Author: 6000

Bet that’s irritating

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Yes, it is.

I don’t know a lot about rugby (see yesterday’s post), and it seems that I don’t know a lot about betting on rugby either.

Earlier in the week, in an effort to learn more about rugby, I have a look at what the bookies thought might happen in the RWC quarter finals. The bookies are nearly always right in these matters, and that’s why they are still all in business. I popped a 4-way accumulator on the four matches (which I won, but not much) and then I looked at the SA v Japan fixture. I felt that this one was going to be close. SA underperform fairly regularly at RWC tournaments (often due to the ref – and I checked that there was going to be a ref in this match), and Japan have been the surprise package of the World Cup so far. I was therefore amazed to see that I could get ridiculous odds for the points difference being 0-27. Fourteen to one. Fourteen!

“I’m having some of that,” I thought, as I had some of that.

It was only later in the week that I finally understood what I had actually bet on. Not the points difference between the teams (i.e. the winning margin), but the total number of points scored in the match.

Oops.

“Never mind, can’t do much about it now,” I thought, neither minding nor doing anything about it now.

It’s not like you can change your mind on these things (well, you can, but you don’t get your money back). I considered it a sign and tried to forget about it. Until, that is, that I wandered in from the garden at half time today and noted that the score was only 5-3.

Sadly, Japan capitulated a little in the second half, and it seems that my bet went out of the window with about 10 minutes to go.

The final score was 26-3, meaning that I lost my bet (and an awful lot of winnings) by just 2 points. Injurious, sure.
However, insult was very much added to that injury when I realised that my initial prediction  (that the points margin would be less than 27) proved to have absolutely correct and also absolutely without value, since I hadn’t actually placed a bet on that happening any more. I’d placed the bet on something that didn’t happen instead.

I think I’ll stick to football in future. Already, I have decided that both the winning margin and the total number of goals in today’s ManU v Liverpool game will be less than 27.

Safety first.

 

Borrowed tweet sums me up

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England beat Australia in the Rugby World Cup quarter final:

I mean… it’s great. Well done, boys and all that, but… that’s about all.

I will be happy with two more wins in the competition, but my Alan Partridge shrug will remain.

Sprints

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I added some sprints to my workout at the gym today. Sprints in my workout at the gym are good because short sprints are an integral part of the weekly 5-a-side football that keeps me young(-ish).

Today probably wasn’t the best day to start them, though. There was clearly a problem with the aircon at the gym and it was uncomfortably warm in there. I tired more quickly than I might usually have done, and with all the sweating and the shortness of breath, I was just waiting for the chest pains to kick in for the myocardial infarction trifecta.

I did consider giving up but “well, it was a bit warm” really didn’t cut it as anything other than a pathetic excuse when I played it back in my head, so I kept going. Good for me.

I used a free-running machine* for my sprints. It was the first time I’ve used one. I don’t like running on treadmills and I can now tell you that I don’t like running on free-running machines either. I can run on trails, tracks, grass and tarmac with no issue, but I constantly felt like I was having to concentrate just to not fall off the thing. Lean a bit forward and it takes off like a jet, lean slightly backwards and it almost instantly stops, like some wild, mutant Segway.

18kph for 150m never felt so dangerous. Eliud Kipchoge would never have got anywhere near 26 miles on a Virgin Active free-running machine. Every sprint was like a 30 second panic attack. (Although obviously, it would probably have taken him a lot less than 30 seconds.)

Records show that my heart rate topped 180bpm, but probably only 150 of them were due to the exercise, the balance being made up by sheer terror.

I’m proud of myself for being so stupid overcoming my fears and doing several (or more) repeats, though. My legs feel tired, but good tired, and I can actually believe that after a few more goes on the scary machine, I’ll be going a bit faster on the football field.

Assuming that I don’t break some important bones while doing it.

 

* aka:”A Self-Powered Treadmill”

Turk 2

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A special post for the graphs produced by @arfness on the northern border incursion into my twitter account my new found Turkish twitter followers.

This one, showing the number of accounts following me who have listed Turkish as their first language.

There were those two on the left when I went to bed last night. And then, suddenly… there were those others as well.

And this one, showing how the the first language of my followers “changed somewhat”:

Decent, normal organic growth of followers on the left, main language: sick-coloured English. Then MASSIVE growth (shape of top of graph is shape of top of Table Mountain), mainly cerise-coloured Turkish.

What’s going on? Maybe this:

Over the last couple of days, tweets promoting Turkey’s invasion of Syria containing non-sequitur mentions of trending topics and hashtags have started to pop up, mostly from accounts with few followers created July 2019 or later.

So yes, it’s possible that my twitter account is being used to add legitimacy to these Turkish-based accounts, so that they can continue to spread their pro-Turkey propaganda. It’s a bit like money-laundering, but without any financial gain. Certainly for me.

What happens next? Probably nothing, but then who knows?

I’ll keep you informed.

 

UPDATE: Interesting article on Twitter bots (may also include Turks).

 

Thanks @arfness.

Turked

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Overnight, around 6,000 Turkish-based bots followed me on Twitter.

Here are just a few of them…

The number is wholly coincidental (and will soon be wholly incorrect, as I’m still accumulating high quality followers from Istanbul even as I write).

I don’t know exactly why this is happening, but just for safety’s sake, I’m going to limit my tweeting pertaining to the current situation in Northern Syria for the moment, as I’m concerned that any three letter codeword involving a P and a couple of Ks could set them all off which would make my account even more unusable.

Hopefully, twitter will note this unusual activity and will clamp down on them (and not me), allowing me to return to my regular* (and entirely justified) criticism of R3c3p Erd0gan.

 

UPDATE: Despite some amazing data analysis by @arfness, we’re still none the wiser. He did make some amazing graphs though.

* never mentioned him before.