ASI Pacific Union 2012

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ASI Pacific Union

John Bradshaw

Pacific Union ASI Plenary Meeting, Part 2

Our Father in heaven, thank you that we can come to you tonight in the name of Jesus.

We come confidently, yet Father I hope we come with enough humility to recognize that you are God and we are merely yours.

As clay in the hands of the potter tonight, I pray that you would mold us, mold our soul, our mind, our heart.

Take my words and mold them and make something out of them that will touch hearts and minds.

In fact, Lord, if you would work in spite of what I say.

I love those moments when people say, oh, I heard the preacher say this when the preacher didn't even say that, but the Holy Spirit just worked and worked in the right way.

So Lord, I'll do some speaking, but I pray that you'll take occasion here to really reach us and bless us and encourage us.

We know time is short, we know Jesus is coming back soon.

We are encouraged by that, we ask for your blessing.

We thank you for the privilege of knowing you and being instruments in your hands.

Lead us now we ask you in the name of Jesus Christ.

Not 1 of these punters, I don't mean like that.

In Britain, a punter is a gambler, a gambler.

Even where I'm from, my dad would bet on the horses.

I used to bet on the horses till I was about 15 years old.

A punter is 1 who gambles, who wages on typically sporting events, really, horse races typically, but Mark Bell is a super punter, a super gambler.

He typically earns around $2 million a year from gambling.

When he gambles, this is what he does for a living, when he gambles he gambles large sums of money, often, not always, but often more than most people would make in a year.

It's nothing for him to gamble a hundred or 200 or 300 or more thousands of dollars in any 1 hit on a sporting event.

Normally he has an office that he goes to to work.

He goes to a betting shop of some kind in Britain.

Working from home and a sporting event caught his attention.

It was a tennis match being played in Poland.

And the game was being played between the world's number 4 player at the time.

The world's number 4 player was Nikolai Davydenko and he was playing the world's number 87 player an Argentine named Vasallo Agüero Vasallo Agüero number 4 versus number 87 and Mark Bell is looking at this tennis match and he's wondering whether he should gamble or not.

Now in Britain, tennis, and this might strike you as surprising, it surprised me a little bit, tennis is the number 3 sport for gambling.

So Mark Bell is sitting looking at the computer and he's looking at this tennis match Davidenko versus Agüero and he's thinking, he doesn't have to be it every time he sees something but he's looking and then he notices something.

Now, number 4 versus number 87, Who's going to win?

I mean, in tennis, strange things can happen, no question.

But number 4, I mean number 4, versus number 87, number 87 doesn't have a chance.

This is the 87th ranked player in the world.

And the game starts with number 4, Davydenko, Nikolai Davydenko, playing very well.

And he breezes through the first set, but something strange is happening.

Early in the game, Davydenko is up 2 games to 1.

And I don't know all the machinery of this, maybe I should have read a little more closely, but as the gamblers are gambling at this gambling website, they can tell how much money, maybe not to the dollar or pound or ruble amount, but they can tell how much money is being wagered on a certain team or individual.

At least, while Bell was watching what was going on, he noticed that someone somewhere was wagering large sums of money on Aguello.

But you know, people have a hunch, I guess, and gamblers are gamblers.

And it's all a gamble when you're gambling.

So he shrugged his shoulders and moved on.

2-1, money is being gambled, placed, wagered on Aguello.

And then big sums of money are being gambled on the other guy.

When I say big, someone, and I don't know if he knew this at the time or what they found out later, someone in Russia was gambling $330, 000 on a single wager on the other guy, the underdog, when the favorite is winning comfortably.

Might have been the same gambler, but it was someone using a different screen name.

In all, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars were being wagered on Vasello Agüello, even though he's 83 places lower in the rankings, and he's losing.

Mark Bell looked at this and he said, something's going on.

And so he said, clearly somebody knows that Aguayo is gonna win this game.

So he got on that computer and he wagered just a small sum for him, $60, 000, even though he knew that by gambling $60, 000 he would only win $6, 000, make $6, 000 profit.

Because the odds now had turned so heavily that the rank outsider was favoured heavily by the gamblers to win this tennis match.

Bell, after gambling his $60, 000, sat back and watched.

The next set began, Davidenko held serve, 1 love.

And then, and then, he limps to the side of the tennis stadium and he sits down and he calls the trainer over and the trainer rubs his foot and he goes, oh my foot!

Doctor came out and had a look at his foot, asked him some questions, he nodded, he shook his head, he nodded, stress fracture.

Vassallo Aguello, ranked number 87 in the world, won against the number fourth ranked player in the world because the number fourth ranked player in the world had to go off because of a stress fracture in his foot.

People spoke to him, they said, man you lost that game.

Now here's how the suspicions got raised.

The betting agency, a group called Betfair, Betfair and it's not bet, well, Betfair, what's fair about betting, but Betfair, that's what it's called.

They looked at what was going on and they said, now we're not saying the game was rigged, we're not saying that, we don't know, but what we're saying is that the betting is not fair.

And so, funny, Betfair, they said it's not fair, And so they did something they had never done before, and they suspended betting.

They said, we're not paying out anything on this game.

Oh, come on, I don't even know how to throw a game.

Don't you know that in the last 3 tournaments, I lost in the first round?

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Pacific Union ASI Plenary Meeting, Part 2

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