The betting craze hit Kenya like a tsunami, sweeping everything under its feet – even old men and women would troop to cybercafés with crumpled betting slips handed by their grandkids.
Young men would huddle in groups and analyze, or talk glowingly about some lucky guy who made a few thousands. A few would be hunched over a computer in stuffy cyber café in Eldoret, looking for teams to lose money too.
As a onetime gambler, there a few things I know you would relate to with this betting craze, that has slightly abated. These are:
That one team you never bet on, no matter what
For many sports betting enthusiasts, that team was As Roma. It would have your ordering drinks on the eighty-ninth minutes, two goals up, but then it would concede quick-fire goals, sending you into panic mode. Another was Celtic. You’d expect it to wallop a team with so many goals, but it never did.
That miss bet that goes your way
You may have wrongly placed a bet. You religiously follow the game on live score. It does not go the way you thought it would. When you’ve forgotten about it, a message pops up telling you you’ve won. Upon a check, you realize that you had bet wrongly. Such joy!
That ever lucky chap It may be that they hide their losses and broadcast their wins. All in all, you consider them some lucky people, whose bets are guided by benevolent spirits. Week in week out they are telling you how they’ve won this and that amount.
Team moja iliniangusha
That moment never goes away, when only one team decides to lose when you expected it to win. To make matters worse you were staring at a lot of money. And so comes the popular team ‘moja iliniangusha’ whine.
Staring at money at the betting site, literally
You open a betting site and literally stare at money. The only challenge being predicting correctly. Matter of fact you even begin budgeting that jackpot money. But then there’s always one winner – the betting company.