The organisation, known as Right2Bet hopes to persuade the European Commission to act on behalf of gamblers across Europe, and now carries the logo of Betfair – which matches bets between millions of gamblers around the world – on its website.

Right2Bet wants the European Commission to enforce EU laws on free trade and force member states to allow their citizens to use any betting providers licensed in other member states, rather than restricting their choice to just state-approved providers based within their own borders.

The organisation hopes to persuade a million Europeans to sign a petition which they will then present to the EU parliament. Under the terms of the Lisbon Treaty – a framework for running the EU being ratified by the Union’s member nations – the Parliament must look at any issue backed by one million signatures from European consumers.

Michael Robb, a spokesman for Right2Bet, said, “Betting fans in Europe are fed up of being told by politicians how and where they can bet.”

Visit the Right2Bet website now.

Sadly, and more than a little ironically, William Hill don’t take bets on their Sports Book of the Year Award. But if they did, our money would probably be on either Eclipse or Feet of the Chameleon. Either way, there’s a few beauties here; well worth putting on the Christmas list. Here they are, with links through to Amazon (they’ve suspended their usual delivery charges by the way – free delivery for Christmas!).

Ring of Fire: the Inside Story of Valentino Rossi and MotoGPby Rick Broadbent (Bantam Press)
At a time when F1 is increasingly petrified by organisational squabbles, cheating scandals and on-track inaction, Ring of Fire depicts an insider’s view of the most thrilling and dangerous sports of all time: MotoGP.

Eclipse: the story of the Rogue, the Madam and the Horse that Changed Racingby Nicholas Clee (Bantam Press)
Apart from having a race named after him, Eplicse was a horse that went on to dominate the bloodstock market (95 per cent of horses racing today are descended from him). He was the eighteenth-century darling of the Sport of Kings. And yet his story begins with a meat salesman and an adventurer who frequented brothels.

Few books about horse racing actually win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award (Seabiscuit is the only one that springs to mind); this could be a rare exception.

Confessions of a Rugby Mercenaryby John Daniell (Ebury Press)
The title promises hilarious seventies smut; the book delivers hard-knock tales of life as a professional rugby union player. “Mercenary” is perhaps a bit strong; “journeyman” would perhaps have been more accurate. And for “Confessions” read “unsurprising, dull tales”. But if unsurprising, dull tales of a rugby journeyman are your thing then you’re in for a treat. (And you probably play rugby. In fact, your name is probably John Daniell. Hi, John!)

Harold Larwood: the Authorized Biography of the World’s Fastest Bowlerby Duncan Hamilton (Quercus Publishing)
The world doesn’t really need another story of Larwood, the Nottinghamshire pit lad who proved the perfect foil/stooge (delete according to social class and political persuasion) for posh England captain Douglas Jardine in the controversial Bodyline Ashes tour of 1932-33.

But in the hands of Hamilton, the Nottinghamshire press lad who spent much of his career reporting on Larwood’s antics as he swept to league success and two European Cups before plunging into alcoholic mediocrity, this tale is bound to win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award for 2007.

Hang on; I’m getting confused with Hamilton’s previous book about Brian Clough; a man whom Hamilton was supremely qualified to talk about given his unparalleled access to Old Big ‘Ead himself. Whether Hamilton can win the William Hill book award for a second time, given this is ground that has been raked over time and again and that Hamilton has no greater insight to Larwood than any other twenty-first century sports writer, remains to be seen.

Feet of the Chameleon: the Story of African Footballby Ian Hawkey (Portico)
Given that the FIFA World Cup will be held in Africa for the first time in 2010 this is a well-timed book and, like FIFA’s benefaction, long overdue. We know a lot about South American football (Uruguayans are dirty; Argies cheat; the Brazilians can do no wrong; gangsterism has ruined Colombia; the rest try hard, bless ‘em) and probably too much about European football; Hawkey’s book aims to redress the deficit in our knowledge of the game in the Dark Continent.

Possibly the most scholarly book on the shortlist and edged out Simon “Football Against The Enemy” Kuper’s Why England Lose: and Other Curious Phenomena Explained, suggesting a book of the highest quality.

Simple Goalkeeping Made Spectacular: A Riotous Footballing Memoir About the Loneliest Position on the Fieldby Graham Joyce (Mainstream)
Part memoir, part guide to playing goalie, this is an offbeat look at the position occupied by the footballer’s best friend: the keeper. One of those books that initially seem surplus to requirements (like a history of salt, or Colleen Rooney’s autobiography) but is crafted with such love between writer and subject that you can’t fail to be won over. It probably won’t win the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, but it will bring a little bit of joy to your life.

Enjoy!

A lively online debate about on-course bookmakers offering scandalous value was illustrated yesterday as punters deserted the bookies in the Juddmonte International.

And the question of whether there is still any value in betting on-course in an age of online betting with a mobile phone will soon be settled if layers don’t start competing with off-course firms – or at least each other – and give people a reason to ‘come racing’.

The flagship race of York’s Ebor Festival should have been awash with punters’ cash as the crowds either decided betting on red-hot favourite Sea The Stars was buying money or saw value in opposing him and backing his opponent Mastercraftsman.

But with Sea The Stars a solid 1/4 across the boards and nobody prepared to risk offering better than a paltry 7/2 on Aidan O’Brien’s multiple-Group One winner, punters just went online to place their bets – or decided this was a race best watched.

Ten minutes before the off in the International, one of the top ten middle-distance races in the world, the bookies’ pitches were deserted. (Pictured)

Earlier in the day, punters were up in arms about the each-way terms on offer, with some layers quoting just 1/6th the odds on each-way places in the opening race – a 17-runner handicap.

Online message board The Punter’s Lounge highlighted this issue at the start of the month. One post from ‘billy the punter’ said the bookmakers were just “robbing uneducated race-goers”.

Horse racing’s funding battle
Horseracing is currently facing something of a funding battle, with big firms like William Hill and Ladbrokes moving offshore and potentially avoiding paying part of their profits back into UK racing.

The attraction of betting on-course was that racecourse bookies would offer better odds, to tempt people to the course. With the huge pots of money floating round at the big meetings, they would have to offer competitive odds to tempt people to their pitch rather than their rivals.

Offering paltry each-way terms and failing to give themselves a competitive edge will no longer do this – especially when punters can just go online and find a competitive price on the internet.

How long before the racecourse bookies are crying that they can’t get punters’ business? And racing’s governing bodies are demanding a government bail-out? Like carmakers and banks before them, they will realise too late that forming a kind of semi-cartel (witness the way most on-course bookies will offer exactly the same prices as their neighbours) is no kind of business plan when faced with external competition that offers innovation and value for money. You can get all the government bail-outs you want, but if you don’t up your game you’ll go to the wall.

The threat to on-course bookies
British Leyland was killed by cheap, reliable cars from Europe and Japan; on-course betting could be seen off by Best Odds Guaranteed offers from Gibraltar-based firms; such innovations as Coral’s 10% cashback offer; imaginative offers from internet pureplay boys like SkyBet’s 1/4 the odds first five each-way betting (offered on today’s Ebor Handicap) or Bet365 with their Channel 4/1 offer; or Tote bets like the Placepot (or even place-only betting).

Bookies have to make a living, but they seem to forget that punters don’t owe them one. And the ‘horseracing industry’ is owed less and less by the high street bookies too (thanks to Turf TV they pay handsomely for TV rights but increasingly derive their profits from football betting and in-store fixed-odds gaming machines).

It would be sad to see an end to on-course bookmaking, but unless they stop offering such miserable value to punters I’ll bet they’ll be gone within a generation.

So why bet on favourites? And how do these apparent losers get to this exalted position in the market in the first place?

Wise crowds bet on favourites
Firstly, it should be said that favourites generally head the betting market for very good reasons. James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds has been mentioned before in these pages, and its precepts generally hold true for betting markets.

To summarise Surowiecki’s argument, a large, varied crowd of people have a greater collective intelligence than a single expert. The crowd brings to the table a range of prejudices, preconceived beliefs, specialised areas of knowledge and localised views. This gives them greater combined insight than a single person can’t have.

This translates into odds making in a reasonably obvious way. An expert, like Channel 4 Racing’s Jim McGrath, for example, may think a certain horse will win a race (he tipped Tartan Bearer to win the 2008 Derby).

But the ‘crowd’ – all the punters in the rest of the world, whose collective opinion, expressed in wagers from as little as 10p each-way to hundreds of thousands of pounds – thought differently. Their 10p each-ways, their fivers, tenners, monkeys and five grands went on Casual Conquest. The bookies consequently stood to lose the most money if Casual Conquest won and correspondingly offered the shortest odds in the field on Dermot Weld’s colt.

That’s how a favourite is decided; the bookie himself (or herself) won’t generally have an opinion one way or another. Their betting odds just reflect the liabilities they have on one horse or another. And the favourite is the one which stands to lose them the most money.

In that sense, the ‘favourite’ isn’t always going to be the horse with the best chance of winning. When Frankie Dettori rode all seven winners at Ascot in 1996, his last horse went off at a ridiculously short price compared to its chance of winning – purely because the world and his wife had come out to join in on the Italian’s winning streak and the bookies stood to lose a bundle.

Emotion, then, can spoil the crowd’s wisdom. But in races where sentiment can be stripped out of the equation, Surowiecki’s argument holds true: the crowd, with all their different opinions and pockets of knowledge, is going to have the best idea of which horse will win the race.

The statistical evidence
Looking back at the performance of favourites over the last ten years shows just how wrong the market can be.

To take a random example, two-year-olds running in non-handicaps at Kempton Park have a strike rate of 70 wins in 174 races over the last 10 years, or 40 per cent. If you’d put a quid on all 174 favourites you’d be £3.43, or two per cent, down.

The same figures for three-year-olds and upwards are 114 wins from 360 races, or 32 per cent. For four-year-olds and upwards the stats are 38 winning favourites from 128 races, or 30 per cent – and in three-year-old and upward handicaps the jollies have a strike rate of 25 per cent, winning just one race in four. (See all the stats for favourites at Race-Courses.co.uk.)

Clearly, backing favourites isn’t a licence to print money. But within these stats there lies the glimmer of a rough idea of how to use favourites in betting on horses.

When not to bet on favourites
There are several situations where all available trends tell us not to back favourites. For starters I have a rule of never backing the favourite in a handicap – no matter how good a thing it appears to be.

The whole point of a handicap is to give all horses an equal chance of winning – and if the favourite can only win two races in five at best in other races, the market isn’t going to have much of a chance of picking the winner when the better horses are carrying extra weights.

The second rule of when not to bet on favourites is when the odds outweigh the risk. If all favourites have a less than fifty-fifty chance of winning, it makes sense to ignore races where the odds say it’s more than fifty-fifty – ie, when the betting market makes it odds-on.

Following these rules inevitably means you’ll miss out on a few winners. But you’ll save a lot more in the long run.

The role of favourites in successful betting
The converse of this is that favourites represent far better value when the bookies are offering odds-against about them, and in non-handicaps.

Even then, though, a horse’s favouritism shouldn’t be taken for granted and other things – like sensible staking plans, and a judicious weighing up of a favourite’s principal opponents in a race – should be taken into consideration.

Short-priced favourites also have a use, because if a bookie is trying to discourage us from backing the jolly they’ll generally bump up the prices of its opponents – and that’s where you can often find true value.

We may look at these things another day. But it’s worth keeping an eye on the fate of favourites in a day’s racing – and seeing whether they would have been worth betting on.

Bookie William Hill took a £100 bet at those odds from Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist at Imperial College, London, and outspoken long-range weather forecaster, who thinks that this will happen.

Corbyn recently wrote to Parliament saying, “Global warming is over and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change, and it is time the government acknowledged this”.

His thoughts are in stark contrast to the Met Office’s predictions that 2009 will be one of the warmest five years on record.  Professor Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, said, “The fact that 2009, like 2008, will not break records does not mean that global warming has gone away.”

However, an increasingly loud body of scientific opinion is arguing that the world is in fact cooling, and that the relatively recent changes in the earth’s temperature are caused by sun spots rather than human activity.
American Spectator made hay with the recent inability of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to come up with a successor to the Kyoto treaty in Poznan, Poland, during its December conference.

Global warming denials in the USA
To be honest, it seems most of the anti-global warming arguments come from the US – and given the state of their economy, it’s hardly surprising.

The world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases is simply in no fit state to take on an inefficient carmaking industry, which lives and breathes carbon emissions and is propped up politically for the sake of saving face internationally.

It’s no surprise that there are plenty of vested interests shouting that the country’s gorging itself on fossil fuels isn’t screwing up the rest of the planet.

That said, George W Bush and his cronies are heading out of office in a week, and Democrat Barack Obama coming in. I think it’s fair to say that most people who expect Obama to walk on water will be disappointed, but he’s still likely to accept that global warming is a) man-made, and b) a very real danger.

Gordon Brown is likely to cosy up to Obama far more than he did Bush, and so I think it’s fairly unlikely that he’ll stand up in Parliament and say global warming doesn’t exist. I won’t be rushing for the 10/1 odds just yet.

I think it’s about as unlikely as a long-range weather forecaster getting a prediction right.