Sink or swim: Budgeting decisions needed for successful punting on Cape Met day

Another whopping weekend lies in wait for sports fans. Centre stage will be the headlining R2 million World Sports Betting Cape Met, but there’s no shortage of supporting acts.

The opening couple of weeks of the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) football tournament has been a terrific spectacle, delivering drama, passion, goals and more than it’s fair share of surprise scorelines. In short it’s been a wonderful watch.

Of course everything is relative and I might be guilty of being somewhat presumptuous when claiming the above, because if you’re a football fan from Accra, Algiers, Tunis or even Lusaka, chances are you not best pleased to see your nation fail to exit the group stage.

The African continent’s latest celebration of the beautiful game has bucked a few trends and the competition is all the better for it. Long gone are the days when the established power houses of the game could comfortably pitch up and exercise their divine right to walk away with the three points.
Witness Equatorial Guinea, whose 4-0 drubbing of the host nation Cote D’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) rocked the status quo of African soccer.

All things considered it was an astonishing scoreline and yet it was a turn-up for the books that hasn’t been an orphan in the tournament. I don’t mind telling you that when the final whistle blew in the Mauritania/Algeria match I had more than a lump in my throat.

We all love a good Slumdog Millionaire script and to see the success of nations traditionally labelled as minnows is beyond refreshing.

The fact that we’ve already seen a couple of coach casualties supports the narrative that this Afcon is like none before and perhaps the hits might keep coming.

Chris Hughton gone from Ghana and the bizarre situation of the Ivorian coach, Jean-Louis Gasset, getting the heave-ho from his football federation despite qualifying, admittedly through something tantamount to a mathematical Act of God, for the knockout phase.

Speaking of which, those round of 16 ties begin on Saturday afternoon and will run through till Tuesday night when the last of the knockout games will feature Bafana Bafana facing off against the might of Morocco, a squad who set their own ‘punching above their weight’ tone when finishing fourth in the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.

It’s a match-up that Patrick Swayze would have been proud of.

In addition to the classic north and south narrative most soccer scribes don’t give South Africa a Ghost of a chance and an unlikely Bafana win will doubtless deliver some Mzansi flavoured Dirty Dancing from Dysselsdorp to Dobsonville.

Perhaps all of this is too much to expect but where possible I will be glued to the coverage of the AFCON action and rooting for the likes of the Democratic Republic of Congo to somehow topple Egypt and send the Pharaohs home to the mummies.

You might sphinx I’m in d’nile, yet only last weekend Dricus du Plessis became the UFC Middleweight World Champion. Thus a man who ‘Boetie’, my solitary friend from Brakpan, maintains isn’t ranked among the Top 8 fighters in Boksburg, proved yet again that you cannot discount the 7-2 outsider in a two-horse race.

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In addition to all the guts and determination he demonstrated, Dricus showed perfect timing. Du Plessis is an ambassador for the sponsors of Saturday’s Cape Met and World Sports Betting’s Warren Tannous, Bob Yearham and Hilton Hasson will be thrilled that the country’s newest sport sensation is trending across the globe.

I must now clarify my position on the subject of surprise results, for whilst I would welcome the continuation of said trend at AFCON my generosity of spirit for the small guy won’t extend to Hollywoodbets Kenilworth on Saturday.

The mirror image of losing Ghana, Algeria, Tunisia and the 2012 Champions Zambia in the first phase of this AFCON would look something like the absence of Isivunguvungu & Thunderstuck and Bavarian Beauty & Tail of the Comet from the Met Day Place Accumulator.

And we can’t be having that!

WSB Cape Met day is a World Pool event so we can confidently expect tote-turnover fireworks. It has already been a buoyant week for horseracing with the Cape Premier Yearling Sale returning a staggering aggregate figure of upwards of R64 million from the 119 lots sold. This represents a growth of over 45% from last year’s figure of R44 million.

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Financial reality bites for those of who aren’t economically equipped to purchase the likes of lots so budgeting decisions are in order for Cape Met day.

The question of what funds are allocated to which exotic is part of securing a successful punting strategy on these big days.

I know I am the worst Bipot player ever born so that bet-type isn’t on my radar but a R2 million Pick 6 carryover and R1 million Quartet carryover onto the main race are like the two sirens from Homer’s Odyssey whose songs of seduction mesmerise young sailors and lure them to a watery grave.

This desperate soul acknowledges the warning from Greek mythology and I shall thus seek to disregard the temptation of the siren’s song and seek the prudent approach of staying afloat through the pursuit of the perceived safety offered by the Place Accumulator. Good luck everyone!