In the world of gambling, there are all sorts of things that you can place wagers on. If you’re watching a football match, you can bet on the likes of which team will win the next throw-in, for example. If you’ve got a child that you think is likely to be some sort of sporting prodigy, you can have a punt on them achieving some sort of success during their lives.
What you might not know is whether or not you’re allowed to bet on yourself. When we say that, we’re not talking about someone being confident in their ability to succeed, but rather placing a literal bet with a bookmaker.
The answer, as you might imagine for such a topic, is a complex one. Athletes in many sports are not allowed to place bets of any kind, let alone wagers on their own success. Doing so has seen players such as Joey Barton and Ivan Toney issued lengthy bans from football.
If you’re an amateur, however, there isn’t anything stopping you from placing a bet on yourself to succeed at something. The only thing that you’ll need to consider is whether or not the odds that you’re likely to get will make it worthwhile investing your money on such a bet in the first place, but the more you can tell the bookies the better.
Have A Little Faith
There is no reason to think that you’re not going to be a success at something if you set your mind to it. Whatever it is that you’re doing in life, you have the ability to be amazing at it if you work hard enough. For some people, that will involve them being top athletes or sports people in their chosen field, whilst for others it will be playing gigs at their local pub.
Whatever it is that you’re doing with your life, you should commit and back yourself to be successful at it. What you might also want to do is to put some financial backing behind your faith in yourself by placing a bet on your success.
You could choose to place a bet that you’re going to win an Oscar, for example. Maybe you think you’re talented enough to win a Grammy. It is more than a little bit possible that you’re going to take part in the London Marathon and would like to place a wager on finishing in the top 100 people to complete the race.
Whatever it is you think you can achieve, you are free to have the faith in yourself that you’re able to do it and get in touch with a bookmaker to ask for odds on it happening. They will almost certainly offer you some, but what they offer you may not thrill and delight.
Bookmakers Don’t Have To Be Generous
Because, in the vast majority of instances, you are not a famous person, bookmakers won’t know the slightest thing about you. As a result, you won’t find odds on yourself finishing in the top 100 of the London Marathon anywhere on your chosen bookmaker’s homepage.
Instead, you will need to get in touch with them and ask them for the odds that they’d be willing to offer you to be successful according to the aims that you’ve set for yourself. The fact that you’re contacting them directly means that other bookies won’t be offering odds, so they have no need to be competitive in the pricing up of their odds.
The more information you’re able to offer your bookmaker of choice, the more they’re going to be able to take into account when they’re pricing up the odds that they offer you on the market that you’re looking to place a bet on. If you can send them information about your Personal Bests, for example, then they’ll be able to add that into their model when drawing up prices.
If you’ve run in marathons previously, the facts around how you’ve got on will be helpful to the bookmaker when they’re investigating the odds that they’re going to offer you on your possible achievement for you to place you wager on.
The Tories That Bet On Themselves
If you’ve ever followed politics with any sort of close interest, you won’t be overly surprised to learn that a lot of Conservative & Unionist Party members are full of their own sense of self-importance. Never could that be more clearly seen than in the fact that Chris Kelly and Justin Tomlinson placed bets on themselves becoming Prime Minister back when they were studying together at Oxford Brookes University towards the turn of the millennium. Tomlinson was offered odds of 10,000/1, placing two £50 wagers on the outcome when he was 21 and Kelly was 20.
That meant that they were liable to win as much as £500,000 should one of them become Prime Minister within 40 years of the bet being placed. Whilst William Hill would have been confident in their pricing when the bet was first offered, it is likely that they twitched a little bit when the pair of them were 1/6 favourites to win their constituencies back in the 2010 General Election.
There might also have been some conversations about what they should do when the Tory Party seemed to be going through leaders like most people use underwear during the tenures of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
The chances of the bookmaker having to pay out on Chris Kelly reduced dramatically in 2014, which was when he decided to stand down as a Member of Parliament and not returning since. Things weren’t quite as clear cut for Justin Tomlinson, however. He served as the Minister of State for Disabled People, Work and Health between 2019 and 2021, representing the North Swindon constituency since his election in 2010.
Though he was accused of ‘bullying and belittling’ people at Conservative Campaign Headquarters in February of 2022, it is unlikely that anyone in the Tory Party would see that as a reason for him not to become the Prime Minister at some point.