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Monday, April 04, 2005

Betting on the Next Pope

The Irish betting chain Paddy Power is taking bets on the next Pope. My two favorite parts:

And at one central Dublin outlet of Paddy Power, Seamus Hegarty spent a cool, calculating 20 minutes before putting his 10 euro note on a 25-1 shot: Norberto Rivera Carrera of Mexico.

"The money I lose on this I'll make back on the British election," predicted Hegarty, 49, who says he simply had to place a bet on someone so that he could maximize his enjoyment of watching events unfold from the Vatican.

And...

Although not listed on its Web page, the Dublin-based bookie also was offering joke bets. Father Dougal Maguire, the fictional dim-witted priest on the British sitcom "Father Ted," attracted sufficient betting that his odds were shortened from 100,000-1 to 250-1.

According to the logic of sports bookmaking, this means that enough money came in on the non-existent Father Dougal that Paddy Power decided to move the line to protect themselves from financial ruin just in case the Vatican decided to make a fictional British sitcom character Pope.

- posted by Don Porges @ 4/04/2005 08:11:00 PM

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