[Datapunter]

Punters Lounge JAVA programming course.

This course was set up specifically to teach computer programming in a context of sports betting. In the world of sports betting many punters nowadays use the Internet to collect information and place their bets. This can in some cases take a lot of time. Imagine you want to find the best price available on an event, like a football match. You will need to look at various bookmakers, make notes and compare. And you need to do this every time you want to bet. It is exactly this kind of re-occurring action that takes a lot of time. What takes you hours and hours can be done in a matter of minutes with a bit of programming. That is the goal of this course. To provide you with the basic skill to extract information from the internet and use that for your betting purposes.

During the course we are going to make an odds comparison program. The program looks at a couple of bookmaker sites, downloads odds information, and presents that info exactly the way we want it. In the process we will be doing some calculating like the overround. Besides that you can start work on your own application as we go along.

To participate you don't need any experience. Basic computer skills will do. Simply follow my lessons and you will end up with a usable result. We will be using JAVA as language. I provide the course for free and you do not need to buy any software. Just so there is no misunderstanding: this is not a list of hints and tips or a guide to how to do things the quick way. It is an actual course in computer programming given in a context of sports betting.

You can follow the lessons at your own pace and I will be available to support you using posts and email and possibly the odd phone conversation every now and then. The course was first created in May 2004 but you can start any time.

One thing I would like to mention is this. If you start this course make sure you have some sort of application in mind. Having a goal or purpose is essential. If you do not have a goal then learning programming is like learning Chinese without the intention of ever having a conversation in Chinese.