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 main directors
and other information,
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 provided handicapping
for changed from time to time as a good handicapper
in a new sport became available, or one had to leave.
Nowadays we have moved away from selling betting packages
and AFL football is the only sport where we still
run a subscriber betting group, mainly due to demand
from the long term members.
Our main corporate income streams are
from advertising 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 free information
and betting tools on our sites.
3. Where
can I read about what the AFL betting 'package' contains?
Here.
4. If
you can get an edge over the bookies, why don't you
just bet on AFL yourselves instead of giving out the
plays?
We do. Several of our handicappers in
various sports have been big bettors and our Managing
Director regularly bets on AFL and other sports.
Our AFL handicapper is an academic who
is motivated not so much by the gambling aspect as
by the intellectual challenge of beating the bookmakers.
For him it was part of his academic research.
As an aside, 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?
There's no proof and no past results
because Professor Clarke's computer model doesn't
tell you what bet to make, just how it assesses the
odds and the value. How clients use the information
is up tp them and varies due to different risk tolerance
and other factors.
We also 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 AFL betting services is our loyal
clients. You are most welcome to ask to speak to as
many of these as you want. We have 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 made comments in e-mails recorded
in the testimonials
section back when we maintained one, 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. 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 trust you 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 also be 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 main directors and consultants.
Our handicappers have often been well
known and their credentials verifiable. Professor
Stephen Clarke and Professor Ray Stefani for instance
are easily found on internet searches as they both
have internationally published academic papers. Other
experts previously or currently connected with our
business such as Dr Tristan Barnett (Probability based
attacks) and Andrew Scott (Blackjack) have profiles
easily verified by a search.
Accuracy and value for money issues:
As mentioned previously, most of our
services are free.
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 valuable,
as we have some highly successful gamblers in our
AFL group. Many companies are too paranoid to let
their clients talk to each other.
8. I can't
seem to find your prices. Where are they?
Our AFL package pricing is here
9. Which of
the sports you have handicapped over the years is
the best to bet on?
There is no definitive answer to this.
Our results from the different sports varied from
year to year. Our AFL football and our horse racing
groups had the most members, but this perhaps mainly
reflected the popularity of those sports in Australia
where we are based. Tennis was also quite popular
for a while.
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 has traditionally been a good
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. However, bookies are much
more accurate now 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
these days, but weight of money occasionally causes
some strange lines which can be exploited.
Golf provided us with excellent long
term profits, but it 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 and golf tips have not been available
through us for some time.
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 online casinos and other gambling
products. Do you genuinely endorse them all?
No. Most of them are paid advertisements
and we don't endorse them any more than a newspaper
endorses the commercials it carries. We just povide
real estate for them hang out their signs.
However, some 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 two Australian corporate bookies 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. Take their free 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. When necessary we use consultants,
not salaried employees.
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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