Scores On The Doors

Time to catch a (very quick) breath and see where we are with the groups all finished :

Match bets : 2/6, -2 points. The Asian handicap underdog bets didn't work out.

Group betting : +7 points as follows

A, lay Germany to win, - 3.2 points. I'm still perplexed that Poland didn't try to win their game against Germany, and annoyed that Ecuador rested five players in theirs. Still, them's the breaks.
D, Portugal to win, + 1.6 . Comfy in the end.
F, Australia to qualify, + 6 . In hindsight this was my best bet so far, good value @ 2/1 whatever happened.
G, lay France to win, + 5.7 . No wait, this was the best :-).
H, lay Spain to win, - 3.1 . Fair enough, this went tits up.

Final four : -2 points so far, but still in play as follows

Poland, - 2. Less said the better.
Argentina, 3 pts @ 3.0, currently 1.78 and looking good.
Italy, 3 pts @ 3.2, currently 1.76, not playing so well but the draw has opened up exactly as planned.
England, 3 pts @ 2.6, currently 2.44. Well, they're still in.

Other bets :

Brazil to win, 10 pts @ 4.0, currently 4.4. Argentina look a major threat.
Crouch to be England's top scorer, 3 pts @ 6.8, currently 5. Trailing Gerrard by one and may well be left out of the next game, but still in with a shout.

All in all, a massive 3 points up and the in play bets have generally shortened. In fact I'm significantly more up than that thanks to a (sadly undocumented) side-bet with Titmus on the Italy-Ghana game. And that was blood money :-)

Into the second round, I'm already funking for England, Argentina, Italy and Brazil so let's just have some bets on the other games for interest.

Germany to win in 90 mins, 2 pts @ 1.67
Ukraine to qualify, 2 pts @ whatever I can get closer to kickoff
Holland to qualify, 2 pts @ 1.74
Spain to win in 90 mins, 3 pts @ 2.4