I followed the Socceroos around the world to the World Cup qualification playoffs and the finals in Russia. I paid for it all with crypto I won betting on the games! See the introductory post for details.

The expenses

I paid for everything soon after the draw in December 2017. The price of Bitcoin was $15,000.

Item USD m฿
Flights: Home – Russia – Home $2636 176
Flights: Kazan – Samara $203 14
Flights: Samara – Sochi $193 13
3 Australia game tickets $693 46
Accommodation Kazan $1898 127
Accommodation Samara $773 52
Accommodation Sochi $1146 96
Travel Insurance $199 13
Incidentals: $100 p/day Jun 14-28 $1400 93
Total $9441 629

The bets

I will bet wherever I see the value and will also run a couple of strategies.

Bet underdogs until one wins

I will martingale to win 100 m฿ on underdogs. Martingale means my first bet will be to win 100 m฿. If that bet loses my next bet will be to win 100 m฿ + however much I lost on the first bet. This continues until I reach my stop loss, or I win a bet. If a bet wins the overall profit of the martingale will be 100 m฿, no matter how short or long the series of bets was.

Martingaling is generally good fun but a bad idea if you want long-term sustainable profits. However this is a short-term tournament and I admit, I am hoping to get lucky. Martingales can only be disastrous if you don’t have a stop loss.

There are 3 big reasons I am confident that this will be a successful strategy

  1. The value is usually on the underdog or the draw.
  2. There will be upsets. There always is. Football is low-scoring which makes results unpredictable.
  3. The very high odds on a lot of underdogs mean the martingale stakes will not rise too steeply. Just in the first round of games, there are odds like 10.86 on Saudi Arabia to beat Russia and 16 on Australia to beat France. Even if my bets on those teams lose, the odds are so high that my stakes will be low.

Bet draws until one happens

This is the same as the above but for draws instead of underdogs and I will martingale to win 50 m฿.

Martingale against teams that won’t win the World Cup

I am not actually doing this betting strategy but I present it for discussion.

Identify teams that you think cannot win the World Cup. You have then identified teams which you think will lose, draw or fail to advance in at least 1 game.

I think Colombia is the worst team that could actually win, so my list of eventual losers is all 21 teams that are worse than Colombia. Those are

Australia

Costa Rica

Denmark

Egypt

Iceland

Iran

Japan

Mexico

Morocco

Nigeria

Panama

Peru

Poland

Russia

Saudi Arabia

Senegal

Serbia

South Korea

Sweden

Switzerland

Tunisia

In this system you martingale against the eventual losers. The tournament structure provides a built-in stop-loss in that each team can only win 7 games.

Even in the worst-case scenario only 1 of the teams you bet against can win the tournament meaning you can still profit from all the other teams losing.

The only tricky part about this strategy is deciding what to do when 2 of your eventual losers play each other. For the 21 teams I think can’t win there are about 11 such games in the group stage.

For these games, you can continue the martingale on whichever team is the best value to bet against and suspend the martingale on the other team until their next match.

BC.Game Casino
Check Icon
Top Betting Site
Check Icon
Native tokens
Check Icon
Large selection of games
Logo image for Bitcoin Logo image for Litecoin Logo image for Dogecoin Logo image for Ethereum Logo image for Monero
+9
Logo image for Bitcoin Cash Logo image for Ripple Logo image for Tron Logo image for Zcash Logo image for Tether Logo image for EOS Logo image for Binance Logo image for Cardano Logo image for Busd
Play Now Arrow
Sportsbet.io
Check Icon
Easy site navigation
Check Icon
Large selection of bets & odds
Check Icon
Impressive range of bonuses
Logo image for Bitcoin Logo image for Ethereum Logo image for Tether Logo image for Litecoin Logo image for Ripple
+5
Logo image for Tron Logo image for Cardano Logo image for Dogecoin Logo image for Binance Logo image for Dash
Play Now Arrow
Coinplay
Check Icon
Instant withdrawal
Check Icon
High payout limits
Check Icon
Great offers & promotions
Logo image for Bitcoin Logo image for Litecoin Logo image for Dash Logo image for Dogecoin Logo image for Ethereum
+17
Logo image for Monero Logo image for Bitcoin Cash Image for qtum Logo image for Ripple Logo image for Tron Logo image for Zcash Logo image for Tether Logo image for EOS Logo image for USD Coin Logo image for Trueusd tusd Logo image for Binance Image for Dai Logo image for Solana sol Logo image for Cardano Image for polkadot Logo image for Shiba Inu Logo image for Busd
Play Now Arrow
Image for N1 Bet star-rating 4.5/5
N1Bet Casino
Check Icon
Crypto sportsbook
Check Icon
Crypto Casino
Check Icon
Weekly promotions
Logo image for Bitcoin Logo image for Litecoin Logo image for Dogecoin Logo image for Ethereum Logo image for Bitcoin Cash
+1
Logo image for Tether
Play Now Arrow
Logo image for Bitsler star-rating 4.5/5
Bitsler Casino
Check Icon
Great Customer Support
Check Icon
Low fees
Logo image for Bitcoin Logo image for Litecoin Logo image for Dash Logo image for Dogecoin Logo image for Ethereum
+12
Image for digibyte Image for bitcoin gold Logo image for Bitcoin Cash Image for ethereum classic Image for qtum Logo image for Ripple Logo image for Tron Logo image for Zcash Logo image for Tether Logo image for EOS Image for bitcoin sv Image for neo
Play Now Arrow