The biggest gambling event of the season to date came in the last Premiership match of 2008 - Hull City versus Aston Villa on Tuesday evening.
Not Chelsea v Man Utd, or Liverpool against Man Utd, or Chelsea/Arsenal, but a really minor midweek evening game on Humberside.
A ScudamoreWorld Spectacular to take us into 2009, a latter day 1929.
This post focuses on this major gambling event and details the background to the market, the liquidity issues, the competitive gambles, the revealing signs and, furthermore, places such considerations in a broader context in relation to the Trading Tigers and the Premier League.
Hull City arrived at this corrupted match in the aftermath of another heavily criminalised entity - the 5-1 defeat at Manchester City on Boxing Day - when certain individuals involved with the Humberside club short-sold their team on the betting markets.
A sophisticated consortium of corruption would have chosen to lie low, wait until the storm had passed, and then re-instigate future criminalities away from the public gaze.
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So, just four days after landing one of the biggest insider gambles in recent memory, the Trading Tigers decided to undertake proprietary insider trading on the Sky televised match against Villa.
This was a mistake on every level, and represents short-termism in extremis.
Firstly, all analysts and insiders who missed out on the first event were very focused on the follow-up - hence, the attempted corruption was both visible and liable to market distortions due to the reactive trading generated by the Trading Tigers' market activities.
Secondly, bookmakers do not respond well to being fleeced, and a major dynamic was created opposing the Hull City insider gamble on a systemic level.
But the market was competitive - there were confrontational market positions being taken by active insiders in the event.
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This proved to be disastrous both for Hull and their illicit trading, and the integrity of the game in front of the global television audience.
The pre-match market was a fascinating example of the bluff and counter-bluff that exists in all corrupt gaming environments, think poker.
All of the early money globally was on Villa, a huge one-way gamble in Asia was particularly significant. On the day of the match, this gamble was inversed although the most skilled market makers stayed true to the omnipotence of the original dynamics.
By Kick-Off, a momentous and reciprocal one-way market had offset some of the earlier price movements but, significantly, certain insiders kept nibbling away at the Villa price as it inflated in reaction to the plunge on Hull.
And so the game, if that has not become a misnomer of some magnitude...
We have been told certain aspects of this match that we are not able to repeat in this place and skilled subscribers will need all of their reading-between-the-line skills to determine the true nature of this ScudamoreWorld neohyperreality.
For starters, the PGMOB squad of officials had differing agendas internally - no linkages in this place, but it should be noted that Steve Bennett was referee, Howard Webb was the 4th Official, A. Halliday and P. Tierney were the assistants while the faceless PGMOB observer was one R. Pearson.
The criminalised fraternity at Hull City backed themselves in the market.
The bookmakers treated the event as an end-of-year private poker table - the match outcome was determined by the machinations of the market-makers.
One of the inevitable losers in this battle of cornering a market was the SkyBet trading entity, the least professional of the leading outfits competing to control the market.
The monitoring of Mr Andy Gray's commentary neatly gave us a link into the atmosphere in Harrogate.
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As the gamble developed, Gray started losing the plot with regard to match referee Bennett - there was a vacuum of silence when Zayatte volleyed in his 88th minute own goal.
Gray had lost a mint!
There was even a poetry to this initial climax in that 88 is the most magical market number in the Far East, think Mansion 88 etc...
The really key moment was yet to occur, however.
Ah, the penalty incident...
For the uninitiated, Bennett gave a penalty to Hull City for a fictitious handball in injury time. His assistant, Mr Halliday, made no signal to indicate that he thought that the decision was incorrect.
The Villa players very reasonably protested.
From what we have been told, Mr Pearson was monitoring the match in an office in the stadium.
There were conversations between Bennett, Webb and Pearson.
Information from video technology off the field of play was used to change the neohyperreality happening on the field of play, as Bennett changed his mind and Villa secured their 1-0 triumph.
Before we go onto the more serious issues relating to this matter, it must be stated that, despite the correct decision having eventually been made, this process was illegal under the Premier League rules.
Video monitors were removed from the technical areas this season after managers became riled after seeing visual evidence of corruptions against their interests.
There is nothing that allows the PGMOB to be monitoring matches in this manner.
Villa captain Gareth Barry: "... whoever he [Bennett] was listening too, he made the right decision."
Hull City chairman Paul Duffen: "All we are saying is that the events bring into question who exactly did influence the referee. I would like a report from the match officials and confirmation of who was talking in the earpiece. There is a concern that somebody (else) was using video evidence. We are most concerned about the integrity of the competition and that some form of video evidence isn't being introduced by officials on a discretionary basis."
And this is the key point.
It is entirely irrelevant that an injustice and an associated insider gamble were thwarted by technology.
It is the discretionary use of illegal apparatus that is the issue.
Who allows invisible and faceless PGMOB officials this degree of power over match outcomes?
Exactly who are all these faceless ones?
The issues related to the selective use of such information are paramount.
Match outcomes, trophies, gambles could all be impacted upon by the use of illicit technology on a discretionary basis.
Absolutely not for this space, but we have noted numerous disturbing correlations with respect to the PGMOB match structures and areas of the game where such officials should have no contact.
At Dietrological/Football Is Fixed, we have demanded the use of video technologies to help to save the integrity of the sport since Day One.
We still hold this view.
The Premier League are, instead, moving in another direction - the placing of two retired match officials behind the goals to help with penalty area decisions.
Oh, and the illegal use of proprietary technology.
Does anybody actually think that placing Graeme Poll and Dermot Gallagher behind the goalposts will lead to a reduction in erroneous decisions?
No.
Does anybody think that the use of open source video technology with open-microphone linkage between the officials will lead to a massive reduction in erroneous decisions?
Yes.
With £1 billion betting markets, does anyone think that the integrity of the game is at stake if match decisions are being made by secretive, privileged consortia of individuals seemingly operating in as opaque a manner as is humanly possible?
Yes.
No-brainer.
Back to neohyperreality...
Duffen said he had spoken to Premier League chief executive Richard Scudamore, who "assured me he will ask some questions and come back to me."
And, while he is at it, perhaps he might like to provide a transcript of the conversations between Phil Dowd and his cohorts over the sending off of John Terry against Everton.
Arsène Wenger was livid at comments made on Setanta by Graeme Poll over Dowd talking with other individuals on a closed mike circuit. Poll claimed that it was valid in important decisions, like the sending off of the England captain.
Presumably, Poll also thinks that other 'important' issues are worthy of external input too...
And Wenger finally seems to be getting the picture. After the mugging at Aston Villa, he quavered: "I know exactly how it works here... I don't feel the need to elaborate any more."
Far too many matches in the Premiership, and in many other leagues around the world, have their outcomes determined before a ball is kicked in anger.
This is corruption.
Take the xmas programme in the senior English league.
Most market makers in Asia 'froze' the prices on the matches on the 28th, 29th and 30th, while the Boxing day gambling markets were played out for your festive delectation.
The theatre provided some spectacular outcomes aside from Hull's 5-1 defeat in Manchester.
West Ham scored 4 at Pompey, Stoke nearly held Man Utd, Villa held Arsenal, Liverpool hammered Bolton etc etc.
When the Asian markets reopened post-match, the average price adjustment for the next round of Premiership games was just 4 points.
Obviously, then the general dynamics kicked in and there was a reaction to the day's events.
But the very key point is this - the Asian market makers, by some distance the most talented analysts on the planet, stayed true to their projections on the latter games DESPITE the events of the Boxing Day matches.
THE BOXING DAY NEOHYPERREALITIES WERE ALREADY ACCOMODATED IN THE PRICE OF THE LATER GAMES BEFORE THE INITIAL MATCHES HAD EVEN TAKEN PLACE.
ScudamoreWorld - le savoir des gens on a proprietary basis.
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