On the 19th December 2015, I went to Toddies Bar in Chester-le-Street with Jack Whelan to perform an exhibition challenge match.  This new format we tried worked out awesome and is a sure fire way for any venue to raise money towards the cost of the exhibition.

Basically, the way the exhibition works is, myself and Jack played 5 sets of pool matches all first to 3 (Best of 5s) and then your customers can have a bet on the resulting score line. So you have 6 outcomes as follows:

Chris Win 3-0, 3-1, 3-2 and then Jack win 3-0,3-1,3-2

The customers can make a bet of anything from £1 through to any amount really and we took bets of up to £20 on a single score line. Now this is where the venue makes money – you pay out on a tote bet so that the payout comes from the money taken. So for example lets say in the first match you take £600 in bets across the 6 score lines as follows.

Chris 3-0 £100

Chris 3-1 £150

Chris 3-2 £50

Jack 3-0 £100

Jack 3-1 £150

Jack 3-2 £50

Total income £600 – so the venue takes 50% towards the cost of the exhibition which is £300 and the other £300 goes to payout the punters. So in the above example if Chris was to win 3-0 for then the payout per £1 would be £300 divided by £100 which is £3 for every £1 bet. ( I have used my name rather than saying ME to make it easier to follow).

Then  you do this 5 times through out the night and if you have enought people taking part the venue will recover more than the cost of booking the exhibition. It is also a great way to engage your audience and get them involved in the game with a bit of fun betting.

I would like to thank Toddies Bar and Jack Whelan for a great night and the people who turn up at these events as without these people the events simply would not happen.