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.