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LM ballot places becoming even harder to come by: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68918984

(I've had one ballot place from about 9 entries.)

Grown Men Crying Day (Part League One first).

Luckily Fleetwood are currently doing enough to keep us up.

Rather than going to an away game (Judge: What exactly is a Port Vale?) I'll go and be a plastic at Craven Cottage instead.

Is reading that book going to make me want to be a gambler? I find the maths fascinating but have a bit of an addictive personality so have never laid a bet and don't want to start. I'd love to understand it though

I had a long running interest in maths and read the book around the time I started doing an OU maths degree so it was perfectly timed. After working through loads of stuff and modelling it on years and years of previous data I found there was a small bit of money to be made, but the risk was huge, too big for me wanting to have stability for me and my family.

If anything it reinforced the idea that to win at gambling you either have to spot something no-one has (which is very unlikely) or just be lucky.

Same author has written some more up to date books, I've never read any of them though.

Padel.

Passtime for cunts.

(Those election date odds add up to 109.2% which means there's a considerable amount of uncertainty in them. A rough rule of thumb is that the higher the overround the less sure of the relative probabilities the setter of the odds are.)

For example, take West Ham v Liverpool tomorrow.

Ladbrokes are offering 24/5, 18/5, 1/2 on West Ham, Draw, Liverpool respectively.

In decimal odds those are (24/5)+1 = 7.25, (18/5)+1 = 3.6, (1/2)+1 = 1.5

From there you can calculate the percentage chances: 100/7.25 = 13.8%, 100/3.6 = 27.8%, 100/1.5 = 66.7% (all to 1dp).

Now if you add them up you get 13.8% + 27.8% + 66.7% = 108.3%

That 8.3% helps ensure the bookies make a profit long term (even if they lose out on an individual event). In reality they offload most of the risk (trading with other bookies, betfair, etc) so that they pretty much guarantee that they'll make 1-2% regardless of the outcome of event.

Back in the early days of online betting you could often find bookies trying to compete with each other, and you'd find them offering better odds on different outcomes, such that you could spread a stake across multiple bookies on the different results and guarantee a profit. This is known as an arbitrage (or an arb for short).

For example, if most bookies were offering similar odds to the above but one bookie priced a West Ham win at 35/4 (so decimal odds of 9.75) the West Ham percentage is now 10.26% and the total percentages would add up to 98.7%. You could then bet a nominal £100 stake split as:

• West Ham - £10.40 at 35/4 (decimal 9.75)
  
• Draw - £22.03 at 18/5 (decimal 4.6)
  
• Liverpool - £67.57 at 1/2 (decimal 1.5)
  
  

In all 3 cases you stand to win > £100 (your total stake). Only about £1.36 extra, but it's still a 1.36% profit on a single bet. Try finding a 1.36% guaranteed return in a single afternoon.

You'd sometimes find the arbs as good as 95%, which were a big payday. If you had £10000 to stake you'd earn £500 guaranteed "risk-free"* profit.

For a while, back in the early 2000s I made a good chunk of money each weekend doing this, but it didn't last long as I quickly got blacklisted from most of the local bookies, and the online bookies, plus it was a lot of work and a lot of stress (especially if the odds shortened before you'd laid all three bets). The outlier bets were usually only available to walk in customers in bookies, which meant a lot of traipsing around on a Saturday lunchtime.

The bookies eventually got wise to these and checked each others odds a lot more carefully which has pretty much eradicated the arb. The "odds boost" things do occasionally make it possible though.

After that I moved on to value betting as described in the bible of the time: https://www.waterstones.com/book/fixed-odds-sports-betting/joseph-buchdahl/9781843440192

That worked for a while (probably only ~£200 profit a weekend from a £5000 total stake) but was way riskier as a bunch of shit results could wipe you out. At least most of it could be done online and was less likely to trip the online bookies "betting system" alarms. I stopped because the margins were getting squeezed more and more and I could easily see gambling seriously fucking up my life so I stopped completely.

(Like most gambling things, I reckon the author of that book probably made more money writing about it and selling books than he did from the gambling itself. C'est la vie.)

#csb

You can switch most to decimal odds, which are a bit easier to understand.

They don't display percentages as then you'll work out that all of the options add up to way more than 100% which is one reason they make their money (it's called the overround).

Probably a better way but you could just do something like this from a cmd prompt:-

cd /D D:
dir /B /S | find "Final images"

Brenda from Bristol isn't going to happy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6-IQAdFU3w

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/1­43186741

Dream until your D reams come true.

No-one really talks about doing the quintuple though.

The thing about taxes is that you've got to hold and give, but do it at the right time.

Not very powerful engine either. Only 1hp.

I'm beginning to think that having three hundred military horses roaming round central London daily might have some H&S issues

Of course it will. But it'll be much less of an H&S issue than hundreds of thousands of cars on the roads daily.

And many only wear those shoes because of sponsorship.

(Too many people would spot if they did what some cricketers do. Which is have their bats made by an independent bat manufacturer and then get their sponsors branding put on them.)

I'd try and go for WQHD (2560x1440) over standard HD (1920x1080). There's a considerable difference in screen real estate (an extra 75%).

https://www.scan.co.uk/shop/computer-hardware/monitors/101/336/2308#t18.f15=2560x1440%2520(WQHD) has a 27" Cooler Master one for £140. No experience of this monitor myself. 100Hz refresh rate is good. HDMI/DP should be easy to connect to both with the right cables.

Today only deal though...(I trust Scan, have spent thousands with them over the years.)

Who would want to live in a house whilst the basement was being dug out from underneath them? Is that really worth £5k?

Unless the flat/house above is a leasehold and it's the freeholder that is selling this...

TW have attempted to repair a leak across the road from me about 12 times now. Another down the road has been done at least 4 times.

Usually seems fine for about 3 days before the botched repair saturates the surrounding ground and then the leak appears again.

And it's likely to be an RAF base and even RAF planes: https://www.forces.net/services/raf/defence-secretary-hints-raf-could-be-used-rwanda-deportation-flights

RwandAir (the national airline) declined the request to provide the planes for the flights.

He’s got me doing c25k and it’s pretty annoying and shit.

I did it coming back from an ankle fracture. Recommended by the physio. Definitely helped keep me from doing too much too soon, so whilst it did feel like it was annoying/shit at times it was better than a possible overuse injury setting me back.

Random things are random. I've had about 9 rejections for London but I did get a place one time.

I've done Brighton twice but each time I've spent £££ on a nice hotel. The first time I stayed both the nights before and after the marathon and was able to make good use of the pool/spa/etc at the hotel after the race, and then travel home comfortably by train the next day. The second time I only stayed the night before, and ended up standing on the packed train the whole way back to London.

My BiL has since moved right next to the start so I'd stay with him if I did it again. Meanwhile it's so much easier for me to get to/from the London Marathon on the day so I'll always try and get a place there.

My goal is, as always, to get in to good enough shape to actually "run" more than 30km of a marathon. Whether that ever happens or not is another matter.

London Marathon Ballot open: https://www.tcslondonmarathon.com/enter/how-to-enter/the-ballot-explained

It's fine. One thing that's fun about this thread is the people that really don't "get it" and post anything they kind of disagree with in here.

It's very telling.

I have one of these at home: https://www.office-furniture-direct.co.uk/dynamic-sitall-visitor-stool

Took me a few weeks to build up my core strength in order to sit on it for ~8h a day but I got there in the end.

Exactly.

Utterly amazing that the rewrite algorithm didn't have some of those test cases TWITTER.COM, blahtwitter.com, foo.twitter.com.example.com, etc).