Spread betting is any of various types of wagering on the outcome of an event where the pay-off is based on the accuracy of the wager, rather than a simple "win or lose" outcome, such as fixed-odds betting or parimutuel betting.
In probability theory, odds provide a measure of the likelihood of a particular outcome. When specific events are equally likely, odds are calculated as the ratio of the number of events that produce that outcome to the number that do not. Odds are commonly used in gambling and statistics.
Matthew Paul Le Tissier is a former professional footballer who played as a midfielder. Le Tissier spent his entire professional club career with Southampton, before turning to non-League football in 2002; his loyalty garnered special affection from Southampton's fans who nicknamed him "Le God".
In organized sports, match fixing is the act of playing or officiating a contest with the intention of achieving a pre-determined result, violating the rules of the game and often the law. There are many reasons why match fixing might take place, including receiving bribes from bookmakers or sports bettors, and blackmail. Competitors may also intentionally perform poorly to gain a future advantage, such as a better draft pick or to face an easier opponent in a later round of competition. A player might also play poorly to rig a handicap system.
Anne LaBarr Duke is an American former professional poker player and author in cognitive-behavioral decision science and decision education. She holds a World Series of Poker (WSOP) gold bracelet from 2004 and used to be the leading money winner among women in WSOP history, and is still in the top five as of April 2023, despite being retired from poker, last cashing at a tournament 2010. Duke won the 2004 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions and the National Heads-Up Poker Championship in 2010. She has written a number of instructional books for poker players, including Decide to Play Great Poker and The Middle Zone, and she published her autobiography, How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed, and Won Millions at the World Series of Poker, in 2005. Duke also authored two books on decision-making, Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts, and How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices.
Huckleberry ''Huck'' Seed is an American professional poker player best known for winning the Main Event of the 1996 World Series of Poker.
Scenario paintball is a colloquialism used to represent a diverse array of paintball events that encompass many themes that may include historical re-enactments, movies, current pop culture, futuristic or video game simulations, and more. Others have no theme at all. They frequently feature game mechanics such as "medics" and "snipers" and "helicopters" carried out through various simulations. The common denominator for this type of play is anywhere from 75 to 5000 players, with at least 6 hours of continuous play. These events average 12 hours of game play across a weekend in 2 major play periods. The longest and most challenging events run 24 hours straight with no breaks, with elite players covering ultra marathon distances. Instead of playing on a single field at a venue, all fields are combined into one continuous playable area. To further enhance the theme of a game, field locations may be named for important story locations, and props of various sorts are added to the game. These may be objects that players collect for points, or even vehicles that take part in the fighting, like paintball tanks. Players may don costumes specific to the theme, such as historic military uniforms or other costumes.
Sports betting is the activity of predicting sports results and placing a wager on the outcome.
Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which the advantage is calculated. In principle, a more experienced participant is disadvantaged, or a less experienced or capable participant is advantaged, in order to make it possible for the less experienced participant to win whilst maintaining fairness. Handicapping is used in scoring many games and competitive sports, including go, shogi, chess, croquet, golf, bowling, polo, basketball, and track and field events. Handicap races are common in clubs which encourage all levels of participants, such as swimming or in cycling clubs and sailing clubs, or which allow participants with a variety of standards of equipment. Often races, contests or tournaments where this practice is competitively employed are known as Handicaps.
A parlay, accumulator, combo bet, or multi is a single bet that links together two or more individual wagers, usually seen in sports betting. Winning the parlay is dependent on all of those wagers winning together. If any of the bets in the parlay lose, the entire parlay loses. If any of the plays in the parlay ties, or "pushes", the parlay reverts to a lower number of wagers with the payout odds reducing accordingly. Parlay bets are high-risk, high-reward; linking the possibilities drastically reduces the chance of the bet paying off overall. The benefit of the parlay is that there are much higher pay-offs, although as usual, casinos and bookkeepers offering parlays often exploit the poor calculation of gamblers by not increasing the pay-out as much as the odds truly demand, with the effect of the house edge increasing in parlays.
2008 Rugby League World Cup qualifying matches took place from April 2006 to November 2007. Of the ten teams to compete in the 2008 Rugby League World Cup, five of them qualified based on their performance in these matches. The other five teams had qualified automatically.
Three-ball is a folk game of pool played with any three standard pool object balls and cue ball. The game is frequently gambled upon. The goal is to pocket the three object balls in as few shots as possible. The game involves a somewhat more significant amount of luck than either nine-ball or eight-ball, because of the disproportionate value of pocketing balls on the break shot and increased difficulty of doing so. In some areas and subcultures, such as the Asian-American youth-dominated pool hall scene of San Francisco, California, three-ball is a popular local tournament game.
Advantage gambling, or advantage play, refers to legal methods used to gain an advantage while gambling, in contrast to cheating. The term usually refers to house-banked casino games, but can also refer to games played against other players, such as poker. Someone who practices advantage gambling is often referred to as an advantage player, or AP. Unlike cheating, which is by definition illegal, advantage play exploits innate characteristics of a particular game to give the player an advantage relative to the house or other players. While not illegal, advantage play may result in players being banned by certain casinos.
Ryan Tandy was an international rugby league footballer who played in the 2000s and 2010s. He played as a prop in the National Rugby League (NRL) for the St. George Illawarra Dragons, South Sydney Rabbitohs, Wests Tigers, Melbourne Storm, and the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs, and in the Super League for Hull Kingston Rovers. He was banned from playing professional rugby league in Australia after being found guilty of spot-fixing during a match in 2010, and in 2014 died of a suspected drug overdose.
The Pakistan cricket team toured England from 29 July to 22 September 2010. The tour consisted of four Tests, two Twenty20s (T20) and five One Day Internationals (ODIs). The first Test of the series, at Trent Bridge, was the 900th Test match to be played by England.
Spot-fixing is illegal activity in a sport in which a specific aspect of a game, unrelated to the final result but upon which a betting market exists, is fixed in an attempt to ensure a certain result in a proposition bet. Examples include something as minor as timing a no ball or wide delivery in cricket or timing the first throw-in or corner in association football.
The Pakistan cricket spot-fixing scandal was a sports scandal that occurred during a Test match between England and Pakistan at Lord's, London, in August 2010. The scandal centered on three members of Pakistan's national cricket team, who were convicted of taking bribes from a bookmaker, Mazhar Majeed, to deliberately bowl no-balls at certain pre-arranged moments during the Test.
The following is a glossary of terms used in card games. Besides the terms listed here, there are thousands of common and uncommon slang terms. Terms in this glossary should not be game-specific, but apply to a wide range of card games played with non-proprietary packs. It should not include terms solely related to casino or banking games. For glossaries that relate primarily to one game or family of similar games, see Game-specific glossaries.
The Counter-Strike match fixing scandal was a 2014 match fixing scandal in the North American professional scene of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). It involved a match between two teams, iBUYPOWER and NetCodeGuides.com, where questionable and unsportsmanlike performance from the team iBUYPOWER, then considered the best North American team, drew suspicion, resulting in a loss for the team; allegations quickly surfaced afterwards that the match was fixed. More decisive evidence and punishments would come half a year later, after an expository article was published by esports journalist Richard Lewis.
Cheating in esports is a deliberate violation of the rules of an esports governing body or other behavior that is intended to give an unfair advantage to a player or team. At its core, esports are video game competitions in an organized, competitive environment. Tournaments often pay out prize money to the highest placing teams in these events, giving players an incentive to cheat. Commonly cited instances of cheating include the use of software cheats, such as aimbots and wallhacks, exploitation of bugs, use of performance-enhancing drugs, such as Ritalin and Adderall, and match fixing.
