The South America World Cup Qualifiers: Round One

Yes they're back! South American sees the start of 'Las Eliminatorias' for 2014 Brazil today, with four matches scheduled. We at IKN, many moons ago, ran a silly theoretical betting thingy on the games in the run-up to the last World Cup (and by the way, I was proven crap at soccer betting), so we're going to try it again this time.

We start with a $100 betting fund and then consider the four matches (with odds supplied by Ladbrokes dot com). Then we go for a couple of bets. So here are today's games :

Uruguay (2/9) Draw (5/1) Bolivia (12/1)

Ecuador (1/2) Draw (3/1) Venezuela (6/1)

Argentina (2/5) Draw (7/2) Chile (7/1)

Peru (7/5) Draw (9/4) Paraguay (2/1)

(for those of you not versed in the way these odds are displayed, a quick tutorial. For example, Uruguay to win is marked "2/9" which means if you bet $9 you win $2 and get $11 total return. Or another example would be Venezuela to win away from home against Ecuador, which is marked at "6/1" and means that if you bet $1 you'd win $6 and get a total return of $7).

So to the bets and after due consideration your humble scribe is only going for one wager today. Peru has improved greatly in the last year under new boss Sergio Markarian, has all of its European stars on the field today and is up against a Paraguay side depleted by injuries. I think the 7/5 for a Peru home win is a good value offer and I'm going to put $40 of my $100 theoretical piggybank on Peru. so the bet is:

• $40 on Peru to win, price 7/5, total return envisaged: $96

Amount of money left in betting fund at this point: $60

And let's see how we get on.