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So after a 6-year career of betting over-the-counter in the Czech betting shops I thought I'd share a few stories and let you all know about the sports betting atmosphere there.
First I'll start by telling you a bit a about formats, laws, betting styles etc. Czechs use the standard European coefficient odds (e.g. +100 is 2.00, -200 is 1.5) There used to be more, but now there are only 3 shops that compete with each other: Tipsport, Chance and Fortuna. It's good for the bettor because they really do compete with one another ... Czechs tend to bet favourites and you'll often see a book open a team 1.30 and then the other 2 will follow at 1.31 and 1.32. The industry is well regulated and anyone opening a shop has to put up 6 000 000 CZK (1 USD ~= 38 CZK so that's about 150 000 USD) as a deposit (not a fee) to insure they have enough to pay out clients in case they run into trouble. I think there is a law that regulates the maximum %age advantage a bet offer may have but I'm not sure. Standard bet offers are sky high by say, American standards anyway e.g. a pick 'em line would run at 1.8-1.8 for both sides and a typical even soccer game would be 2.7-2.7-2.7 (both of those have a 11.1% edge for the house, more than twice as much as a Vegas NFL line which is 4.7%).
It gets worse: there is a 5% tax on the risk amount of the wager PAID WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE, which is a nightmare. So if you wager 1000 CZK at odds of 2.00 you are actually risking 1050 CZK to win 950 CZK, turning the "effective odds" of the bet into 1.90.
I made all my bets straight up when I first went down there and really struggled with this tax at first and then realized I could minimize it's effects by betting parlays. It seems so obvious to me now but it took a while to figure out ... I was convinced for a long time that 5% was 5% and I couldn't do anything about it. I'm sure in other countries with this type of tax you'e been through all this long ago. I started betting parlays so that the total odds on the ticket were somewhere between 3.00 and 5.00. The parlays gave the advantage that if you hit the first game, it gave you bet on the next game equal to your payout, but WITHOUT THE TAX.
There was another reason I had to go to parlays: limits. Limits weren't a problem when I first got there because I was practically broke, but as my bankroll increased it became one. Read this and tell me if it doesn't seem backward: The limits for a ticket with one game on it was for a clean win (not total payout, but total profit) of 10000 CZK (about 250 USD) but if you put more games on your ticket they went up! For example, 2-4 games on a ticket was 20000 CZK and 5 or more was 50000 CZK. What does this tell you? It tell me that limits are in place not because the book can't afford to pay, but because it doesn't trust it's ability to set proper odds!
More to come but I think I'll take a break in order to avoid a monster-sized posting.
First I'll start by telling you a bit a about formats, laws, betting styles etc. Czechs use the standard European coefficient odds (e.g. +100 is 2.00, -200 is 1.5) There used to be more, but now there are only 3 shops that compete with each other: Tipsport, Chance and Fortuna. It's good for the bettor because they really do compete with one another ... Czechs tend to bet favourites and you'll often see a book open a team 1.30 and then the other 2 will follow at 1.31 and 1.32. The industry is well regulated and anyone opening a shop has to put up 6 000 000 CZK (1 USD ~= 38 CZK so that's about 150 000 USD) as a deposit (not a fee) to insure they have enough to pay out clients in case they run into trouble. I think there is a law that regulates the maximum %age advantage a bet offer may have but I'm not sure. Standard bet offers are sky high by say, American standards anyway e.g. a pick 'em line would run at 1.8-1.8 for both sides and a typical even soccer game would be 2.7-2.7-2.7 (both of those have a 11.1% edge for the house, more than twice as much as a Vegas NFL line which is 4.7%).
It gets worse: there is a 5% tax on the risk amount of the wager PAID WHETHER YOU WIN OR LOSE, which is a nightmare. So if you wager 1000 CZK at odds of 2.00 you are actually risking 1050 CZK to win 950 CZK, turning the "effective odds" of the bet into 1.90.
I made all my bets straight up when I first went down there and really struggled with this tax at first and then realized I could minimize it's effects by betting parlays. It seems so obvious to me now but it took a while to figure out ... I was convinced for a long time that 5% was 5% and I couldn't do anything about it. I'm sure in other countries with this type of tax you'e been through all this long ago. I started betting parlays so that the total odds on the ticket were somewhere between 3.00 and 5.00. The parlays gave the advantage that if you hit the first game, it gave you bet on the next game equal to your payout, but WITHOUT THE TAX.
There was another reason I had to go to parlays: limits. Limits weren't a problem when I first got there because I was practically broke, but as my bankroll increased it became one. Read this and tell me if it doesn't seem backward: The limits for a ticket with one game on it was for a clean win (not total payout, but total profit) of 10000 CZK (about 250 USD) but if you put more games on your ticket they went up! For example, 2-4 games on a ticket was 20000 CZK and 5 or more was 50000 CZK. What does this tell you? It tell me that limits are in place not because the book can't afford to pay, but because it doesn't trust it's ability to set proper odds!
More to come but I think I'll take a break in order to avoid a monster-sized posting.
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