Snooker Spread Betting
Snooker is another sports that by its very nature is very suited to spread betting. In fact, it is probably better than cricket – it will take the better part of a day to score 350 runs, but you would have accumulated this many points in just 3 or 4 frames of snooker over the course of an hour of play – in other words snooker comes with plenty of volatility, a quality that most spread betters love.
The big event in snooker is the World Championship which could be likened to the Wimbledon in tennis and is by far the most important and most followed tournament on television.
Some spread bettors even specialise on the snooker sports but the World Championship is known to attract new punters to the game. The longer-established markets are the tournament indices, which for Extrabet operates at 80 points for winning, 60 for being runner-up, 40 for semi-finalists, 20 for the quarter-final and 10 for reaching the last 16. For instance, Higgins might be at 32-35, O’Sullivan 28-31, current champion Neil Robertson at 29-32 and Ding Junhui at 27-30.
Tournament indices highlight one particular area where sports spread betting enjoys an obvious advantage over fixed odds. A fixed odds bettor placing a bet on a tournament is usually focused on what the final would be. The spread better on the other hand may get value from a player whose progress is halted is a couple of rounds. Let’s take Ricky Walden for instance – at fixed odds he might be quoted 80 or 100 to one but on the index he’ll likely be 2.5 to 3.5, which means you can turn a profit even if he gets through just a few rounds.
In-running markets have also grown in popularity over the last few years. Here there are the single frame points which are also highly volatile since a player may win or lose a frame by as much as 147 points. Spread that concept over a 35-frame final and you could have cumulative winning margins adding up into four figures. Punters also have to check how players react to having a big lead in a frame; in particular whether they continue playing on as if each ball still matters or whether they start playing defensively.
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