People ask why the name choice PintBet, or find it interesting so here is a little background.

A lot of internet startup names are dictated by what domain names have been taken, basically any generic betting-tip related name you can think of will have a domain name. Pint was stumbled upon using a thesaurus which listed pint as a synonym of small or tiny, but is obviously well known for being an imperial drink size, something which many people, and especially tipsters / those who fancy a wager can recognise. I wanted to emphasise the casual element of the bet tipping, and the low (zero) risk it posed. The bet part came from necessity to tell people what field the site was in, and I think does this better than having a suffix of tip.

(ye, no money has been recieved from Guinness for this image)

There were many other names worked through, but the most important thing with PintBet is it's something I could envision being used and working in a proper website.

Thanks, Sam

Current work has involved bringing in support for multiple bookmakers across the site and calculating the best odds from each for any given selection. The current bookmakers are Betfair and Betdaq and the odds are updated hourly. Betfair being the size they and leader they have the majority of best odds, but betdaq does have a respectable amount of odds which are better than Betfair - showing the advantages of multiple bookmakers. 

You would of thought this would be a pretty essential feature on an website such as PintBet, and it is, it's just I don't think jumping to try making the finished product right away is the best way to produce an internet application, or possibly anything. Evolution is what's happening, and will continue to happen after our beta launch and continue still after that.

Fantasy football is closely linked to the world of sports betting and tipping. You choose players from a limited budget on how well you think they will perform; you make predictions. They are fun - and my real fun comes from competing with friends. If you're looking for one I'm using: fantasy.premierleague.com. The prizes aren't great but I like the scoring system: assists count and bonus points for the best players.

This is a bit sidetracked from PintBet but since it's about football, and money (sort of) I'll do share some thoughts. I was going to go through the rules.. but there are quite a few and they are all on the site, instead i'll tell you my strategy. 

You can have a 5-4-1 to a 4-4-2 to a 3-4-3 formation. I see most value in defenders, they get a lot of points for a clean sheet, as well as more points for a goal than a striker, and won't cost more than 7.5 million.. where Rooney will cost you 12 million. Rooney may be worth it anyhow, but the value is in defenders, so I'm having 5 of them, and good ones who are part of a solid defence (top 4 team).

The captain has his score doubled, so it makes sense to have as high-scoring a player as you can in this position; Gerrard or Rooney, I'm opting for Gerrard, as he still get some points for a clean sheet, and is due to improve from last season. Remaining money is going on players like Bale and Adam Johnson, low price but I expect good things - if they play. This post has gotten a little specific so I'll just stop (you can try playing if you want) but knowledge applicable to real life betting is transferable to fantasy football, so could be some fun, and maybe a prize.. good luck. 

Sam

Currently pintbet is in an Alpha development stage - that is, behind the scenes still early stage development but a product or service is there, just with a lot of bugs.

In 3 weeks (22nd july + 21 days) PintBet will move into beta, allowing users who want to try and use the service while it is not quite finished and still has some testing left, to do so. You can expect a working site, with real events and odds being pulled in from several bookmakers and updated regularly, on a range of popular UK sports including football, rugby and tennis.

Currently the only tip type you can do will be ‘match bet’ which is a selecting a winning tip from one team, a draw, or another team to win. More options will be added later such as top goal scorer etc. Beta testers will be remembered and rewarded with recognition on the site, in the form of an icon / signup date notice / different coloured name of a combination of the previous.

The beta will be available from http://pintbet.com

contact hi@pintbet.com to make sure you are involved in the beta or have any ideas to contribute. Forgive the formatting, in a mcD's.

Thanks

Sam

Sneak peak of the events page, across the top are the sports, followed by leagues, followed by events themselves. Clicking a sport will load a default league and it's events, by default. 

Behind the front-end (the back-end) much work is being done on the events page, pulling in real events from more than one bookmaker now, and updating each event with the best odds every hour.

Current description for the site stands: 'A site to place bettings tips on real sports events for real odds for with play money.' 

This is the first public preview of the new site design.

Users can't have a negative balance anymore. The Win Rate is the percentage of tips a user has won on, out of all their tips made (minus the current unsettled tips). The design goes for simplicity and focus on the core functionality of the site, stripping back many features we have been experimenting with. 

The first of many updates. Comments / emails / tweets welcome!