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 discussion
forums for bettors, probability calculators for various
games and sports, tables showing the best casino games
to bet on, etc.
Over the years we have tried recruiting
handicappers from all over the world to work for us
in pursuit of an edge in various types of sports betting.
Handicappers were judged by whether they could demonstrate
an edge against the bookies over a statistically meaningful
number of bets. Nowadays we have moved away from providing
paid betting tips and only provide subscriber information
on one sport, AFL Football. We continue to provide
coverage of AFL Football by demand, because of its
popularity in Australia.
Our main corporate income streams are
from providing advertising space, a little from AFL
package subscriptions, and most importantly, from
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.
3. Where
can I read about what the AFL betting 'package' contains?
Just click on on the link on the left
hand menu and it will take you to an information page.
4. If
you can get an edge over the bookies at AFL betting,
why don't you just bet yourselves instead of giving
out the plays?
We do. We used to bet on the other sports
we covered, too. Several of our handicappers have
been reasonably big sports bettors, and our Managing
Director regularly used to bet on their selections
too.
Often our handicappers though have been
academics, who were motivated not so much by the gambling
aspect as by the intellectual challenge of beating
the bookmakers. For some of them it was 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 AFL handicapper really has
an edge? Can I see past results?
It is not unusual for businesses in
this industry to falsify past results. 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
our AFL package 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
members 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 our 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. If I want to advertise
or join your AFL group, how do I know your company
has integrity?
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 names of our
contractors.
Our handicappers over the years have
in many cases been well known and their credentials
able tobe 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) and Andrew Scott (Blackjack), have
profiles easily verified by a search.
We are an open and honest company and
we are confident that if you speak to anyone who has
dealt with us, they will confirm this.
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
can be quite valuable, as we have some highly successful
gamblers in our AFL group.
8.
I can't seem to find your AFL prices. Where are they?
Our AFL package pricing is here
9. Which sport
is the best to bet on?
There is no definitive answer to this. Our results
from the different sports we've covered varied from
year to year. Our AFL football group and our horse
racing group usually had the most members, but this
probably 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 used to be a great sport to bet
on, for various reasons. Many punters lacked in-depth
knowledge of any but the highest profile players and
even some of the bookies seemed 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. However, in recent years the
tennis market has matured a lot and the bookies are
much harder to beat than they used to be.
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 provided excellent long term profits,
but required 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 had some excellent golf handicappers,
but they are hard to hang on to and we have moved
away from handicapping, so golf tips are no longer
available on our site.
In the final analysis, all major sports
are beatable with sufficient skill, and that's what
we are here to promote. 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
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 where possible
and try to minimise overheads and create passive income
streams.
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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