How to Guide: Travel the world and still stay connected to the Internet

My French Impersonation

My French Impersonation

How I travelled the world and still managed to make a great living

I have three major loves. In no particular order they are sports, travel and technology. Combine these three amazing things and you get this article. For the past 2 years I have been travelling the world while still being able to place all my bets and stay connected to the internet, all the while keeping my data completely secure.

My dream, which I was living for those past 2 years was to travel the world and see all the major attractions while still making money. If I could make more then I spent on plane tickets and hotels every month then I could do this forever. I am currently planning my next trip which should last the whole year, I will be watching every tennis major and following the ATP tour around the world, all the while visiting many new places and making money.

From mid ’07 to mid ’09, I travelled to England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Italy, Monaco, Canada, Germany, Spain, Austria, The Netherlands, Russia, America, Mexico, Cuba, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia.

In all these places I had fairly reliable internet connection, apart from Cuba, where the internet seems to work when it wants to. I was able to log in, check my emails, place bets and watch my profits grow. There were a number of ways I connected and a number of different things I used to keep my data as secure as possible.

Connecting to the Internet

There are many different ways I connected to the internet. These included mobile broadband, Wi-Fi, internet cafes, hotel connections, Airport Wi-Fi, and 3G mobile phone networks.

Mobile Broadband

Mobile Broadband

These USB devices have become very popular around the world in the last few years and are getting cheaper every day. I even have one in Australia in case my home broadband ever goes down. These devices connect to your laptop via the USB port and you just need to install the software and connect and your online as long as you are in a coverage area. If you are in a poor coverage area you may only get dial up speeds, but it was still adequate for placing bets. In the UK, I went with 3 Mobile wireless broadband which cost $200 for the prepaid option. This required no bank account info or ID to purchase. It gave me 12gig of access that could be used over a year and worked all over the UK. As I spent 9 months travelling and living in the UK, this device was a life safer. You can see more info about costs for these devices here. The same usb mobile broadband devices are available all over the world, I have bought them in Australia and the US as well.

Wifi

wifi_zoneMost pubs, mcdonalds, starbucks and so on offer free wifi. Sometimes a purchase is necessary to get a password to access the wifi.

Internet cafes

If you have any of the Lonely planet books while travelling, they have all the internet cafes around the area you are in. These places charge per hour. I paid anywhere from 50cent to $5 per hour at internet cafes.

Hotel connections

Whenever I book a hotel I make sure it has in room broadband or at worst some sort of internet connection. The majority of hotels around the world now have some way to get online and usually it is included in the room price, if it isn’t they usually charge a stupid price to get connected. At the marriot in Bristol I had to pay 15pounds for 24hours access, luckily that was the day Volandri beat federer and I made 1000 times the cost of that connection, and that one bet paid for the next 6 months of travel.

Airport Wifi

Same as above really, sometimes it is free, most times you will have to pay. I spend a lot of time in airports and am usually in the club lounges where internet is free. A good reason to get a FF card and join airlines rewards programs.

3G Mobile phones

iphone_homeThis is deffinantly a last resort, as roaming charges are extremely expensive, costing about $5 a megabyte. I have an iphone that is not locked to any one carrier, so in each new country I get a prepaid sim card and this makes things cheaper. The new iphone can also connect to your laptop, so you don’t need to use the tiny screen to surf the net.

Keeping your details safe

So now you have many choices of how to get connected in other countries, the next hurdle is making sure everything you send is secure. Another thing to keep in mind is that most bookies will get suspicious if your logins are coming from other countries, so either tell them beforehand you will be travelling or use one of the following options below.

Depending where I am in the world and what sort of connection I have, I use a number of different things to make sure all the data I send over the internet is secure. I use logmein, vpns or proxy servers.

Logmein

I have a computer at my home that is on 24/7. Whenever I travel I also let any friends or family live in my house rent free on the proviso that they make sure my computer is always on and my internet is always connected. If there is ever a problem I can give them a quick call and get them to fix anything.

Logmein is a program that allows you to log into your computer from over the internet. So once I am connected to the internet I then log into my home computer and place all my bets over my homes internet connection which I know is secure. The overseas connection only intercepts data between my laptop and the logmein website, so it makes it 100% secure. I use this 99% of the time to place my bets, check my emails and bank accounts. I use the free version of logmein.

VPN

Virtual private networks are another secure way to place bets and do other browsing, once you are connected to the internet you then connect to this private network and all data is routed through that. This will give you a static ip address from whichever country you want it to. The company I use charges me $15 a month. To find out more about VPN’s visit the wiki page.

Proxies

I rarely if ever use proxy servers. I would never use one that I hadn’t looked into. These allow you to connect to a server anywhere in the world and have all data routed through it, much like a VPN tunnel, but some proxies are run by criminals who then look at everything you do and can steal your username and passwords. Only use a proxy server if you trust the server 100%.

Connection Devices

Now we know how to connect and how to keep our data secure. The last piece of the puzzle is the hardware. There are hundreds of different laptops designed specifically for travel. For the last 4 years I have been using a stock standard dell Inspiron with a 12inch screen, it is small enough to carry around yet big enough to watch TV shows and movies when I’m bored. Netbooks are fairly new and I love the functionality of them. I will be buying one before my next trip. One other thing to think about is how much battery life the laptop has, as sometimes there might not be any power points around for hours at a time.

How to get started

honduras

Partying with friends in Honduras

That’s it, you now have the hardware, connection and security. All you need to do now is throw that dart at a world map and book a ticket to wherever it lands. Once you get into the flow, it really is easy to work and travel at the same time. Travel is one of the greatest things you can do and it has made me a better person. Waking up each morning in a new place always brings a smile to my face and then logging in to see another winning night and more profit in the bank just makes that smile even wider.

Let me know if you’re planning to travel and work soon in the comments section. If you would like more in depth advice just contact us in the forums. Let me know if you would like me to post some travel stories and picture, I have many of both.

Posted in Blog, Gambling Blog | 7 Comments

Good news on online gambling

Bookmaker Stan Jambookmakeres is set to sell their company. They are citing the recession and new online competitors as the reason. Looks like they failed to keep up with the competition. They also said that large payments to online bookies was another reason why they made a loss last year.

In other news PinnacleSports CEO has resigned, so maybe Pinnacle will get a new face lift?

The US might be getting an internet facelift as a new study has shown that the internet gambling ban has failed. Up to $42 billion could be gained by the government if sensible online gambling is allowed and monitored, according to this study.

All the signs are there, that US Gambling will come back. Betfair has even set up an operation in the US for the projected online gambling arrival. And why not when the forecasted online gambling turnover is expected to skyrocket as shown here. Check out the graph.

Either way, punters winning, more bookmaker competition and the US back in the market, all spells good news.

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Melbourne Cup Probabilities

Well the Melbourne Cup is smelbournecupoon on us. Come Tuesday at 3pm they will all be in full gallop. So, I thought I had to whip up something for the special event. Whilst my horse racing model might soon be on the cards here at Sportpunter, the best I can do at the moment is give you the probability of each horse finishing first, second, third, and for some most importantly, last.

The probabilities are calculated from a simulation based on the starting price of each of the horses to win. And so here they are:

No Horse 1st 2nd 3rd Last
1 Viewed 17.8% 13.2% 10.1% 1.5%
2 Cest La Guerre 3.2% 4.1% 4.5% 2.9%
3 Fiumicino 1.1% 1.6% 2.1% 5.5%
4 Master Oreilly 7.8% 7.1% 7.1% 2.6%
5 Mourilyan 3.6% 4.2% 4.8% 3.0%
6 Roman Emperor 10.1% 9.7% 8.4% 1.7%
7 Ista Kareem 0.6% 1.2% 1.8% 5.6%
8 Crime Scene 1.7% 2.8% 3.1% 4.1%
9 Munsef 1.6% 2.2% 2.9% 4.8%
10 Zavite 1.0% 1.7% 1.7% 5.0%
11 Alcopop 16.8% 12.6% 9.3% 1.4%
12 Harris Tweed 0.2% 0.7% 1.1% 7.3%
13 Kibbutz 0.8% 1.3% 1.7% 5.0%
14 Newport 2.0% 2.6% 2.9% 4.0%
15 Warringah 2.2% 3.0% 3.5% 3.8%
16 Gallions Reach 0.1% 0.3% 0.4% 9.9%
17 Spin Around 0.1% 0.3% 0.6% 9.2%
18 Basaltico 2.4% 3.0% 3.7% 3.5%
19 Capecover 0.6% 1.1% 1.7% 5.4%
20 Daffodil 5.8% 6.1% 6.2% 2.7%
21 Shocking 9.7% 8.5% 8.0% 1.9%
22 Allez Wonder 2.4% 3.3% 3.9% 3.5%
23 Changingoftheguard 4.3% 4.9% 5.3% 2.8%
24 Leica Ding 4.2% 4.6% 5.2% 2.9%

For those who are interested, Sportsbet have a special deal that if your horse runs in second to any of Bart Cummings horses (either Viewed, Roman Emperor, Allez Wonder or Zavite) then you will get your money back. Perfect!

Who are you betting on this year? How do you spend your Melbourne cup? Tell us all below in the comments section

Posted in Gambling Blog | 2 Comments

Match fixing in soccer? Surely not!

260820489_fca040b824It was the final week of the season, and top spot of the Brazilian state League Championship were all but sown up….but not until this happened:

Needing to win 11-0 to clinch promotion from the Second Division, Viana found themselves leading Chapadinha by just 2-0 with 81 minutes played. A bit of fatigue might have been setting in, of course, but surely not enough to see them ship nine goals in the final nine minutes!

That’s right, nine goals in nine minutes! Strange things can happen in the final week of a football round. Check out the video below

Posted in Gambling Blog | 1 Comment

Soccer analysis – best and worst leagues

worldcupThere has been a lot of discussion going on in our forum at the moment about the Sportpunter soccer model and the incredible profits that have been achieved. There is also talk about the high number of bets on a Saturday as we cover almost every single league in the world, with some of these leagues it is difficult to get adequate bet sizes on.

So what happens if we don’t bet on some of the minor leagues? Well let’s see what the best performing and worst performing leagues are since we went live with soccer betting on 14/09/09. These are based only on head to head or 1×2 betting.

Here are the top 10 leagues:

League #Bets #Wins %Wins $Bet $Profit %ROI
scotland3 27 12 44% $ 3,586.86 $1,801.84 50%
sweden2 51 21 41% $ 6,284.00 $1,726.66 27%
italy2 52 18 35% $ 5,624.93 $1,714.61 30%
japan1 31 11 35% $ 2,848.35 $1,697.30 60%
turkey1 25 10 40% $ 1,933.06 $1,642.92 85%
england2 67 18 27% $ 4,437.02 $1,452.28 33%
denmark1 20 12 60% $ 2,243.20 $1,249.96 56%
austria2 25 10 40% $ 3,941.79 $1,090.00 28%
estonia1 12 9 75% $ 3,644.44 $1,057.31 29%
poland2 28 11 39% $ 2,438.69 $ 942.16 39%

And here are the bottom 10 leagues:

League #Bets #Wins %Wins $Bet $Profit %ROI
ukraine1 21 2 10% $ 1,099.85 -$ 736.05 -67%
belgium1 33 10 30% $ 2,980.64 -$ 763.54 -26%
chile1 31 9 29% $ 3,877.72 -$ 777.18 -20%
belgium2 30 7 23% $ 3,225.45 -$ 795.04 -25%
scotland2 20 3 15% $ 2,258.78 -$ 954.04 -42%
france2 42 12 29% $ 3,517.98 -$ 981.80 -28%
norway2 35 8 23% $ 3,044.86 -$1,028.83 -34%
czechia1 23 6 26% $ 2,811.63 -$1,395.78 -50%
england5 66 16 24% $ 4,712.60 -$1,626.49 -35%
romania1 32 4 13% $ 3,171.01 -$2,240.14 -71

Interestingly a lot of the leagues in the top 10 are middle quality leagues. All of them are lower European leagues along with Japan. None of the big leagues are there, although I note that English Premier League has come in 12th position with 34 bets at 30% ROI.

The bottom ten have a few strange leagues. Firstly, Romania is dead last on the list, with only 4 wins from 32 bets. Something might be playing up there. Ukraine is also on the list, long with the English Conference National.

Here is the list of all the questionable leagues:

League #Bets #Wins %Wins $Bet $Profit %ROI
estonia1 12 9 75% $ 3,644.44 $1,057.31 29%
ecuador1 7 3 43% $ 2,583.85 $ 869.71 34%
slovenia1 15 6 40% $ 1,451.88 $ 442.97 31%
latvia1 4 3 75% $ 844.06 $ 278.88 33%
peru1 6 3 50% $ 364.74 $ 232.17 64%
uruguay1 10 4 40% $ 962.94 $ 230.02 24%
hungary1 23 9 39% $ 2,581.73 $ 226.96 9%
slovakia1 7 3 43% $ 872.99 $ 179.95 21%
iceland1 7 2 29% $ 1,160.19 $ 59.24 5%
lithuania1 5 1 20% $ 378.00 -$ 87.06 -23%
singapore1 11 5 45% $ 1,077.77 -$ 170.24 -16%
romania1 32 4 13% $ 3,171.01 -$2,240.14 -71%

So apart from Romania, there seems to be some very good results in the minor eastern European (and Singapore) leagues.

Could Sportpunters analysis of found a corrupt league? I will take a closer look at Romania, to try and pinpoint any problems. Overall, the minor leagues seem to be doing quite well.

View all the soccer betting histories here

The soccer model will also become a paid service in the new year so start following our picks now to make enough profit to pay for it next year.

Posted in Model, Sport Models | 1 Comment

Models…..What are they and what are they good for? – Part 2

michaeljordanIn the last article about sports models I talked about how as human beings we can often find patterns in randomness. I want to talk a little more about this in the real world.

One of my friends recently had a baby which they named “Jordan”. Its cool to give surnames as first names at the moment, and even better it gives me an excuse to post a picture of the great man (as opposed to the “great” women) . Thing is, even though Jordan was born, I had no idea if it were little Jordan boy or a little Jordan girl.

So on further perusal, my friend said, “of course he’s a boy, just take a look at my family, they are all boys!”. And he was right. My friend had two brothers, one of them had 3 children – all boys, and the other had a boy and another boy in the oven.

But my friend wasn’t entirely correct. This is because gender is not hereditary. If it were, then there’s a good chance that we would have no such thing as males and females and we would all be the same sex. This would of course lead to interesting times, but that’s a thought for another story.

Still the unlikelihood of his side of the family being comprised of all males, made my friend believe that it is of no fluke. But of course it is.

This kind of finding patterns in randomness has had a very long history. In ancient times, people used to worship the sun and the moon because it gave them light, warmth and consequently life. But on rare occasions, the moon seemed to gobble up the sun. This is what we now know of as a solar eclipse, but without the inhabitants having a good depth perception or any idea of the cosmos, to them it must have looked like the moon was indeed feasting on the sun.

Naturally, this was of great concern for our forefathers, and they used to perform a typical dance ritual so that eventually the moon would spit out the sun and all would be fine again. Thing is, it worked. Every time, the moon looked as though it was gobbling up the sun, if they performed this dance and ritual, all would be good.

No one dared to stop performing the ritual, just in case the sun was no more. This type of ritual continued for a long time across many generations, until some bright spark worked out that you can actually predict when a solar eclipse would happen. Using mathematical principles, our ancestors worked out exactly when eclipses would take place, and every time they were right.

It seemed after all, that because of the predictability of solar eclipses, it could not be that the moon was just hungry, and hence, the dancing ritual was in vain.

A mathematical model that predicts outcomes trumped people who merely found a pattern that has no logical consequence or predictable power.

In the same way, Sportpunter’s mathematical models are doing the same thing, just on a different level. Sportpunter are attempting to mathematically model the outcomes of sporting events. We may not be as accurate as those who predicted when the solar eclipses would occur, but we are more accurate than the bookmakers, whose odds are dictated by the punters perception.

Punters may find patterns that are valid, and may find patterns that are invalid. At Sportpuner we have the advantage, because we can mathematically test the validity and predicting power of sports data.

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Email List competition. Prizes worth $5,000

Email ListSubscribe to the Sportpunter email list and you could win a years free subscription to our every Sportpunter model. For every 1000 members who sign up, we will randomly pick 2 subscribers to be given a years free subscription to all of our betting models. That’s a total prize value of almost $5,000. Just fill in the form below and click sign me up to be in with a chance to win. Each month you will also receive an email from the Sportpunter team with

  • Latest monthly profit/loss for each sport
  • Great promotions and offers
  • Our most popular stories
  • Email only content
  • As well as much much more

Subscribe now to win these great prizes

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The art of sports prediction

Sportpunter may well seattlemarinersbe a market leader when it comes to sport prediction, but we’ve recently come across some tough opposition, especially in the baseball field. It has come to our attention that Mike Blowers who is an ex baseball player and now radio commentator may have the edge on us. We have been attempting to contact Mike, in an attempt to poach him onto our side, but at this stage there are a number of contenders and his price tag might be too high.

Either way, if we get our man or not, it is our goal at Sportpunter to predict at least as good as Mike Blowers. I mean, seriously, the ball didn’t even get into the second tier!

See the video below:

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The betting advantage in NBL

Another fantastic two wins nblgfin Australian basketball (NBL) on the weekend with both bets easily covering the line. This year has been quite amazing so far with NBL betting as our record shows. A small number of bets so far, but it seems as though we have been on the right side of the line and may have one up on the bookies.

Eight bets on the head to head betting with a 59% return on investment (ROI), and 11 bets on totals betting with a 22.7% ROI. This is even better than our long term of 10% ROI on h2h and 7.3% ROI on totals. So why the difference?

Well it has been well documented that the length of the quarters has been reduced from 12 minutes to 10. This would have a big influence on the total score line, and it is interesting to think about how this would play out.

At first glance one could assume that the total number of points should decrease by about 16.7% (or 2/12ths), however this is not necessarily the case.  Better players will play a greater percentage of the total court time, and more fouls should occur, but of which will increase the score above the first reduction.

In the pre season tournament in Darwin, an average of 172 points was scored per game, but one would think that if anything this would be lower than the norm, as more second rate players were tested out and skills could be down on normal performance.

However it hasn’t eventuated this way. Since then an average of just over 165 points has been scored per game. This graph is shown below which looks at the bookies line as well as the total points that are scored:

nbl4_18103_image001

The line of best fit shows the bookmakers line over the 16 or so matches that has so far been played. It is obviously decreasing, starting around the 170 mark, and decreasing till about the 165 mark.

Aside from the incredibly boring 130 point game between Wollongong and Cairns last Saturday (of which we picked the under), the scores have been pretty even with eight results going under and six over.

There is some evidence that the bookmakers have been overcompensating for the totals, which is what could easily happen when rules change. Take matches 5 to 11 or even 8 to 11, where we get 5 of our 6 matches below the line. The line following this is lower, however, perhaps because the teams following are generally higher scoring teams or else wise, the overs have all won.

In fact this year, we’ve only had 2 under bets, despite the decreasing line odds, and both were winners. For overs we have had 5 wins from 9 bets.

As far as head to heads go, it seems that the home ground advantage is quite underrated by the bookmakers. We’ve had only one major bet on the away team that lost, but all other bets have been on the home team, and all but one smaller bet has won. Our average probability for the home team this year is 65.7% (or equivalent to odds of 1.52), whilst the average odds for the home team has just been 1.69. A good difference.

Either way, Australian Basketball or NBL has been very profitable so far this year, exactly like it has been in the past.

You can get the free predictions for NBL here.

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Tax Free Tasmania

Tasmania has stepped utasmaniap the bookmaking race by giving tax free incentives to Tasmanian bookmakers. Tasmania has always been ahead of the rest of Australia when it comes to gambling, having the first casino and being partners with betfair. Recently northern territory and the ACT has welcomed Australian bookmakers, but with tax incentives in the UK for example, Canbet is one among a few that have travelling to London.

The only company spitting chips is strangely enough, betfair, who currently pay a 15% tax rate in Tasmania. The tax free fee is estimated to save bookmakers almost a quarter of a million per year, and this means we might well see either bookmakers heading down to the apple isle, or relaxed tax laws in the remainder of Australia.

What does it mean for us gamblers? Well better competition is great for us, and with bookmakers paying less tax, this means that we should see better prices or at least better signup options. Either way, weakening of any governmental influence on gambling has got to be good.

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