How a spread better can save £288,400

Sports spread betting can be fun and profitable. But get it wrong, and it can be disastrously expensive. Tim Bennett relays a cautionary tale of massive losses, and explains how you can avoid doing the same thing.

"Every wicket felt like a stab in the heart. By the end of the night I felt like I'd been scalped". That's how the former Liverpool midfielder and German international footballer Dieter ('Didi') Hamann describes in his recent autobiography a costly spread bet on the outcome of a cricket match between Australia and South Africa. It cost him £288,400. Clearly, no-one wants to lose that sort of money ever, let alone as fast as he did. So what was the bet he put on, and how can new sports spread betters ensure they don't follow his disastrous example?

Sports spread betting can be fun and profitable. There are countless sports to bet on these days rugby, cricket, tennis, football, snooker - you name it. A popular football match, for example, could attract over 100 different types of bet, ranging from the number of goals score, to the number of corners, penalties, and even the number of yards covered by a particular player!

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Tim graduated with a history degree from Cambridge University in 1989 and, after a year of travelling, joined the financial services firm Ernst and Young in 1990, qualifying as a chartered accountant in 1994.

He then moved into financial markets training, designing and running a variety of courses at graduate level and beyond for a range of organisations including the Securities and Investment Institute and UBS. He joined MoneyWeek in 2007.