Golf is added for 2016 and 2020 Olympic

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After the long wait, golf will be returning to the Olympics at the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Golf has been reinstated for the 2016 and 2020 Games after a vote by the International Olympic Committee. The Golf sport has received large support in votes after top athletes and officials shown their support and presentation, including a taped video message from Tiger Woods which he has indicated that he would play in the Olympics if golf were accepted for 2016.

"There are millions of young golfers worldwide who would be proud to represent their country," Woods said from the Presidents Cup in San Francisco. "It would be an honor for anyone who plays this game to become an Olympian."

Golf was approved 63-27 with two abstentions and this certainly a great news to all golf fans!

Below is the OMEGA TV spot welcomes golf back to the Olympic Games:

Sports Betting Guide Post

Building a Healthy Sports Betting Habit

It is a known fact for people to have different hobbies and interests that they are very passionate about. However, as in all things, everything done in excess can already be bad for the person. The same is true for sports betting, which obviously can start as a plain leisure activity, but later on might tend to become a harmful addiction if not done judiciously.

Here are some of the most common signs that a bettor has already acquired a harmful gambling obsession:

•  If he uses money supposedly set for paying bills on gambling 
•  If he bets an amount that is beyond what he can bear to lose
•  If he goes beyond the budget or limit that he had set to make up for his losing streak
•  If he experiences lack of sleep over gambling
•  If he resorts into lying especially to loved ones about bet losses

These harmful signs are not necessarily unique to losers alone. There is also a good chance that you can see these awful symptoms among winning sports bettors. You can be a winner and yet suffer from severe gambling obsession. Nevertheless, winner or not, the most important thing for all bettors to remember is to adopt a healthy sports betting habit.

Listen to Family or Friends' Advice before you bet!
If it is your family and friends talking to you about your sports betting activities, then you cannot disregard their words. Listen to them because these people have genuine concern for you and they probably see that’s something wrong already. They may be worried that your passion for gambling has led to harmful sports betting habits so they will point out observations that you may not notice. Keep your mind open to their observations because they tend to be more objective. Someone who has gambling addiction will tend to be short-sighted and less objective so it pays to have an open mind to family or friends’ advice. It is better to discuss with them about these things and avoid being defensive so that you can evoke a healthy sports betting habit.

Sometimes, the money matter doesn’t come if you’re on the winning side. What create the problem usually is if you start spending too much time on this gambling hobby; time that is more than what is considered moderate. This doesn’t come as a surprise though since people usually tend to devote a lot of their time doing things that they enjoy the most.

In sports betting, your time is usually consumed because of several activities on top of the actual betting. First, you’ll need to constantly monitor the games and statistics particularly if you’re going to do handicap. Then, there’s also this need to research and improve your mastery of the game so you try to subscribe to several online forums and articles. You might also be persistently looking around to know which sports book provide the best value. And then, once you’ve placed in your bets you’ll of course be compulsively monitoring the games you have your stakes on so you know right away how much money you have gained or lost.

All these things contribute to that perception of your loved ones that you have unhealthy sports betting habits. Imagine them seeing you deal with all these sports-betting activities almost every second of your time. Hence, no one can blame them if they think that this lifestyle is harmful for you, regardless if you’re on a winning roll.

And so, the key solution to this problem is adopting a healthy sports betting habit. There is of course nothing wrong about betting, it just needs to be done in moderation. While studying sports betting continuously is a good practice, it does not necessarily require you to do it every day. What you can do is to come up with a schedule where you only assign a specific date for your research and studying. Moreover, there’s no use for you to monitor the games 24 by 7 because realistically, it will not help you win or lose the game even if you monitor it real-time. It’s better to just spend your time instead on doing other exciting activities like going out. And even while you’re out and not monitoring the game on TV, avoid obsessing on checking out the result of the game via other mobile devices.

So again, no one doubts that sportsbetting is an enjoyable and money-making hobby. But the key thing to remember is that you should do it in moderation. And if the time comes when it is your family or friends telling you that you are taking it too far already, there’s a good chance they are right.

Record Your Sports Bet

Keep Track of All Sports Bet

All serious or professional sports bettors practice the habit of keeping track of each of their bets. If you intend to be one, then this practice is something you must also consider. Keeping records of all your sports bets allow you to monitor and check your previous moves regularly. Some lazy or uncommitted bettors will say that they don’t need to manually keep a record because they won’t forget their bets. These people also tend to focus solely on their bet earnings, which is something that they don’t need to write down because they can conveniently monitor this via their account balance. However, to be a serious bettor, you must realize the importance of keeping records of your bets, especially when it comes to analyzing future trends and bet strategies.

An effective and very convenient way of tracking your bets is by using a computer spreadsheet, with the likes of MS Excel, EditGrid and other common versions such as Google Documents. You are already using the computer anyway as you manage your sports bets online, so it should be more convenient to deal with computer spreadsheets compared to keeping records the old school way, notebook and pen that is. There’s nothing wrong if you prefer using the latter. But we highly recommend the spreadsheet programs instead so you’ll be able to sort and filter all your data with more ease, not to mention that it is also easier to analyze the trends in this way.

These electronic spreadsheets are widely available today, and utilizing the full features of a program like MS Excel will turn out more helpful in your data gathering and analysis especially long term wise. For some of those programs, it may take a while to learn and master but nevertheless, the practicality and convenience it offers once you get the hang of it seems to prove it’s worth it. The important thing is gradually getting the habit of using spreadsheets and just experiment on which specific program works best for you, then stick with it.

Record the Important Elements of Your Betting Data

Earlier we have already established the necessity to rigorously and consistently record each of your bets. Additionally, recording your bets will not mean anything if you don’t know how to filter the important data and decide what to record. A good betting spreadsheet must contain these fundamental elements so that your data becomes meaningful:

1. Date of bet
2. The sport you joined
3. Sportsbook
4. Betting classification (i.e. Total, Halftime, Spread, Moneyline, Teaser, etc.)
5. Betting line
6. Actual bet amount (plus its percentage equivalent of your total bankroll)
7. Outcome

Now, for those who do playing line moves and deal with steam betting, it is also essential to include these two:

8. Opening Line
9. Closing Line

Offhand, some may think it’s very tedious and time consuming to record this much data every time. However, once you get the hang of recording your betting data then it’s going to be a piece of cake and the habit of recording will just come out naturally each time you make a bet.
As your spreadsheet data gets updated, you will be able to start with monitoring your betting results. Be careful not to under or over-estimate your analysis if your data spreadsheet is still very small to begin with. Just like any other study or data tracking, you will need a substantial quantity of data first before it can be statistically telling and meaningful. The important thing is to continuously grow and update your betting spreadsheet so you can build a reliable portfolio after some time. Refrain from stopping just because you got around 10-30 betting results as betting assumptions will be premature at this point.

Gain Profitable Betting Opportunities from your Spreadsheet

The moment your sports bet portfolio gets on going regularly, you have formidably increased your chances of winning in your bets and beating the bookies. This is because once you have your betting history, you get to see in full scale all the sports you joined, as well as find out what betting types you are beating or losing. With your spreadsheet, you can find out if you are really winning, especially for those who might have an increasing bankroll and yet still losing big time in the long run due to halftime betting.

Losing Even When Winning at Sports Betting

You’re Still Losing Even When You’re Winning

At sports betting, your main goal is always to go for spread bets and beat the bookies. Bettors usually do this by handicapping with a practical long-term target of getting 55% winners. Once this skill is mastered, one would then assume that you must devote all of your time doing sports betting because this is the key to winning huge money and becoming extremely wealthy. Getting 55% winners is considered an exclusive skill.

However, 55% winners doesn’t guarantee wins a hundred percent of the time. There will still be instances of losing that can challenge a player’s emotions and discipline. The worst part that you have probably not realized yet is that even though you’re with 55% winners, you will still find yourself in an overall losing streak on most games. You might take this as quite a shock, but there is truth in this. And we can explain this phenomenon with this simple answer: Juice.

In the data below, you can see the long-term percentage trend of 55% wins from handicapping. The data shows a player’s top 4 bets in a day’s average.

 

Wins	Losses	Percentage
4	0	9.15%
3	1	29.95%
2	2	36.75%
1	3	20.05%
0	4	4.10%

What this data shows is that on an average, the player has 9.15% chance of winning in all the 4 picks, whereas there’s 20.05% occurrence that he will win in 1 bet and lose in all the 3, so on and so forth.

Hence, if we analyze the data in greater detail, it will show us that there’s around 60.9% chance that a bettor on 55% winner is actually losing money. Easily you can see that losing happens on that 4.10% and 20.05% rows, but the reason why the 36.75% row where winning and losing is tied 2 for 2 is included in the losing percentage is that this does not contribute to your juice. So what happens is that you will end up with less money compared to your starting amount.

In essence, even for an exceptional spread bettor, when he does his top 4 bets, there is 60% occurrence of losing. If you want to remain on top of your game then you have to be emotionally and mentally prepared for this fact. If you do not accept this because whenever you are in a losing streak then your emotions will get the best of you and all that you’d want to do is make up for all your losses. This will be very damaging to your betting habits, not to mention to your money.

Avoid Chasing Your Losses

Chasing off your losses is never healthy, however minor you may treat it. In our example, the 55% bettor for instance gets a shaky trend with 0-4 or 1-3 losses over wins. He will probably try betting on 5 instead of the usual top 4 plays. He may not realize the harm in this at first but he is forgetting that he is only a 55% bettor within top 4 picks. Thus, his betting percentage relatively deceases as he moves to top 5 picks. He puts himself in an even unfriendly situation.

All in all, each bettor must master their emotions and discipline whenever they engage in any game, particularly handicapping, because this is key driver to succeeding in the long run.

2014 Brazil World Cup The Preliminary Draw results

Image by Getty Images

 FIFA.com rounds up the results from the Preliminary Draw which took place at the Marina da Gloria in Rio de Janeiro on Saturday 30 July.

Intercontinental play-offs Asia – South America
North, Central America and the Caribbean - Oceania

African Zone Draw Group A: South Africa, Botswana, Central African Republic, Somalia or Ethiopia
Group B: Tunisia, Cape Verde Islands, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea or Madagascar
Group C: Côte d'Ivoire, Morocco, Gambia, Chad or Tanzania
Group D: Ghana, Zambia, Sudan, Lesotho or Burundi
Group E: Burkina Faso, Gabon, Niger, Sao Tome e Principe or Congo
Group F: Nigeria, Malawi, Seychelles or Kenya, Djibouti or Namibia
Group G: Egypt, Guinea, Zimbabwe, Comoros or Mozambique
Group H: Algeria, Mali, Benin, Eritrea or Rwanda
Group I: Cameroon, Libya, Guinea-Bissau or Togo, Swaziland or Congo DR
Group J: Senegal, Uganda, Angola, Mauritius or Liberia

Asian Zone Draw Group A: China, Jordan, Iraq, Singapore
Group B: Korea Republic, Kuwait, UAE, Lebanon
Group C: Japan, Uzbekistan, Syria, Korea DPR
Group D: Australia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Thailand
Group E: Iran, Qatar, Bahrain, Indonesia

North, Central America and the Caribbean Zone Draw (Round Two) Group A: El Salvador, Surinam, Cayman Islands, Dominican Republic
Group B: Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Barbados, Bermuda
Group C: Panama, Dominica, Nicaragua, Bahamas
Group D: Canada, St. Kitts and Nevis, Puerto Rico, St Lucia
Group E: Grenada, Guatemala, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize
Group F: Haiti, Antigua and Barbuda, Curacao, US Virgin Islands

North, Central America and the Caribbean Zone Draw (Round Three) Group A: USA, Jamaica, Winner of R2 Grp E, Winner of R2 Grp F
Group B: Mexico, Costa Rica, Winner of R2 Grp A, Winner of R2 Grp B
Group C: Honduras, Cuba, Winner of R2 Grp D, Winner of R2 Grp C

Oceanian Zone DrawGroup A: Vanuatu, New Caledonia, American Samoa/Cook Islands/Samoa or Tonga, Tahiti
Group B: Fiji, New Zealand, Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea

European Zone Draw Group A: Croatia, Serbia, Belgium, Scotland, Macedonia, Wales
Group B: Italy, Denmark, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Armenia, Malta.
Group C: Germany, Sweden, Republic of Ireland, Austria, Faroe Islands, Kazakhstan.
Group D: Netherlands, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Estonia, Andorra.
Group E: Norway, Slovenia, Switzerland, Albania, Cyprus, Iceland.
Group F: Portugal, Russia, Israel, Northern Ireland, Azerbaijan, Luxembourg
Group G: Greece, Slovakia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Lithuania, Latvia, Lichtenstein
Group H: England, Montenegro, Ukraine, Poland, Moldova, San Marino
Group I: Spain, France, Belarus, Georgia, Finland

Related articles

• World Cup 2014 preliminary draw - live! (guardian.co.uk)