5*

I was searching for gambling forums on Google the other day and stumbled upon a site where message board members post the plays that the touts give out.

The touts sell their picks for a fair bit of money so I was interested to see how they did. I took note of a few of the picks that the people had relayed to the other users of the website.

Some won, some didn't.

Last night, I decided to have another look and one of the threads on the board had given out a '5* Game of the Year' which must have been the tout's biggest play of 2010.

Or - in reality - it was one of his selling points to try and lure more people to pay for the pick.

He had the Milwaukee Brewers to win their baseball game.

I had a look at the odds and the team were 20/23. I decided to put £11.50 of my money where his mouth was.

They won 4-3.

Apparently, Milwaukee had been on quite the losing streak so it was a gamble that paid off.

I'm not sure whether what this site is doing is wrong. Part of me feels it is, yet another part feels that charging people for picks is. I guess this is sort of a middle ground. After all - the person who relays the pick has paid for it. Maybe they have a certain right to do whatever they do with what they've paid for.

That's my argument, anyway.