Tuesdays with the Conductor

A very warm welcome to the 6th Edition of the newsletter. I hope those of you who are currently betting experienced the enormously satisfying feeling of logging into your betting accounts yesterday morning and seeing some healthy betting balances after the rugby weekend, and Scottie Scheffler winning the Masters.

Over the weekend and in between all the sport, I was able to watch the film "Dumb Money - The Gamestop Story" (would definitely recommend). For context, the term "Dumb Money" is what large financial institutions such as hedge funds call retail investors, who are non-professional investors managing their own investments. These individuals often trade smaller amounts and don’t always have access to the incredibly expensive financial data that the big players do. As a result some decisions are made on emotion or a trend rather than good information.

This led me to draw parallels with the betting industry where a similar situation exists. Often, large betting syndicates and groups, who are wagering larger sums of money, have ensured access to costly critical data to make informed betting decisions. Then there are smaller bettors who may not be able to dedicate as much time to research, or have access to the important information and statistics. For these smaller bettors, not dedicating daily or weekly time to research and still betting on the weekend can be devastating for their betting accounts. We had just such an example this past weekend. After the Bulls absolutely hammered Lyon in Pretoria in the Champions Cup, you would have expected them to be a definite contender against the Northampton Saints at Franklins Gardens. However, some research would have shown that the Bulls intended to send a much weaker side to the United Kingdom for the game. Bettors armed with this knowledge made an absolute fortune on the Saints, while those with bets on the Bulls would have been considerably poorer this week.

On the Patreon group, we showed a good profit with both Friday bets delivering, and then the overs in Toulouse arrived with ease on Saturday. I was definitely not in my most aggressive mood this weekend as I very much feared a losing weekend after a very successful one. This fear stems from several years of such experiences where you end up returning all your profits and then some more to the sportsbooks the very next weekend.

This past weekend was an overs bettor's dream, with every Challenge Cup game and Champions Cup game covering the overs line, with the exception of the game between Gloucester and the Ospreys. If you had blindly bet on every overs line, you would have won 7 out of 8 bets.

Onward we move to this weekend, and I am really looking forward to some of the fixtures in Super Rugby, the United Rugby Championship, and the Gallagher Premiership. In Super Rugby, it's the unbeaten Hurricanes traveling to Suva, Fiji, to take on the Fijian Drua. While the Drua have looked shaky on the road, they are unbeaten at home this year, having defeated the Crusaders, Waratahs, and the Western Force. I love the Drua spirit, and their fans often whip them into a frenzy where each player seems to get stronger and faster over the course of the game. Again, the question will be what sort of team the Hurricanes will send? In the gentle 87% humidity, I'm leaning towards the Drua to defend their island and cover the spread. With this being the first Drua night fixture, I am also looking at the points line. It has dropped to 58.5 from the opening line of 61.5, but this still seems like it could be too high. In the very humid nighttime air, the ball can be like a bar of soap. Just like in prison, you try your utmost to avoid dropping it, but it’s still going to be very difficult to hang on to.

While the Patreon group chat has been all about the Lions vs. Leinster game and what sort of team Leo Cullen will send to Johannesburg, I now have my eye on the fixture 1,402km away. The Stormers did beat Edinburgh by 22 points a few weeks ago, but some of their other home games haven’t been as convincing. The Stormers will be missing a key man in my opinion, Deon Fourie, who is out after undergoing knee surgery. Leolin Zas may also miss the game with a knee niggle. On the other side of the coin, I really like the Ospreys' spirit. Toby Booth and his men from Swansea have a great fighting grit, and this is evident in their results. The handicap of +19.5 is looking very tempting at this stage. Click on the image below to open an account and get in on the action.

In the Gallagher Premiership, it’s now a question of what toll the last 3 weeks have taken on the Northampton Saints. In consecutive weeks, they've played Saracens, Munster, and the Bulls. There is no doubt that the Saints are playing some of the most sublime rugby and are deservedly league leaders, but I just wonder if a rested Leicester Tigers might deliver a dose of hard reality in the East Midlands derby. It might be a very dangerous prospect taking any plus handicap at Franklins Gardens, but I'm currently leaning towards that +8.5 for the Tigers.

It was great to see more subscribers join the Patreon group this past weekend and add their input to the betting. Click here to join the action - https://www.patreon.com/user?u=83508629

The conductorbets.com site is live and I will be adding other bets on the site throughout the weekend! We are also working on some exciting new additions to the Conductor Bets service, and I will be announcing these in due time

Cheers and have a great punting week!

(Brendon Wessels) The Conductor

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