Average per bet: 11,986

---

Winners
Total Wager: 73,410
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 18,352

---

Round 1
Total Wager: 46,930
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 5,866

---

Round 2
Total Wager: 73,940
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 9,242

---

Round 3
Total Wager: 69,425
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 8,678

---

Round 4
Total Wager: 92,579
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 11,572

---

Round 5
Total Wager: 108,439
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 13,554

---

Round 6
Total Wager: 58,171
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 7,271

---

Round 7
Total Wager: 84,636
# of bets: 7
Average per bet: 12,090

---

Round 8
Total Wager: 100,744
# of bets: 9
Average per bet: 11,193

---

Round 9
Total Wager: 151,573
# of bets: 9
Average per bet: 16,841

---

Round 10
Total Wager: 160,192
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 20,024

---

Round 11
Total Wager: 117,691
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 14,711

---

Round 12
Total Wager: 70,423
# of bets: 9
Average per bet: 7,824

---

Round 13
Total Wager: 92,692
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 11,586

=================

Gibraltar
Total Wager: 123,035
# of bets: 25
Average per bet: 4,921

---

Round 7
Total Wager: 33,192
# of bets: 7
Average per bet: 4,741

---

Round 8
Total Wager: 44,300
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 5,537

---

Round 9
Total Wager: 45,543
# of bets: 10
Average per bet: 4,554

---

Round 10
Total Wager: 27,431
# of bets: 8
Average per bet: 3,428

================

Aeroflot
Total Wager: 469,175
# of bets: 44
Average per bet: 10,663

---

Winners
Total Wager: 13,815
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 13,815

---

Round 2
Total Wager: 10,813
# of bets: 7
Average per bet: 1,545

---

Round 3
Total Wager: 29,984
# of bets: 7
Average per bet: 4,281

---

Round 4
Total Wager: 21,159
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 5,290

---

Round 5
Total Wager: 38,275
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 9,569

---

Round 6
Total Wager: 51,306
# of bets: 5
Average per bet: 10,261

---

Round 7
Total Wager: 127,453
# of bets: 6
Average per bet: 21,242

---

Round 8
Total Wager: 76,242
# of bets: 6
Average per bet: 12,707

---

Round 9
Total Wager: 100,128
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 25,032

=================

Petrov Memorial
Total Wager: 26,744
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 26,744

---

Winners
Total Wager: 26,744
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 26,744
__________________________

Polish Championship
Total Wager: 36,110
# of bets: 7
Average per bet: 5,159

---

Round 8
Total Wager: 20,640
# of bets: 3
Average per bet: 6,680

---

Round 9
Total Wager: 15,470
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 3,868
_________________________

Reykjavik Open
Total Wager: 38,184
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 38,184

---

Winners
Total Wager: 38,184
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 38,184

____________________________

Mecking-Granda Match
Total Wager: 41,577
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 41,577

---

Winners
Total Wager: 41,577
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 41,577
____________________________

European Women Championship
Total Wager: 37,889
# of bets: 23
Average per bet: 1,648

---

Round 7
Total Wager: 16,566
# of bets: 5
Average per bet: 3,313

---

Round 8
Total Wager: 5,387
# of bets: 6
Average per bet: 898

---

Round 9
Total Wager: 3,147
# of bets: 3
Average per bet: 1,049

---

Round 10
Total Wager: 12,235
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 3,059

---

European Individual Championship
Total Wager: 537,177
# of bets: 51
Average per bet: 10,531

---

Winners
Total Wager: 18,468
# of bets: 1
Average per bet: 18,648

---

Round 1
Total Wager: 15,313
# of bets: 3
Average per bet: 5,104

---

Round 2
Total Wager: 32,571
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 8,142

---

Round 3
Total Wager: 13,080
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 3,270

---

Round 4
Total Wager: 32,557
# of bets: 7
Average per bet: 4,651

---

Round 5
Total Wager: 43,056
# of bets: 5
Average per bet: 8,611

---

Round 6
Total Wager: 16,811
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 4,202

---

Round 7
Total Wager: 94,642
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 23,661

---

Round 8
Total Wager: 60,189
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 15,047

---

Round 9
Total Wager: 82,064
# of bets: 4
Average per bet: 20,516

---

Round 10
Total Wager: 76,128
# of bets: 5
Average per bet: 15,226

---

Round 11
Total Wager: 52,586
# of bets: 6
Average per bet: 8,764

===

Leg
Total Wager: 2,655,584
# of bets: 267
Average per bet: 9,946

Aronian vs Kramnik: WINNER - Who will win: Aronian, Kramnik, or will it be tied at 6 games?

Aronian vs Kramnik: RAPIDS? - The GMs promised that if any game ends up being a short (under 3 hour) draw, they will play a rapid game purely for the spectator's entertainment! This bet is a proposition bet: will this actually occur, or not? Bet "YES" if you think they'll end up having a short draw and being obligated to play rapid-chess, or "NO" if you think it just won't happen.

Macias - Felgaer 1-0
Almedina - Bruzon 0-1

http://chess-results.com/tnr70665.a...

# User Net Worth

1. tesasembiring 1,683
2. Natalia Pogonina 1,142
3. gunsan 1,064
4. technical draw 1,034
5. gauer 1,012

I just put up round #4 of the Ibero-American tournament when it dawned on me that the games were already over. Apparently rounds 3 and 4 both took place today. No problem, I refunded all of the round 4 bets. Moving right along, here are the round 5 bets:

IV Ibero-American Rd 5: Edgardo Almedina Ortiz-Andres Rodriguez Vila

IV Ibero-American Rd 5: Lazaro Bruzon-Byran Macias Murillo

IV Ibero-American Rd 5: Ruben Felgaer-Rafael Prasca Sosa

Round 6 on 2012/04/21 at 10:00

<An Over/Under total chess bet: The final Total of Chesspieces on the Board (or TCB) for each player after the match.> We've done over/under bets with the number of moves but never with the remaining pieces.

A concern is that occasionally it's a little unclear whether the final move of a game was actually played or not. You see that when somebody resigns in "mid move", e.g. imagine one GM reaching out to play Rxg7+ and the other GM looking in horror at the combination he overlooked. The victim immediately resigns before the fatal blow is administered. One GM has 35.Rxg7+ written on his scoresheet, the other writes 35.0-1 and stomps off in a huff. Stranger things have happened.

Over 8.5 @ 1.83 Anand. That is, over 8 chesspieces (for Anand, white or black) on the board after the first World Chess Championship 2012 game, odds @ 1.83 for Anand.