Those of you who read last week’s column will know I didn’t have a very good weekend and it was important that I bounced back and made some money heading into Round 3 of the Super Rugby Unlocked.

Things did not start off particularly well on Friday night when I was on Stormers to beat the handicap against the Pumas. In fact it was the Pumas who dominated the game and the Stormers were very fortunate just to win in the dying minutes.

Heading into Saturday I could feel the pressure mounting and I decided to leave the handicap bets alone and rather focus on the total and team points markets which have always been my strength. The problem with these markets is they are normally only priced up 24 hours before the game, so when I write my articles or do the newsletter I find myself going for bets where I have proven to myself historically I am not that strong on.

My first big play of the weekend was Ireland to score 39 points or more against Italy and although there were some scrappy moments early, the bet never looked in danger of losing.

I followed with a big strike on the Blue Bulls to score 24 points or more against the Sharks and when on 26 minutes they had only scored 3 points I was getting worried about this one. The Bulls then put in an attractive burst of rugby, scoring 2 quick tries and this bet arrived very comfortably indeed.

By now I was well up and looking forward to the France v Wales International later that night. It doesn’t take much to get me to back the French and I replicated the Bulls bet and backed the home team to score 24 points or more.

Wales started the quicker of the two sides, but the French put some great patches of play together and I even pressed the bet at half-time backing the French to score 32 points or more in the match. Both bets arrived and my weekend was a profitable one.

In analyzing my performance, I realized that I had moved away from my strengths, coming into the weekend with a random almost scatter-gun approach.

You never stop learning in sports betting and from this weekend it is back to basics for this punter.

Twitter: @BrentGraham.

This article was written for the CitiGaming supplement of the Citizen Newspaper and was published on the 29 October 2020.

Brent Graham is a blogger on www.goodforthegame.co.za and sends a free weekly e-mail list just CLICK HERE to register