Craig’s wish to come true
It was a profitable week for our followers on Saturday as the headline Ali top scorer bet was landed and the recommended Jade/Jo bottom 2 combination also came in at 20s. We hope you managed to grab some of the 7-1 and 8-1 that was quoted on Ali.
You often have to act fast on these markets to snap up the best prices, hence the early posting this week. Second guessing the training footage, we see the high scorer value this coming Saturday in Laila at 10s, doing the Viennese Waltz, and Jade at 8s, doing the foxtrot.
Laila & Anton can be a class act in the ballroom arena and it was a plus that Laila made it through her samba without going wrong – probably the first time she has managed this during the entire series. This bodes well for next Saturday, even more so with her being back in her comfort zone of ballroom. Jade will probably get a good score from the judges if she does well with her foxtrot because she found herself in the dance off last Saturday. She should also profit from the bounce effect with the public and avoid the bottom 2. We saw this on Saturday with Zoe getting a very generous 33 for her American Smooth after being in the dance off the previous week, before then escaping the bottom 2.
Ricky Whittle doing a quickstep doesn’t scream top score to us, but if you’re looking for a saver at 5-4 to cover your stake on Laila and Jade, then he’s probably the bet rather than Ali who is doing the always tricky to score highly in Paso.
If you’re not a student and learning each week from the reality shows, you’ll never make your betting pay as well as you could. One thing we have learnt is that you absolutely must follow a story when a show sets one up, and the story in Strictly right now is Craig Kelly’s mission to make it to his home town of Blackpool which is hosting the show a week on Saturday.
It’s also his birthday on Saturday and we expect the show to get behind Craig so much that he’ll escape the dance off. If you can lay him at around Evens or lower on the elimination and bottom 2 markets, this has to be the way to go.
It opens the door for another ‘surprise’ bottom 2. We are still of the firm belief that Natalie is vulnerable on the public vote and her time is nigh. She is doing a jive and it’s hard to see it being ‘a-ma-zing’ regardless of her saying it’s the dance she’s been wanting to do all series. She is the elimination value at 8-1. The other two we will be having a few quid on in this market are Zoe at 16s and Ricky Groves at 14s.
Zoe has already been in the bottom 2 and she is probably going to have to negotiate a difficult fast Latin – we think a Samba or a Salsa though unconfirmed at time of writing this. Ricky G has the rumba which will also be a tester and, like Zoe, may leave him in a tricky spot on the leaderboard. And we don’t think he’s as strong with the public as Hollins or Tufnell.
A play on the bottom 2 combos is again in order because with grounds to believe Craig can escape, there looks to be some great odds waiting to be snapped up. We suggest the 6 combinations involving Natalie, Zoe, Ricky G and Ricky W, available at 25-1 and upwards. Ricky Whittle’s public following remains very much unproven and he could easily follow Jade and Zoe in the last couple of weeks and be dragged into the dance off.
Rob Furber