QPR V Wigan: Sunday six-pointer for these relegation candidates

"A bet on Both Teams To Score would've paid out in five of QPR's last half a dozen outings, and five of Wigan's last seven Premier League away games."

Jonno Turner previews the action down at Loftus Road, as both of these sides aim to improve their chances of Premier League survival with a win in this Sunday afternoon kick off...

We're off to West London to check out the best bets as QPR host Wigan Athletic - in what is a huge clash for both sides.

As far as relegation six-pointers go, they don't come much bigger than this - with the hosts looking increasingly likely to be kicking off next season in the second tier.

Harry Redknapp's side have suffered unforgivable defeats at the hands of Aston Villa and Fulham in their last two games, and are now a whopping seven points from safety with just seven left to play.

The home side will be without winger Shaun Wright-Phillips, who has undergone ankle surgery this week, but other than that it appears that 'Arry has a full complement to choose from.

Todays opponents Wigan Athletic are the side that Redknapp's charges will need to catch - which suggests that anything other than a win here will all but condemn the R's to the drop.

The Latics travel south full of confidence having won five of their last six, and, incredibly, it appears that Roberto Martinez is likely to engineer another miraculous last-ditch survival.

A 1-0 win at home to Norwich last week was a huge result for the DW Stadium side, and, with an extra game to play compared to many of their rivals down the bottom, todays visitors will be desperate to leave Loftus Road with a positive result.

And the away boss will be boosted by the fitness of Callum McManaman, who was withdrawn at half time last weekend due to an ankle injury, but has been passed to play against QPR.

Over 2.5 goals

With both sides desperate for the points in this clash, I have a hunch that we'll see goals - and Over 2.5 goals is available at 1.875/6.

A flutter on that market would have paid out in five of QPR's last six outings, and with 11 goals notched in their last five games, it is clear that it is not a lack of quality in the final third which has been the home side's achilles heel of late.

'Arry is not the most cautious of managers at the best of times, but with this game being a case of 'do or die', I think we will see the R's come flying out of the traps on their own patch.

And though results have not been satisfactory in the last couple of games, Rangers have mustered a whopping 21 shots on goal, which suggests that they are capable of carving out chances.

A look at the visitors' recent results shows that the Latics faithful have also been getting their moneys worth of late.

Backing Over 2.5 goals would have sent you home with a smile on your face in eight of their last nine games, and that is also testament to the open nature of how Martinez likes his side to line up - especially at the DW Stadium.

Both Teams To Score

With an end to end clash in the pipeline, I reckon that, though short, the BTTS market is well worth a look pre-match.

It's no secret that QPR harbour some real quality in their squad - but even so, they are always likely to ship a goal or two, as shown in recent weeks.

Christopher Samba came in for a lot of stick last week following a disastrous performance against Fulham, and he will be looking to make amends in this clash, but I still think that the visitors have the attacking threat to put their hosts on the back foot.

A bet on this market would've paid out in five of QPR's last half a dozen outings, and five of Wigan's last seven Premier League away games.

The Latics have not been involved in a goalless draw since February 2012, and that is a telling statistic, especially as QPR have shipped a massive 14 goals in six outings of late.

It is 1.674/6 for these sides to notch at least one each, and that's well worth a back.

Wigan DRAW NO BET

QPR go into this game priced as favourites - and with just two wins from their last 10 outings, and one win from nine at Loftus Road, I am struggling to see the value in backing that.

Yes - Redknapp's side desperately need to take maximum points from this clash, but Wigan are not a side you'd want to play at this stage in the season, and with forward Arouna Koné in impressive form having notched his 10th goal of the season against Norwich, the Latics are always likely to pose a threat.

Wigan are a tempting 3.259/4 to take maximum points from this clash, and I think that there is real value in that bet - but for the more cautious amongst us, the 2.265/4 on Wigan DRAW NO BET, with added insurance should the game end in a stalemate, could tick a box.

Recommended Bets

Over 2.5 goals @ 1.875/6
Both Teams To Score @ 1.674/6
Wigan DRAW NO BET @ 2.285/4

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These Jokers Are Ruining the Game!

Poker News / Short-Stacked Shamus / 25 March 2011 / Leave a Comment

"To play poker with a joker is a lower-class game."

Such was the lesson taught to young John Lukacs by his mother in Hungary in the 1930s. Lukacs tells of his early poker-playing days in a 1963 essay titled "Poker and American Character."

The family played what Lukacs calls "classic draw poker" with no wild cards, although occasionally they would discard the lower cards (playing with less than a standard 52-card deck), thereby increasing the likelihood of making higher hands. In any event, the rejection of wild cards, coupled with his mother's "superciliously" objecting to their inclusion, revealed to Lukacs "a slight but appreciable class difference between the several varieties of the game."

In the essay Lukacs goes on to relate the experience of his first coming to America in his early 20s (in 1946) where he'd become a professor of history and embark upon a lengthy academic career which would see him author dozens of books on a variety of subjects.

"I had many illusions about the United States," Lukacs says of his earlier self, adding how "these illusions included poker." Like many, Lukacs saw poker as somehow emblematic of American culture. He recalls hearing a radio broadcast during the second world war profiling General Dwight Eisenhower (later to become president) that reported how he liked to play poker.

"This piece of precious intelligence about the new Supreme Allied Commander filled us with great joy and hope," writes Lukacs. "A poker-playing general, we agreed, would be a general with nonchalance and dash and that loose-limbed, easygoing, natural elegance of action characteristic of Americans." In other words, knowing that Eisenhower played poker seemed to endorse further his capability to lead.

Hearing that also further reinforced for Lukacs that strong connection between the game and America, "the fatherland of poker... the classic country of poker, where everybody plays poker." Whatever life in the U.S. would be like, thought Lukacs, one thing was certain. There would be poker.

Cut to 1963. Lukacs, writing his essay about "Poker and American Character," is forced to admit that poker as he imagined it being played was, in fact, one of those "illusions about the United States" that proved less than accurate. People were playing a card game that involved betting and calling it poker, all right. But to Lukacs the game wasn't really poker at all, "its relationship to poker [being] about as distant as that of General Lee's horse, Traveller, to Eisenhower's bubble-top limousine -- no; to his electric golf cart."

What was the problem? Wild cards. Jokers, gleefully grinning from the cards' surface as though mocking the "classic" game Lukacs once played.

According to Lukacs, every time he joined a game he was almost always forced to endure these non-traditional, wild card variants. "In seventeen years," he complains, "I have been able to organize a classic, or draw, poker game but once. At best, I have been able to compromise, on a one-sixth or one-seventh basis, meaning that when we play dealer's choice, I choose five-card draw on my turn."

Lukacs goes on to explain his predilection, his argument implicitly reprising his mother's earlier statement about "lower-class" forms of poker. By introducing wild cards, he points out, "the human factor is weakened and the factor of chance is correspondingly increased." In other words, skill becomes less important, and luck more so. "It becomes a gambling game," says Lukacs.

But there's more going on here than just a degrading of the game, argues the historian. "In this development I see reflected the erosion of the American national character," says Lukacs, connecting the rise of wild card games with a "gross inflation of values," "a form of immaturity," and a "strange kind of grown-up disorderliness covering up what is fundamentally an adolescent attitude."

It's a provocative argument which certainly seems to ring true in some respects. By increasing the importance of luck in poker and decreasing the skill component -- making it more of a "gambling game" -- Lukacs believes it becomes a much less worthy or defensible pursuit, perhaps less "adult" and more "adolescent" or childish. And since for him poker is so intimately connected with America, such a development doesn't speak well for the national character.

Here Lukacs sounds a great deal like the character of Mr. Brush in James Thurber's hilarious poker-themed short story "Everything Is Wild." First published in 1932 in The New Yorker, the story presents an irritable Brush being dragged by his wife to a dinner party that eventually evolves into a poker game involving three couples.

Like Lukacs, Brush is a strict proponent of "classic draw poker," and thus couldn't be more miserable when the others propose "adolescent," wild-card games like Duck-in-the-Pond, Poison Ivy, and seven-card stud with twos and threes wild. When Mrs. Spear announces the latter game, "the women all gave little excited screams," adding considerably to Brush's despair.

Brush gets his revenge, however. After calling straight draw poker on his first turn, he has an inspiration the next time around. "We'll play Soap-in-Your-Eye this time," he says, adding that "Out West they call it Kick-in-the-Pants." What follows is a side-splittingly funny -- and utterly incoherent -- hand of poker in which "red queens, the fours, fives, sixes, and eights are wild" and other murky instructions about betting rules cause utter confusion for everyone but Brush.

In the end, the three players remaining in the hand all make royal flushes, "but mine is spades, and is high" explains Brush to poor Mrs. Spear, since by her calling his bet he was awarded the right to name his suit. The story ends with Mrs. Brush telling her husband he is a "terrible person," her reprimand having little effect on his good mood.

Like Lukacs, Brush saw the degradation of the game with wild cards as representing "a form of immaturity," an unseemly (perhaps "lower-class") activity he couldn't bear to endure. You can almost imagine the conservative-minded Brush, faced with the prospect of having to sit with adults and play such childish games, crying out the story's title -- "Everything Is Wild" -- as not just a reference to the games the others are calling but a complaint about the culture as a whole deteriorating in much the way Lukacs is describing.

It would be interesting to know what Lukacs thinks of games that have become popular since he wrote his essay -- games like no-limit Texas hold'em, pot-limit Omaha, or the various poker tournaments with structures that perhaps tip the balance toward luck and away from skill. And how those games might reflect upon the character of those who play them.

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Only punters fear Tiger Woods these days...

Tiger Woods / Ralph Ellis / 01 February 2011 / Leave a Comment

Tiger pictured not enjoying himself during the final round of the Farmers Insurance Open

"The only people scared of Tiger now appear to be punters. How else do you explain that, after a year without winning a tournament, he’s already been installed as favourite for every single Major of 2011?"

Tiger's turmoil continued on the weekend with a 44th place finish at a venue, Torrey Pines, where he was previously impregnable. And yet he is still odds on for a major win in 2011, says a shocked Ralph Ellis

On holiday in Spain I once found myself playing what must have been the world's only 13 hole golf course. Unlucky in more ways than one. It wasn't meant to be that way. It had been built, snaking through beautiful orange groves, with 18 challenging holes surrounded by luxury villas.

Sadly for the people who had moved there with promises of a golden retirement the money for maintenance ran out, the developers disappeared, and the only solution had been to leave some of the greens to go wild.

If they are still there, the remaining residents can feel proud of that this morning - or at least compared to the first ever Tiger Woods-designed golfing centre in Dubai. There, it appears, only six holes have been completed on what was meant to be a 1.1billion dollar development. Word is that not only are they abandoning the rest of the plan, but will stop watering what has been built. In six months the desert will take over again.

That's bad news for the people who had already put down deposits to secure the mansions which were designed to overlook the fairways. But it just about sums up how the world of Woods has come crashing down in little more than 12 months since that early hours car accident which blew open the whole charade of his private life.

It seems he's been in therapy, both for his life and his golf swing, ever since. And so far nothing seems to have halted the decline either off or on the course. He's even more surly than ever, this weekend even refusing to answer straightforward questions about his schedule. And after finishing tied in 44th place in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines there's no sign of his ability to win coming back either.

The man who once intimidated everyone who found themselves drawn to play him was even put in the shade by Venezuala's rising star Jhonattan Vegas.

The only people scared of Tiger now appear to be punters. How else do you explain that, after a year without winning a tournament, he's already been installed as favourite for every single Major of 2011? All logic says that's a bargain chance to lay him, and also to take the near even money [1.95] on offer in Betfair's Tiger Specials market for him to win no Majors at all.

Amazingly he's as short as [5.9] for The Masters, while the man who has taken over as world number one Lee Westwood is [15.0]. Last year's winner Phil Mickelson is nearly twice the price at [10.0]. Paul Casey, who picked up his first trophy of the season by calmly holing an eight foot putt on the last in Bahrain, is [34.0].

All the evidence says the Tiger era is over. Sadly his reality is that, just like that unfinished development in the Dubai desert, he doesn't appear capable any longer of putting more than six good holes together.

Five things you might not know about Jhonattan Vegas
1. Born in the Venezualan capital of Maturin in August 1984, dad Carlos and mum Mauritza did the catering on a nine-hole golf course built for American oil workers.
2. He was four years old when his grandfather taught him to play the game using a broomstick and a rock
3. He left home aged 17 to seek his fortune in North America - his father forbade him from attending a baseball game for fear he would be trampled by the crowds
4. He won a golf scholarship to the University of Texas where a local property developer Dick Kemp became his legal guardian to help subsidise his progress. Kemp has now taken the same role for Jhonattan's younger brother Julio who also plays golf at the University
5. He spoke only ten words of English when first moving to America, but has completed his university degree in Kinesiology, the science of human movement

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