Frequently Asked
Questions
1. Who
owns this website?
This website Smartgambler, our
horse racing website Pro-Punter
and our poker website The
Holdem Lounge are all owned by OZmium Pty
Ltd, a privately owned company based in Melbourne,
Australia.
For short profiles on the directors,
company
and contact details, visit our corporate website,
OZmium
2. What
is your main business? What do you do? 
OZmium provides mostly free information
services aimed at helping sports bettors and horse
racing punters to gain a statistical edge over the
bookmakers and become long term winning bettors. We
also provide all sorts of free betting aids like probability
calculators for various games and sports, tables showing
the best casino games to bet on, etc.
Over the years we have recruited handicappers
from all over the world to work for us in pursuit
of an edge in various types of sports betting. Handicappers
are judged by whether they can demonstrate an edge
against the bookies over a statistically meaningful
number of bets. The sports we provide handicapping
for change from time to time as a good handicapper
in a new sport becomes available, or one has to leave.
Our main corporate income streams are
from advertising, AFL package subscriptions and, most
importantly, bookmaker commissions. The latter are
achieved by referring punters to bookmakers that we
think offer a good service and offer attractive new
account bonuses and other periodic promotions to their
clients. The vast majority of punters who are referred
to bookmakers via links on our websites are just web
surfers making use of the information and betting
tools on our sites.
One of the incentives that we offer
visitors to open new bookmaker accounts via the links
on out sites, is to provide membership of selected
free
betting groups to people who open new bookie
accounts for which we get paid a commission.
3. Where
can I read about what each betting 'package' contains?
Just click on any betting group listed
on the Smartgambler home page and it will take you
to an information page.
4. If
you can get an edge over the bookies, why don't you
just bet on those sports yourselves instead of giving
out the plays?
We do. Several of our handicappers have
been, or are, big bettors, and our Managing Director
regularly bets on our selections in his favourite
sports.
Some of our handicappers though are
academics, who are motivated not so much by the gambling
aspect as by the intellectual challenge of beating
the bookmakers. For some of them it is part of their
academic research.
Betting, even with an edge, is still
gambling and many people have responsibilities that
are not suited to the cashflow vagaries of professional
gambling. It is actually not very surprising that
many handicappers market their expertise as well as,
or instead of, betting.
5. What
proof do I have that your handicappers really have
an edge? Can I see past results?
For all of our current betting groups
except AFL Football this is not an issue, as they
are free and you can monitor the results for nothing.
In our only subscription service, AFL
football, we don't rely on claimed past results because
we know it is not unusual for businesses in this industry
to fake them. One common technique is retro-fitting,
where a 'system' is created that would have won heavily
based on results that have already occurred. The past
results always look great of course, but future results
are unlikely to be as good the retro-fitted past ones.
Results supposedly monitored by 'independent'
proofing sites can also be suspect, as often there
is an undisclosed relationship between the handicapping
business and the proofing business, and we have found
that if the proofing site is genuinely independent
it will usually want to charge quite a bit for its
services.
We believe the best way to differentiate
ourselves from other services is our large number
of loyal clients. You are most welcome to ask to speak
to as many of these as you want. We have numerous
lawyers, doctors and so forth who have professional
reputations to maintain and whose identities can be
verified. You will be able to tell very easily that
these are genuine people. Many of them have made comments
in e-mails recorded in the testimonials
section and these are worth looking at.
6. Do
you give free trials of your AFL package?
Not any more. We used to and it definitely
wasn't worth the hassle. We attracted too many people
either with short term perspectives who needed money
immediately, or had no intention of ever joining,
or who passed on the information to all their friends.
We are pitching ourselves at the higher end of the
market, to serious or professional gamblers. Free
trials seem to attract too many people with the wrong
profile. If the price of our AFL package is too high
for someone to join on the basis of what they read
on our site, then they are probably not a big enough
bettor to make the investment worthwhile.
7. Why should
I join your service rather than one of the other handicapping
services on the web?
Most of our services are free. There
are a lot of bad or even dishonest handicapping services
and very few good ones. The industry has a pretty
poor reputation and deserves it. You can draw your
own conclusions about us from the following observations.
Integrity and service issues:
Our
Managing Director is contactable in person by e-mail
and telephone contact can be easily aranged. We are
not a fly by night, Gold Coast PO Box, type of company!
We answer e-mails promptly.
Our corporate details are transparent
and verifiable and can be found at ozmium.com.au
as can profiles on our directors and contractors.
Our handicappers are in many cases well
known and their credentials can be verified. Professor
Stephen Clarke and Professor Ray Stefani for instance
should be easily found by internet searches as they
both have internationally published academic papers.
Other experts connected with our business such as
Dr Tristan Barnett (Probability based attacks), Andrew
Scott (Blackjack), Nick Nicolaou, Joe Hachem and their
Card Academy team (Poker), all have profiles easily
verified by a search.
We are an open and honest company and
we are confident that if you speak to any of our betting
group members they will confirm this.
Accuracy and value for money issues:
As mentioned previously, most of our
services are free. Our handicappers are first class.
We employ globally and are continually looking for
expert handicappers that meet our requirements.
We try and negotiate special deals with
online boomakers for our clients, and keep looking
for ways to make delivery of our plays more timely
and improve the service in some way.
We
are one of the few handicapping services that allows
members of a betting group to communicate (via our
special insiders' e-mail forum.) This creates a group
spirit and camaraderie and allows members to make
new friends and share their expertise. It's very valuable,
as we have some highly successful gamblers in our
groups.
8. I can't
seem to find your prices. Where are they?
Our AFL package pricing is here
9. Which of
the sports you cover is the best to bet on?
There is no definitive answer to this.
Our results from the different sports vary from year
to year. Our AFL football and our horse racing groups
have the most members at present, but this perhaps
mainly reflects the popularity of those sports in
Australia where we are based.
Horse racing is hard to win at consistently
because of the relatively larger take by the bookies,
who often run their books to greater than 125%, compared
to around 5% or even less on most other sports. However,
in racing, because of the large fields and long odds
available which increases complexity, there is a greater
difference in the skill level of punters and therefore
greater potential to exercise skill to overcome the
bookies theoretical edge. You just need to be much
better relatively than the next person to win
consistently.
Tennis is a great sport to bet on for
various reasons. Many punters lack in-depth knowledge
of any but the highest profile players and even some
of the bookies seem to regularly get it wrong. There
are lots of variables in tennis including motivational
factors, injuries, court surfaces, weather conditions,
fatigue and so forth, so it lends itself to skilful
analysis.
AFL football has been quite profitable
for us over the long haul. The market seems to attract
a certain percentage of emotional money, which is
not smart money. The bookies tend to be pretty accurate,
but weight of money occasionally causes some strange
lines which can be exploited.
Golf has provided excellent long term
profits, but requires great discipline and patience
because many of the bets are on long shots (taking
one individual against the field) and there can be
long losing runs followed by a big winner. In this
respect it is even more demanding of a strong character
than horse racing. Like tennis, we have had some excellent
golf handicappers, but they are hard to hang on to,
so golf tips are not always available on our site.
In the final analysis, all major sports
are beatable with sufficient skill, and that's what
we are here to provide. The best idea usually is to
choose the sports you most enjoy following. That way,
winning money is not the only source of enjoyment!
10. You seem
to promote a lot of bookies and other products. Do
you genuinely endorse them all?
No. Some of them are paid advertisements
of course and we don't endorse them any more than
a newspaper endorses the commercials it carries.
However, many of the products we promote
are done so via affiliate deals that we initiated
ourselves because we thought the offer for the consumer
was good. The bookies and online poker rooms we promote
generally fall into that category because we have
chosen ones that have an attractive new account bonus
or other features that we think can give punters a
worthwhile head start. If the ad features some kind
of lucrative bonus for punters then we genuinely endorse
the product. Take their money and get yourself an
extra edge!
11. Do you
have any job opportunities in your company?
No, we're not really a big employer.
Our business model is to automate things and try to
minimise overheads and create passive income streams
where possible.
12. What
is the best way to keep up to date on what sports
or special bookie deals are available?
Subscribing
to our free Smartgambler
or Pro-Punter
(for horse racing) newsletters is easiest if you don't
want to visit our sites regularly.
If you have a question that may be
appropriate to post in this section, please e-mail
our Managing Director, Guy West.
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