World Pool Championship: Kelly Fisher in group with Alex Kazakis as Fedor Gorst defends his title

World Pool Championship: Kelly Fisher in group with Alex Kazakis as Fedor Gorst defends his title

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World Pool Championship: Kelly Fisher in group with Alex Kazakis as Fedor Gorst defends his title

Kelly Fisher will meet Alexander Kazakis and Darren Appleton in her group at the World Pool Championship in Milton Keynes

Fedor Gorst will begin his World Pool Championship defence against Estonia’s World Cup semi-finalist Mark Magi in Milton Keynes, live on Sky Sports.

Among the other standout matches for the double elimination Group Stage is recent World Pool Masters champion Alex Kazakis against women’s world champion Kelly Fisher.

Championship League Pool winner faces Italian Mosconi Cup legend Fabio Petroni, while former world champion Mika Immonen will be up against rising star Kristina Tkach.

The tournament begins on June 6 with a two-day Group Stage, with the 128 players split into 16 groups of eight players.

That will reduce the field down to 64, after which the tournament will adopt a straight knockout format.

Group matches are all race to 9, with knockout stage matches a race to 11 except the final, which is a race to 13.

Players who win their first two matches in the group stage advance to the last 64, while players who lose their first two will be eliminated.

Players with one win and one draw will play a third match with the winner advancing to the last 64 and the loser knocked out.

Fedor Gorst is the defending World Pool Championship champion

GROUP DRAW

Group A

Fedor Gorst (ROC) vs Mark Magi (EST)

Mark Gray (GBR) vs Julio Burgos (PUR)

Jeffrey De Luna (PHI) vs Dimitri Jungo (SUI)

Konrad Juszczyszyn (POL) vs Jasmin Ouschan (AUT)

Group B

Albin Ouschan (AUT) vs Fabio Petroni (ITA)

Roberto Gomez (PHI) vs TBC

Omar Al-Shaheen (KUW) vs Alain Da Costa (FRA)

Aloysuis Yapp (SGP) vs Kaiden Hunkins (USA)

Group C

Billy Thorpe (USA) vs Francisco Gatsby (CHI)

Marc Vidal (USA) vs Ivica Putnik (CRO)

Petri Makkonen (FIN) vs Benjamin Belhassen (FRA)

Mieszko Fortunski (POL) vs Marcel Price (GBR)

Group D

Thorsten Hohmann (GER) vs Tobias Bongers (GER)

Mika Immonen (FIN) vs Kristina Tkach (ROC)

Sanjin Pehlivanovic (BIH) vs Kevin Lannoye (BEL)

Ralf Souquet (GER) vs Ronald Regli (SUI)

Group E

Jayson Shaw (GBR) vs Moritz Neuhausen (GER)

Jani Siekkinen (FIN) vs Michal Gavenciak (CZE)

Ruslan Chinakhov (ROC) vs Alex Montpellier (FRA)

Marc Bijsterbosch (NED) vs Imran Majid (GBR)

Group F

Casper Matikainen (FIN) vs Elliot Sanderson (GBR)

Mark Foster (GBR) vs Jan van Lierop (NED)

Mohammad Ali Berjawi (LEB) vs Vladimir Matvienko (ROC)

Max Lechner (AUT) vs Mickey Krause (DEN)

Group G

David Alcaide (ESP) vs Andreja Klasovic (SRB)

Pijus Labutis (LTU) vs Jeremy Sossei (USA)

Robbie Capito (HKG) vs Ruben Bautista (MEX)

Denis Grabe (EST) vs Vitaliy Patsura (UKR)

Group H

Skyler Woodward (USA) vs Jaroslav Polach (SVK)

Radoslaw Babica (POL) vs Ivo Aarts (NED)

Vincent Halliday (RSA) vs DJ McGinley (CAN)

Daniel Schneider (SUI) vs So Shaw (IRI)

Group I

Shane van Boening (USA) vs Petr Urban (CZE)

Oscar Dominguez (USA) vs Roberto Bartol (CRO)

Karol Skowerski (POL) vs Jonas Souto Comino (ESP)

Hunter Lombardo (USA) vs Mats Schjetne (NOR)

Group J

Wojciech Szewczyk (POL) vs Marco Dorenburg (GER)

Richard Halliday (RSA) vs Aleksa Pecelj (SRB)

Oliver Szolnoki (HUN) vs Daniele Corrieri (ITA)

Francisco Sanchez-Ruiz (ESP) vs TBC

Group K

Eklent Kaci (ALB) vs Lukas Fracasso Verner (USA)

Stephen Holem (CAN) vs Badar Alawadhi (KUW)

Yukio Akagariyama (JPN) vs Ricky Evans (USA)

Corey Deuel (USA) vs Benji Buckley (GBR)

Group L

Darren Appleton (GBR) vs Shane Wolford (USA)

Marco Teutscher (NED) vs Christoph Reintjes (GER)

Ricardo Sini (ITA) vs Jeff Nieuwenhuyzen (AHO)

Alexander Kazakis (GRE) vs Kelly Fisher (GBR)

Group M

Niels Feijen (NED) vs Tim de Ruyter (NED)

Chris Robinson (USA) vs Yip Kin-Ling (HK)

Nick Malai (GRE) vs Veronika Ivanovskaia (GER)

Masato Yoshioka (JPN) vs Muhummed Daydat (RSA)

Group N

Mateusz Sniegocki (POL) vs Miguel Silva (POR)

Mario He (AUT) vs Philipp Stojanovic (CRO)

Jakub Koniar (SVK) vs Vania Franco (POR)

Tyler Styer (USA) vs Henrique Correia (POR)

Group O

Naoyuki Oi (JPN) vs Jennifer Barretta (USA)

Roman Hybler (CZE) vs Daniel Maciol (POL)

Donny Olson (USA) vs Bahram Lotfy (DEN)

Chris Melling (GBR) vs April Larson (USA)

Group P

Tomasz Kaplan (POL) vs Sergey Lutsker (ROC)

Chris Alexander (GBR) vs Nikos Ekonomopoulos (GRE)

Wiktor Zielinski vs Kim Laaksonen (FIN)

Joshua Filler (GER) vs Margaret Fefilova (BLR)

For those on the move, we will have the Snooker & Pool season covered via our website skysports.com/more-sports, our app for mobile devices, or our Twitter account @skysportspool for latest news and reports.

Enhancing Accessibility in U.S. Elections

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Authors’ note: The disability community is rapidly evolving to using identity-first language in place of person-first language. This is because it views disability as being a core component of identity, much like race and gender. Some members of the community, such as people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, prefer person-first language. In this report, the terms are used interchangeably.

Introduction and summary

In 2020, voters with disabilities turned out in force in one of the most consequential elections in U.S. history. According to data compiled by the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 62 percent of disabled voters cast a ballot in the November 2020 election, compared with just about 56 percent of disabled voters who participated in the 2016 presidential election. 2020’s high turnout is demonstrative of disabled voters’ unwavering resolve to make their voices heard and to fully participate in American democracy. While all voters—regardless of disability status—experienced difficulties in registering to vote and casting ballots last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, disabled voters faced particularly significant challenges. Registering or voting in person was especially hazardous for disabled people with certain chronic, preexisting health conditions. Some disabled people who rely on transportation assistance faced logistical obstacles as public modes of transportation came to virtual halts nationwide and the sharing of vehicles posed health risks. And while vote by mail offered many voters—disabled and not disabled alike—a safe and effective alternative to in-person voting, it posed complications for those with visual and dexterity impairments.

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These barriers to voting for Americans with disabilities are not new; rather, the coronavirus pandemic exacerbated the existing barriers that disabled Americans have been facing for generations. Each cycle, disabled people across the United States are forced to overcome immense challenges and make enormous sacrifices to exercise their fundamental right to vote. U.S. election systems and infrastructure are not designed with disabled voters in mind. Disabled voters’ unique and varying needs are frequently overlooked by policymakers, and election accessibility is sometimes dismissed as a logistical and fiscal impossibility. Voting options that could dramatically improve accessibility are too often sacrificed in the interest of security. The result is inaccessible polling places and voter registration offices; inadequate registration and voting accommodations; and election information that is unreadable for some.

Systemic inaccessibility at nearly every step in the voting process causes difficulties for disabled voters, resulting in notable participation gaps between disabled and nondisabled voters. A prominent February 2021 study, the 2020 Election Disability and Voting Accessibility Survey conducted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and Rutgers University, found that in 2020, disabled Americans were roughly 7 percentage points less likely than nondisabled people to participate after adjusting for age. This must change. Barriers to accessibility must be removed to enable disabled people to participate in elections to the same extent and in equal measure to those who are not disabled. Such is demanded by central tenets of participatory democracy and federal law. This report, which heavily cites the 2020 Election Disability and Voting Accessibility Survey throughout, examines several election-related hurdles that hinder or prevent disabled voters from participating fully in the democratic process, including during the 2020 election cycle. It then offers recommendations that policymakers can adopt to improve election accessibility for disabled voters, including the following:

Provide robust and continuous federal funding for election administration.

Conduct comprehensive accessibility audits on election systems with reform mandates.

Adopt pro-voter policies and meaningful accessibility standards for elections.

Rescind anti-voting rules and reform guardianship laws.

Develop safe and accessible election technology.

Crowdsource low- and no-cost accessible voting solutions.

Enhance enforcement of federal voting laws.

It is long past time that policymakers prioritize improving election accessibility. Enhancing election accessibility and closing participation gaps are wholly achievable and within America’s grasp. Tools and resources exist to accomplish the job; politicians and policymakers must exercise the political will to wield those tools.

Barriers to participating in elections

In 2020, voters with disabilities were nearly twice as likely as nondisabled voters to experience problems when voting. In all, roughly 1 in every 9 disabled voters faced barriers to accessing the ballot box. Put another way, across all voting methods, approximately 11 percent of disabled voters reported difficulties voting in 2020, according to the 2020 Election Disability and Voting Accessibility Survey. This is a marked improvement from past election cycles. For example, in 2012, the last time a comparable study was completed, 26 percent of disabled voters reported experiencing problems while voting. Although this improvement is worth celebrating, it does not take away from the fact that election systems remain inaccessible for many. Indeed, people with vision and cognitive impairments were especially likely to experience obstacles in 2020. An estimated 7 million eligible voters have a visual disability; 13.1 million eligible voters are estimated to have a cognitive disability.

The types of election-related hurdles that hinder or prevent voters with disabilities from participating in elections are as diverse and varied as the disability community itself. Disability is not a monolith: It has broad meaning and is not limited to physical or cognitive disabilities, as is so often wrongly assumed. People who are disabled may have symptoms that affect their hearing or vision, may experience memory loss, or may have difficulty learning or communicating. Some disabled people utilize mobility assistive devices to ambulate. Mental health conditions also qualify as disabilities. The list goes on.

With respect to an individual, the ADA Amendments Act of 2008 defines disability as “a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities of such individual; a record of such an impairment; or being regarded as having such an impairment.”

Each disabled voter has unique needs dependent on their specific disability. Factors impeding a blind voter’s ability to cast a ballot may be different from those affecting a voter with a cognitive disability or social anxiety disorder. The overlapping burdens experienced by ) who are disabled cannot be overemphasized. Disabled are doubly burdened with accessibility barriers and anti-voting policies designed specifically to prevent BIPOC from participating in elections, such as strict voter ID and signature matching requirements, polling place closures in BIPOC communities, and restrictions on mail and early voting. One in 4 Black Americans have a disability, while every 3 in 10 American Indians and Alaska Natives are disabled. It is important for policymakers to keep these realities in mind as they identify barriers that keep disabled Americans from fully participating in the democratic process. Taking a holistic approach to pinpointing accessibility barriers is necessary to ensuring that all disabled Americans—no matter their disability—have equal access to elections.

Below, the authors provide a sampling of barriers to voting and elections that make participating harder for voters with different types of disabilities. This list is in no way exhaustive. It does not include a discussion of inaccessible campaign webpages where voters obtain important information about candidates, nor does it examine how disabled people are disadvantaged by big money in politics. Still, the list below offers policymakers a good starting point to begin to thoughtfully examine inadequacies in their own election systems and to brainstorm solutions. Policymakers must work closely with affected voters and advocates representing varied disabilities and interests to discern all the ways that existing election systems are inaccessible.

Inaccessible voter registration

Requiring assistance when registering to vote can pose fewer privacy concerns than the act of voting. There is also lower risk of coercion. Still, registrants with disabilities should be able to complete voter registration processes privately and independently, just as nondisabled registrants do.

An individual must first register before they can vote. Depending on the jurisdiction, a voter may register in person at a designated registration office, by mail, or online. A growing number of states automatically register eligible Americans who interact with certain agencies such as departments of motor vehicles (DMV), unless the person declines. For decades, these registration methods have successfully added millions of Americans to voter rolls, yet they pose challenges for disabled voters. Federal law requires states to make voter registration fully accessible to people with disabilities. But for many disabled Americans, that right too often goes unrealized. In 2020, people with disabilities were 3 percentage points less likely than people without disabilities to report being registered to vote, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Although that number may seem small, it translates to millions of Americans. Disabled voters with cognitive difficulties, as well as those with self-care and independent living difficulties, were especially unlikely to be registered.

Registering in person

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) requires that states make available various options for registering to vote. The law requires states to offer voter registration services at state DMVs and at other state and local government entities, such as public assistance and disability offices. At these places, employees are required to provide registration materials and assist people with disabilities in completing and returning necessary paperwork. Unfortunately, government entities sometimes fail in their duty to assist disabled voters in registering to vote. Investigations by nonprofits into state NVRA compliance discovered that some designated entities do not offer registration services or do so intermittently, do not make registration materials available, or are unaware of their duty to offer such services to people who interact with their offices.

Regrettably, state DMVs have been found largely inadequate for registering people with disabilities. Disabled people, particularly those with certain visual and mobility impairments, underutilize DMV services either because they cannot drive or because obtaining a driver’s license is exceedingly difficult. Disabled people are less likely than nondisabled voters to drive their own or a family vehicle. Although the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) prohibits DMVs from denying driver’s licenses because of disability status, burdensome requirements for disabled people can have the same overall effect. For example, some states require people with epilepsy to provide a physician’s note confirming they can drive safely and/or require disabled drivers to provide periodic reports attesting they have been seizure-free for a certain period of time. Furthermore, DMVs located in rural communities and other areas with high densities have been shut down in recent years. As noted previously, are disproportionately likely to have one or more disabilities.

NVRA noncompliance at designated government entities and inaccessibility of DMVs have implications for automatic voter registration (AVR) systems because AVR relies heavily on registrant data derived from these locations. As a result, disability advocates have raised concerns that some AVR systems are underinclusive of disabled people who want to register. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least eight states operate AVR programs solely out of the DMV.

Registering by mail

The NVRA further requires states to offer voter registration services by mail. Registering by mail, which remains among the only registration options in eight states, is problematic for Americans who have print disabilities, or difficulty or inability to read printed material due to a perceptual, physical, or visual disability. For these individuals, completing paper registration forms and returning them by mail may be impossible without assistance, especially if registration paperwork is not made available in accessible downloadable and fillable formats. The act of placing paper registration forms in the mail is problematic for voters who have difficultly traveling to the mailbox or post office. Even obtaining information online about how to register can be difficult for disabled registrants. A 2020 review by the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired found that election webpages in 12 battleground states were in violation of ADA accessibility standards to varying degrees.

Registering online

Online registration, which has been adopted by 41 states and Washington, D.C., poses its own challenges for voters with disabilities. To register online, potential registrants must visit and complete the relevant forms found on official webpages, which can be inaccessible for some people with disabilities. A 2015 study by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Accessible Technology found that only one state—California—had an online registration system that was fully accessible. At that time, most states failed to meet even minimum accessibility standards. Although improvements have been made since that study was completed, some election websites still are not designed to accommodate magnifying tools that assist low-vision users in reading and completing online forms. Others are not built for screen reading technology that helps translate text into spoken word for registrants with visual impairments. Websites that require the use of a keyboard or mouse, lack explanatory graphics, and rely on highly complex, technical language pose significant hurdles for registrants with dexterity and cognitive disabilities. These same technical deficiencies prevent disabled voters from accessing important election-related information about registration and vote-by-mail deadlines as well as information about designated polling locations and relevant documentation required to cast a ballot.

Inaccessible voting

Several federal laws require voters with disabilities to have equal voting access. They include the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA); Americans with Disabilities Act; Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA); Rehabilitation Act of 1973; and the Voting Accessibility for the Elderly and Handicapped Act of 1984 (VAEHA). Together, these laws guarantee the following rights:

People with disabilities must have full and equal access to cast ballots that count.

In-person voting sites and polling places must be fully accessible to disabled voters.

People who need assistance when voting by reason of disability or limited English proficiency must be able to choose the person who assists them, with few exceptions.

The right to vote cannot be conditioned on a voter’s ability to read or write or on a similar test of cognitive capabilities.

Each polling place in federal elections must have at least one accessible voting machine that enables voters with disabilities to cast a secret, independent ballot.

Unfortunately, disabled voters often find that these mandates are unmet to varying degrees when they try to vote in person or by mail. Roughly one-sixth of disabled voters required assistance and/or had trouble casting a ballot last year.

Voting in person

Disabled voters have come to expect that they will face myriad obstacles when showing up to designated voting sites—and 2020 was no exception. Last year, roughly 49 percent of disabled voters voted in person on or before Election Day. Ultimately, 18 percent of disabled voters who chose to vote in person at a polling place or election office last year experienced problems casting a ballot. This is compared with 10 percent of nondisabled in-person voters. Individuals with cognitive and visual disabilities, as well as those who require assistance with daily activities, were disproportionately likely to report problems at in-person voting locations. Disabled voters who had difficulty voting in person in 2020 reported encountering polling places that were inaccessible, ballots they had difficulty reading or seeing, and problems associated with waiting in line to vote. Others reported difficulties communicating with poll workers and with understanding how to use voting equipment; a small percentage of disabled voters also reported being treated disrespectfully by election officials. Among disabled voters who voted in person and required assistance last year, one-sixth did not receive the help they needed.

Inaccessible voting locations: Polling place inaccessibility is among the most common problems encountered by disabled voters. An oft-cited 2017 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that 60 percent of polling places had at least one impediment that made them inaccessible. Problems ranged from deficient ramps for wheelchair access, inadequate passenger drop-off areas, and insufficient signage indicating accessible entrances or causeways. In 2020, voters with disabilities were nearly six times more likely than nondisabled voters to experience difficulties entering polling places. For voters who are blind or with low vision, low-hanging signage or tree branches in and around polling places; blockades in hallways or along sidewalks; and open stairwells pose risks to voting in person. Such impediments also make in-person voting harder for voters with disabilities who use wheelchairs, scooters, and other mobility aids and who require wide unobstructed pathways to move around. An estimated 21.3 million eligible voters have a disability that affects mobility. Doorways that are not automated, propped open, or outfitted with accessible hardware may make it impossible for some disabled voters to enter without assistance.

Problems at check-in: Problems persist during the voter check-in process. Voters who are deaf or hard of hearing have trouble communicating with election workers where information is not provided in writing and where workers face downward or away from the voter when speaking so that the deaf or hard of hearing person cannot lip-read. An estimated 11.6 million eligible voters are deaf or hard of hearing. Wisconsin voters previously were required to verbally state their full name and address when they showed up to vote, which created barriers for disabled voters with communication disabilities, though that law has since been repealed. Although disabled voters are supposed to be informed at check-in about their right to assistance and accessible machinery, this does not always happen, leading to complications. Unfortunately, some disabled voters have reported being asked offensive questions about their disability status during the check-in phase. Even worse, some have reported having their right to vote challenged or being told they should not be allowed to vote.

Accessible voting methods: HAVA requires at least one accessible machine at each polling place. But HAVA is the floor, and its one-machine-per-polling-place mandate is inadequate in densely populated areas or at high-traffic voting locations where disabled voters must endure prolonged wait times to use the polling station’s sole accessible machine. Additionally, jurisdictions are not always compliant with federal law. Voting locations that do have assistive machinery do not always have them turned on or ready to go when polls open, which forces unnecessary wait times on disabled voters who require their use, and some machines are inoperable. Many disabled voters report poll workers being inadequately trained on the use of accessible voting equipment, such as ballot marking devices like ExpressVote machines, and their assistive features like magnification. Some 10 million Americans “need to use magnification in order to vote accurately, efficiently, and with confidence.” In 2020, compared with nondisabled voters, disabled voters who voted in person reported greater difficulty reading or seeing their ballot and understanding how to use voting machines. These voting impediments can be highly discouraging. At best, a disabled voter is forced to endure an overly complicated and often demoralizing voting process. At worst, a disabled voter’s ballot may get lost or the voter may leave the polling place in frustration without having voted at all.

Privacy: Insufficient poll worker training also results in disabled voters being denied their right to choose for themselves who will provide voting assistance. Mistakenly believing they are protecting the disabled voter from potential coercion, poll workers have blocked family members, friends, or care aides from accompanying disabled voters into the voting booth. Sometimes, the disabled voter is told they must vote alone or not vote at all. Other times, election workers designate themselves to assist the voter, which has privacy implications. The 2020 Election Disability and Voting Accessibility Survey found that of disabled voters who needed assistance at polling places last year, more than half were helped by an election official, while nearly one-fifth received assistance from a family member. Reports have also surfaced of accessible election machinery without privacy screens being placed in high-traffic areas at voting sites, allowing anyone walking by to see how the disabled person voted. It must be said that moving accessible machinery into a dark corner at the back of a polling place is not a solution; disabled voters must not be isolated from other voters.

Voting by mail

Voting by mail was the most popular method for casting a ballot among disabled voters during the 2020 election. Roughly 51 percent of disabled voters cast their ballot by mail last year. The proportion of disabled voters who chose to vote by mail exceeds the share of nondisabled people who voted by mail in 2020—about 44 percent—and surpasses 2012 levels for disabled mail voters by more than 27 percentage points. Substantial reliance on mail voting among disabled voters in 2020 can be linked, at least in part, to the coronavirus pandemic and the disproportionate impact its health risks and cascading effects had on Americans with disabilities. The pandemic made voting in person especially risky for disabled voters with certain chronic, preexisting health conditions. Voters such as these were more susceptible to developing severe health complications if they encountered a COVID-19-positive person at an in-person voting site. Health risks associated with and limited access to public transportation and ride-sharing during the pandemic also made traveling to in-person voting locations difficult for some voters with disabilities. Disabled voters are more likely than nondisabled voters to rely on ride-sharing or taxis and public transportation. Some disabled people also rely on paratransit to get to and from places.

Vote by mail provided many disabled voters with a good method for making their voices heard in 2020. Only about 5 percent of disabled voters reported difficulty voting by mail last year, which is an improvement from 2012. Still, disabled voters are roughly twice as likely as nondisabled voters to encounter difficulties voting by mail, and significant obstacles remain. Tensions between security and accessibility are especially pronounced in the mail-voting context. Technologists and election security experts warn that the electronic return of voted ballots poses risks of ballot tampering and system malfunctions where votes can be lost. At the same time, voting and disability advocates argue such methods are needed to protect the federally guaranteed rights of disabled voters. To date, policymakers have struggled to balance these interests.

Inaccessible mail-voting forms: Obtaining a mail ballot poses difficulties for disabled voters who have physical, cognitive, and visual impairments. Many of the same problems discussed in the mail and online registration sections also apply to mail voting. Election webpages where voters can apply to receive mail ballots often do not accommodate tools used by people who are blind, have low vision, or cannot use keyboards or a mouse. Directions for applying for and casting a mail ballot routinely use convoluted language with odd formatting and often lack helpful explanatory graphics, which causes problems for individuals with certain cognitive disabilities. A 2020 study found that 43 states had mail-ballot application webpages that had at least one critical fault that made them inaccessible. On average, state webpages had 10 critical or serious accessibility issues. Problems persist once ballots arrive by mail. Compared with nondisabled voters, voters with disabilities—especially those with low vision and who require assistance in daily life—had a harder time reading their mail ballots last year. A growing number of states allow voters to submit mail-ballot applications online and to receive ballots electronically. However, some places still require absentee applications and ballots to be sent and received by mail, which can be difficult for those who cannot easily travel to mailboxes or the post office. Some post offices, especially those located inside older buildings, are inaccessible to people with disabilities. Low-income voters may also lack printers necessary for printing and returning ballots or mail-ballot applications. Only about 1 percent of disabled voters who voted by mail in 2020 received their ballot through the computer.

Privacy and independence: Inaccessible absentee request forms and states’ reliance on mail paper ballots make it impossible for some disabled voters—particularly voters with low vision and with disabilities that affect the arms, hands, or fingers—to cast a secret, independent ballot. Absentee request forms and mail ballots are seldom compatible with software programs that enable voters with visual and physical disabilities to complete them alone on their computers using assistive aids. Some blind voters have the option to cast mail ballots in Braille, but this still involves election workers hand-copying the voter’s ballot onto a “standard” paper ballot before feeding it through vote tabulators, which violates the voter’s right to a secret ballot. Some jurisdictions will transport accessible equipment to assisted living centers or places where disabled voters live, but this is not an option everywhere, especially in rural areas with limited resources. In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic restricted transportation of voting equipment to places such as nursing homes due to concerns over higher rates of mortality among people 65 and older. For security reasons, most states have barred use of technology that could allow disabled Americans to cast ballots electronically at home or on their mobile devices. Nineteen states require voters to return voted mail ballots via the postal service. Jurisdictions such as West Virginia and Delaware have experimented with mobile phone apps or electronic voting pilot programs, but these initiatives have been criticized by election security experts.

Inaccessible mail-voting systems introduce substantial privacy concerns for disabled voters and disability advocates. According to the 2020 Election Disability and Voting Accessibility Survey, 11 percent of disabled voters who cast mail ballots last year required assistance in completing or returning their ballots. People with low vision had the most difficulty completing and returning mail ballots in 2020; they comprised a quarter of disabled voters who needed help. Although many disabled voters have trusted friends, neighbors, and family members who can assist them, this may not always the case. As described by Tracy Soforenko, president of the National Federation of the Blind of Virginia, “You have to find someone to help you complete that ballot, and you have to trust that they’ll adequately complete that ballot as you wish. People have really strong opinions about voting. Your neighbor might not necessarily agree with who you want to vote for. I wouldn’t know that they completed my ballot accurately. That’s not fair. That’s not right. That’s not the private, independent ballot that we are guaranteed.”

Signature matching: Most states require voters to sign mail-ballot return envelopes to confirm their identity, which is used to compare the voter’s signature to one that the jurisdiction has on file. Signature matching processes are prone to errors and result in valid ballots being incorrectly discarded. In Ohio, which relies on signature matching, one expert estimated that during the 2020 primary election, 97 percent of ballots rejected based on purported signature mismatching were likely wrongly discarded. Signature matching processes are also widely considered to be discriminatory, and disabled voters are among those most targeted. Voters who are blind or have low vision and voters who have limited dexterity may have difficulty signing their names or doing so in a consistent manner. The signature that a jurisdiction has on file may appear very different from that found on a disabled voter’s mail ballot. Ballots signed using accessible signature stamps, which are relied upon by some disabled voters to create uniform signatures, have also been rejected.

Restrictions on ballot collection: Rigid restrictions on who can return someone’s mail ballot disproportionately disadvantage disabled voters as well. Voters with mobility impairments—particularly those who live in congregate settings or who receive home-based services—rely on caregivers, community advocates, and friends or family to assist them in completing tasks. There are approximately 3.6 million people in America who are unable to travel because of a disability. Yet Alabama and Tennessee prohibit ballots from being returned by anyone other than the voter themselves. There are more 567,000 nonelderly disabled people living in Alabama and some 751,500 living in Tennessee. Ten states allow only family members to return mail ballots on behalf of the voter. This is problematic for disabled Americans who may live far away from or be estranged from family. Instead, these voters rely on help from caregivers, community advocates, or friends who are barred from collecting and returning their ballots to election officials.

Guardianship laws

Most states and Washington, D.C., permit judges to strip people with certain cognitive disabilities—such as Down syndrome and Schizophrenia—of their voting rights. An estimated 1.5 million adults in the United States are subject to legal guardianship. These laws rely on an outdated assumption that people under guardianship lack the capacity to make informed decisions about voting. Guardianship laws restricting voting access are unconscionable and discriminatory. Policymakers argue these laws are necessary to prevent disabled people with cognitive disabilities from being coerced into voting. But the reality is that many disabled people with guardians are fully capable of making decisions over casting a ballot. Worth noting is that voter coercion is already a crime. Under guardianship laws, however, it is the voter who gets punished. As described by Charles P. Sabatino, director of the American Bar Association’s (ABA) Commission on Law and Aging, “Adults under guardianship lack the decisional capacities needed to take care of one or more essential needs such as health, food, clothing, or shelter; yet, too often overlooked is the fact that in most cases, they do not lack all capacities, and the level of their impairments can fluctuate over time.” States are increasingly moving toward rescinding and modifying these laws, but too many disabled Americans remain disenfranchised. As cited in a 2019 report by the Center for American Progress, one study found that in California alone, at least 32,000 individuals have been disenfranchised on account of guardianship laws over the past decade.

Anti-voting policies

Anti-voting laws, which are designed to keep Americans of color from accessing the ballot box, also prevent disabled people from making their voices heard each election cycle. Voter suppression policies such as voter ID laws, early-voting restrictions, and disenfranchisement of justice-involved individuals disadvantage voters with disabilities, who are less likely to have accepted forms of identification and rely on extended in-person voting opportunities to make their voices heard. Indeed, studies show that 11 percent of voters lack requisite forms of identification; elderly people, people with low-incomes, and are disproportionately likely to lack government-issued ID. Nearly one-quarter of disabled voters cast ballots early in 2020, and prison inmates are three times more likely than the general public to have at least one disability. Overall, 32 percent of prison inmates have at least one disability, with cognitive disabilities being the most common. Discriminatorily motivated policies aimed at limiting the availability of curbside voting and ballot drop boxes and reducing the number of polling places in low-income communities excessively burden disabled voters, especially people with mobility disabilities. Research has found that restrictions over who is allowed to vote by mail can result in lower turnout among disabled voters.

Solutions for improving the voting experience and boosting participation

To eliminate participation gaps between disabled and nondisabled voters, substantial improvements must be made to America’s election infrastructure and voting processes. The goal must be to not just shrink voter turnout gaps between disabled and nondisabled voters—but eliminate such gaps altogether.

For elected officials, improving voting accessibility is required by law. It is also smart politics. Across the United States, disabled people comprise influential voting blocs. According to the most recent estimates, there are more than 61 million disabled adults living in the United States, with voters who are disabled comprising nearly one-fifth of the U.S. electorate. The proportion of disabled adults in the United States is expected to expand substantially as more Baby Boomers reach senior citizen status; it is estimated that 40 percent of all voters will have some type of disability in coming years. Long-term effects from COVID-19 are also expected to significantly enlarge the share of disabled Americans in the United States. Lawmakers must champion accessible voting solutions or risk isolating or disenfranchising enormous numbers of potential voters.

Every voter must have equal access to the ballot box, and the recommendations outlined in this report will help to ensure that promise is fully realized by voters with disabilities. To eliminate participation gaps between disabled and nondisabled voters, policymakers must do the following:

Provide robust and continuous federal funding for election administration.

Conduct comprehensive accessibility audits on election systems with reform mandates.

Adopt pro-voter policies and meaningful accessibility standards for elections.

Rescind anti-voting rules and reform guardianship laws.

Develop safe and accessible election technology.

Crowdsource low- and no-cost accessible voting solutions.

Enhance enforcement of federal voting laws.

In thinking through policy solutions for improving voting accessibility, policymakers and election officials must consider equity gaps in access to computers, smart phones, and other electronic devices. Only about 77 percent of American adults report owning a laptop or desktop; just 53 percent report owning a tablet device. Low-income voters and voters of color are especially unlikely to have ready access to these tools. Of Americans making less than $30,000 annually, only about 76 percent of people own smartphones, compared with 96 percent of those making at least $75,000. Similarly, those in charge cannot assume that every disabled voter will have assistive care or a trusted aide who can help them complete voting-related tasks. Election systems, accessible voting solutions, and emerging voting technology must be designed in ways to ensure that all voters with disabilities have full and equal access to the ballot box and can cast a secure and independent ballot regardless of whether they have a personal electronic device or can afford help.

The Biden-Harris administration demonstrates an ongoing commitment to improving accessibility At the executive level, President Joe Biden has already issued an executive order with initiatives designed to improve election accessibility. Among other things, the March 7 order directed the General Services Administration to improve Vote.gov and ensure the site has user-friendly interfaces that comply with federal accessibility standards. It also directed the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to “evaluate the steps needed to ensure that the online Federal Voter Registration Form is accessible to people with disabilities” and “analyze barriers to private and independent voting for people with disabilities, including access to voter registration, voting technology, voting by mail, polling locations, and poll worker training” in consultation with other federal agencies. NIST is required to publish recommendations following these assessments. Furthermore, federal agencies are ordered to explore ways to better assist individuals in registering to vote and obtaining important election information and resources as well as to promote voter participation generally. These directives will be especially beneficial to voters with disabilities who frequently interact with federal agencies such as the Indian Health Service, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and U.S. Social Security Administration. Beyond this, in March 2021, President Biden took the unprecedented step of naming Kimberly Knackstedt as the first person to serve in the newly created role of disability policy director for the White House Domestic Policy Council. White House staffers focused on voting-related matters should work in close consultation with Knackstedt to ensure the unique needs of disabled voters are fully incorporated into the president’s pro-democracy agenda.

Provide robust and continuous federal funding for election administration

Election funding constraints harm all voters. But when elections are underfunded, it is voters with disabilities and those belonging to other historically underrepresented groups who suffer most. Jurisdictions lacking adequate funding for elections tend to direct whatever little money they have to equipment or initiatives that will do the most good for the most people. There is some logic in this approach; forced to make do with limited funds, jurisdictions want to get the most bang for their buck. The problem, however, is that the needs of voters belonging to groups making up a small proportion of the population, such as those with disabilities, are often overlooked or set aside. For instance, rather than redesign polling places to make them more accessible or purchase more accessible voting machines to accommodate hundreds of disabled voters, a jurisdiction may instead replace inaccessible equipment that will accommodate thousands of nondisabled voters. Inadequate election funding similarly hampers innovation for technology and solutions that are secure and accessible. It means there is no funding to support grants for the development of assistive registration and voting equipment by companies, institutions, or academics. It means there is no funding or incentive for local election officials to experiment with new, more accessible ways to administer elections, even those that are low-cost.

States alone cannot be responsible for funding elections. Although state budgets earmark some money for election administration, it is never near enough. This is especially true now as many state purses are run dry by the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, Congress must step up and provide robust and continuous funding for elections. To be sure, Congress has provided periodic funding for elections, especially in the aftermath of the 2016 election, to address election security concerns and COVID-19 complications. But these have largely been one-time buckets of funding with associated expiration dates. Moreover, the amounts have been a fraction of what experts and election officials say is actually needed. Certainly, the federal funding provided thus far has been a good starting point, but much more is needed to improve election accessibility and protect the fundamental right to vote for generations. Meaningful federal investment in voting accessibility is long overdue.

The Center for American Progress has developed a rough estimate of the total amount of funding needed to make necessary upgrades to election infrastructure, implement pro-voter solutions, and improve accessibility. This estimate covers a broad array of programs and initiatives that will make elections better for all voters. Indeed, guaranteeing full and equal voting rights for disabled voters is not limited to purchasing accessible voting machines or updating election website interfaces; it also requires implementation of smart election practices that will strengthen democracy generally. Thus, in addition to costs associated with accessibility programs, CAP’s estimate covers costs associated with adequately staffed polling places; poll worker training and recruitment; meaningful post-election audits that confirm election outcomes; voter education campaigns; vulnerability testing of election systems; improved mail-ballot printing and sorting capabilities; ballot tracking programs; public financing of elections; redistricting reforms; and resources to reduce polling place wait times, among other things.

CAP estimates that at least $8 billion is needed for fiscal years 2022–2026 to fund important programs that will help improve election access and spur innovation around accessible voting, including:

A new accessibility office at the Election Assistance Commission

A national resource center on accessible voting

Full funding for the U.S. Access Board

Comprehensive congressional investigation into electoral barriers for disabled people

Federal grants for studying barriers to voting for people with disabilities and developing nontechnical and technical solutions

New Democracy Technology and Resilience Laboratory at an appropriate federal agency with disability access expertise

Challenge.gov competitions for developing secure and accessible voting solutions for people with disabilities

Periodic audits of NVRA compliance carried out by certain federal agencies

Election accessibility audits carried out by state and local officials

This funding estimate is not exact, nor does it reflect costs for many supplemental policies that are needed. That said, it offers policymakers a good jumping-off point for determining necessary funding levels.

Conduct comprehensive accessibility audits on election systems with reform mandates

The first step to improving election accessibility is for policymakers to conduct full accountings of ways that existing election systems block voters with disabilities from participating. Comprehensive election accessibility audits will help policymakers and experts identify specific problems or inadequacies with registration and voting systems so that they can design effective, targeted solutions. Accessibility audits should be carried out at all levels of government, and findings from such audits must be used to form the basis for clear reform mandates with hard implementation deadlines. Accessibility audits conducted by the federal government will undoubtably be more high-level than those conducted by state and local entities; federal assessments will paint a broad picture of accessibility issues affecting disabled voters across the nation’s patchwork election landscape. Localized audits, on the other hand, will more precisely pinpoint failings in jurisdiction-specific infrastructure and election processes. These audits are complementary to one another, and both are needed to improve accessibility for people who are disabled.

Critically, accessibility audits must not be utilized as a tool to suppress voters of colors and members of other historically underrepresented groups. Policymakers have previously misused ADA noncompliance as the basis for suppressing voters of color and voters living in low-income neighborhoods. This insidious practice was on full display in Georgia during the 2018 election cycle. There, state officials hired an outside consultant to evaluate polling places for ADA compliance. But that review was not carried out in good faith. Instead, Georgia officials used the ADA as an excuse to close polling places in majority-Black and low-income neighborhoods located in Randolph County, thereby forcing these voters to travel far distances to cast a ballot. Policymakers in Georgia could have chosen to open temporary replacement sites in those communities that fully complied with ADA accessibility standards and remained convenient to all voters who lived in those areas. Instead, officials sought to close the sites down completely, making it more difficult for both disabled and nondisabled individuals in these neighborhoods to vote, increasing the burdens placed on Black and working-class disabled voters, and effectively discounting the experiences of disabled Black voters by seeking to pit disabled voters and nondisabled voters of color against each other. Policymakers must advance policies that enhance access for all voters and not implement policies that benefit some communities at the expense of others.

Accessibility audits by states and localities

States and local jurisdictions must coordinate on audits assessing the accessibility of voter registration systems and processes; election administration procedures and worker trainings; polling place practices; voting machinery and location check-in equipment; and the availability and distribution of election-related information and materials. In Colorado, county-by-county audits are conducted after every election to review whether accessibility standards are being met. In auditing these systems, state and local officials must consult with disability advocates and community activists representing voters with varying needs. Doing so is necessary to ensure accessibility audits fully capture election insufficiencies affecting voters across all disabilities. Audits could be carried out by independent commissions comprising state and local election officials as well as disability advocates and voters. Alternatively, audits could be overseen by the state’s top election official, such as the secretary of state, whose office would be responsible for coordinating auditing processes with and collecting information from local elections offices and governments. Another option is for a given state’s local jurisdictions to enter into informal or formal pacts or agreements to conduct accessibility audits and share information among themselves. This may be an especially good option in states whose top election official is unmotivated to carry out an audit or who cannot be relied upon to do so fairly.

Accessibility audits should be carried out in haste so that necessary improvements can be made before the 2022 midterm election. Disabled voters must not be disadvantaged in yet another federal election. Of course, some policy changes may take longer to implement; accessible election equipment can take a long time to acquire. Still, a great deal can be accomplished over the next year and a half, and policymakers must aim to adopt as many positive changes as possible before November 2022. Audits of this kind should be conducted regularly following future elections to account for polling place changes and equipment or resource updates.

Accessibility audits by the federal government

Accessibility audits on U.S. election systems should also be carried out by the federal government. To date, federal entities have conducted only a handful of studies or assessments on election accessibility and compliance with federal voting laws protecting disabled voters. The GAO polling place study, referenced earlier in this report, provides one of the only publicly available comprehensive analyses of voting location accessibility by the federal government. The federal government has not carried out a formal review of NVRA compliance by government entities or federally funded programs for many years. Nonprofit organizations and academics have helped fill the information gap by conducting independent accessibility audits and reviews of election systems. These studies have been hugely valuable and should continue. However, scholars and nonprofit organizations with limited resources should not be solely responsible for collecting and sharing important data on disability voting access with lawmakers and the public.

The federal government must be more intentional in employing its vast resources to pinpoint and assess access issues for disabled voters in federal elections. To do this, Congress could commission a new GAO study that more comprehensively reviews election accessibility across a range of categories and factors, not just polling places. Another option is for Congress to investigate election accessibility on par with the investigation it conducted on Russian interference in the 2016 election. This targeted bipartisan investigation, which took place over many months, laid the basis for a series of reports by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence assessing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election. Congress has occasionally held hearings on disability voting access, but this proposed approach would be much more intensive. An investigation to this scale would appropriately signify the urgency of the matter and would produce the first single, comprehensive examination of access issues across the whole system of elections and politics. In addition to investigating inaccessible polling places, voter registration systems, and in-person and mail-voting systems, the investigation would cover NVRA noncompliance, money in politics obstacles, challenges in running for office, and inaccessible political campaign websites and events. Like the congressional investigation into Russian interference, an investigation by Congress into barriers to participation for disabled voters would culminate in a series of reports that policymakers, advocates, and political campaigns could rely upon as they adopt reforms.

At the executive level, President Biden could direct the U.S. Access Board, along with agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Department of Agriculture, to investigate NVRA compliance by federally funded programs in order to help identify gaps in registration services. Additionally, like President Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission on Election Administration, President Biden could assemble a bipartisan working group tasked with undertaking a full assessment of barriers for disabled voters in federal elections. This initiative would be different from past commissions in that it would focus exclusively on election administration problems for disabled voters. As a general matter, disability representation and accessibility expertise must be improved across the federal government, including at agencies such as NIST and other entities with involvement in voting and election matters. The administration should provide federal agencies with clear mandates to make accessibility and the needs of disabled people a central consideration in the policymaking process. NIST’s historical focus on voting system “usability” does not check the box; usability and accessibility are two separate things.

Adopt pro-voter policies and meaningful accessibility standards for elections

Once policymakers have identified existing problems, they can begin adopting solutions. It is pertinent for policymakers to adopt affirmative voting policies proven to help disabled voters and nondisabled voters alike participate in elections. Priority should be given to extended early-voting periods and polling place hours, along with same-day voter registration. These policies “can be highly beneficial for voters who have inflexible schedules because they rely on personal care attendants, paratransit, and other factors that are out of their control to get around.” Flexible vote-by-mail policies enabling any American to cast a mail ballot regardless of excuse should also be prioritized, as should online voter registration systems. As outlined in previous sections, mail voting is preferred by disabled voters, and online registration enables disabled voters to register at home safely. It is essential for policymakers to ensure both systems are fully accessible. This means reconfiguring election webpages and forms for compatibility with assistive aids. Election webpages must be outfitted with clear, straightforward language and explanatory graphics to ensure access for registrants and voters across all disabilities. Maryland has offered disabled voters an online tool for filling out mail ballots independently since 2014 and is reportedly willing to share its technology for free with other states. In 2020, several states—such as Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia—enhanced accessibility for mail-voting systems in response to litigation brought by disability advocates. In Virginia, officials offered blind and low-vision people the option to receive a mail ballot electronically with screen reader-compatible technology.

Before adopting any one pro-voter policy, policymakers must carefully consider potential impacts on disabled voters. While most pro-voter solutions benefit disabled and nondisabled people equally, some do not. For example, Election Day holidays and AVR programs operating solely out of DMVs are well intentioned but can have unintended consequences for voters with certain disabilities. Election Day holidays can make voting hard for those relying on home health aides who take the day off. Past sections of this report discussed how disabled people are less likely to frequent DMVs compared with nondisabled voters, which risks them being shut out from AVR programs limited solely to those agencies. Exclusive reliance on paper ballots is another example. From an election security standpoint, hand-marked mail ballots are the safest, most reliable, and hackproof voting method. They enable jurisdictions to carry out robust, dependable post-election audits to confirm the accuracy of election outcomes. But paper ballots are not accessible to many disabled people and, as such, cannot be the sole voting option. Policymakers had security in mind when they moved to all-paper elections, but in doing so, they overlooked consequences for voters who cannot mark or handle a paper ballot.

To be sure, all these policies are good and necessary. They simply require a bit of fine-tuning to be accessible. For instance, rather than turn Election Day into a holiday, employers should be mandated to provide workers with extremely flexible paid time off, including during early voting and on Election Day. This achieves the same goal as Election Day holidays—ensuring people have ample opportunity to vote—without disadvantaging disabled voters who require assistance. Additionally, AVR programs currently restricted to DMVs should be expanded to include education and health care agencies that more frequently serve disabled people. Technology improvements are still needed to make returning voted ballots electronically safe. In the meantime, policymakers should invest in mobile vote vehicles that travel to disabled voters’ homes and provide them with accessible technology needed to cast ballots secretly and independently. In-person paper-based voting systems must be coupled with widely and readily available assistive technology, such as ballot marking devices, that poll workers are fully trained on how to use.

Additional pro-voter policies that must be adopted to close participation gaps between disabled and nondisabled voters include:

All poll workers must be educated on how to respectfully interact with disabled voters and must receive comprehensive training on use and functionalities of accessible election equipment. Jurisdictions should hire poll workers who are disabled. All workers must receive cultural competency training and be fully trained on disabled voters’ voting rights.

Voting locations must be situated near public transportation and must be set in ADA-accessible buildings with pickup and drop-off areas that comply with requirements outlined in the ADA checklist.

Ballot drop boxes where voters can return mail ballots must be plentiful, designed for ADA compliance, and conveniently located across communities with accessible paths of travel to ensure equal access.

Voting locations must offer flexible and convenient curbside voting options for disabled voters. Voters utilizing this option must be able to notify poll workers that they have arrived without reliance on cellular phones or having someone accompany them to the voting location. Curbside voting areas must be monitored by election staff throughout voting hours to ensure limited wait times. Having staff monitor the area can also help reduce potential harassment from electioneers.

States and localities should designate a chief voting accessibility officer tasked with assisting policymakers as they adopt and implement pro-voter policies in ways that guarantee equal voting access for all people with disabilities.

Officials must provide plain language formatting and American Sign Language translations for all literature around voter rights and responsibilities.

Rescind anti-voting rules and reform guardianship laws

In addition to adopting pro-voter policies, policymakers must rescind harmful anti-voting rules. Indeed, affirmative voting policies do not help disabled voters if felon disenfranchisement policies and guardianship laws block them from participating in the first place. Similarly, strict voter ID laws, restrictions on mail voting, and harsh signature matching or ballot collection rules prevent people with disabilities from fully utilizing policies such as vote by mail and early voting that can help shrink participation gaps between disabled and nondisabled voters. Equal voting access will not be achieved unless and until these restrictive and discriminatory practices are overturned. Strict voter ID laws should be eliminated entirely, and justice-involved individuals must have their voting rights restored immediately upon release from detention. Signature matching processes require substantial improvements. Ideally, signature matching processes would be altogether eliminated and replaced with more equitable and nondiscriminatory methods of verifying voter identity. Unfortunately, political realities prevent this from happening anytime soon; signature matching is here to stay, at least for the time being. In reviewing voter signatures, there should always be a strong presumption of validity; before being rejected, the signature should, preferably, be reviewed by at least three people, including at least one person of a different political party than the party of the voter. All three reviewers must independently conclude that the signature is invalid before a ballot is rejected. Jurisdictions nationwide must accept signature marks or stamps that are sometimes relied upon by disabled voters, and officials must rigorously train election staff not to reject ballots on which these marks are used.

The rising tide of anti-voting efforts being witnessed across the country is deeply worrisome for all Americans but is especially so for disabled voters who will be among those excessively burdened. More than 360 anti-voting bills have been introduced in states, many of which would place substantial restrictions on vote by mail, early voting, and registration access. All voters will be required to jump through a multitude of hoops to make their voices heard, but disabled voters, who more often rely on flexible voting and registration options, will be unfairly disadvantaged. It is imperative that these anti-voting efforts be culled or overridden by federal legislation.

In reforming guardianship laws, policymakers should rely on the ABA’s recommended standard. Specifically, the right to vote must be retained for someone under guardianship unless a court decides that all the following criteria are met:

The exclusion of voting rights is based on a determination by a court of competent jurisdiction.

Appropriate due process protections have been afforded to the person under guardianship.

The court finds that the person under guardianship cannot communicate, with or without accommodations, a specific desire to participate in the voting process.

The above findings are established by clear and convincing evidence.

The right to vote is fundamental, and depriving someone of it should be exceedingly difficult. The ABA’s standard was incorporated into the Uniform Law Commission’s Uniform Guardianship, Conservatorship, and Other Protective Arrangements Act in 2017 and is increasingly featured in state guardianship reform legislation.

“If I can in some way indicate that I have a desire to vote—that is the base standard that should be applied. … It should be the same standard as everyone else.” Michelle Bishop, voting access and engagement manager for the National Disability Rights Network

Develop safe and accessible election technology

Advancements in election technology are needed to promote voting access for disabled voters and to ensure they can cast a secret, independent ballot. As described in previous sections, disabled voters currently have limited options for registering, requesting ballots, and obtaining important election information in ways that are fully accessible. At present, there is a lack of technology that would enable disabled people to vote and return voted ballots electronically safely and securely. Ballot marking devices such as ExpressVote offer disabled voters good options at in-person voting locations, but ingenuity is lacking. Well-intentioned attempts by local officials to develop new accessible voting technology have failed to garner support from security experts or have been unsuccessful due to logistical complications or funding constraints. Some private companies have attempted to fill accessible technology gaps with mobile voting apps and other products designed to help disabled people participate in elections. But some of these technologies have suffered problems, and there are serious questions surrounding the role private corporations should play in outfitting U.S. elections. Today’s corporate election system vendors are often criticized for their lack of transparency and oversight; in 2018, one election system vendor was found to have ties with a Russian oligarch.

Voting accessibility is required by law, and governments must take responsibility for ensuring that right is fully realized by investing in the development of secure and accessible voting technology. The federal government has an especially critical role to play given the vast resources at its disposal. In addition to funding pilot programs for secure voting methods that enable disabled voters to register and vote from home privately and independently, it should consider creating a new entity tasked with developing technologies to improve participation for disabled and nondisabled Americans alike and to protect democratic institutions more generally. President Biden recently proposed a new agency modeled off the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to spur health care innovations and propel vaccine and treatment development into hyperdrive. Innovations to protect U.S. democracy and the fundamental right to vote equally deserve this level of urgency.

Such an agency or department—let’s call it the Democracy Technology and Resilience Laboratory—could be housed at any number of federal agencies but would ideally be situated in agencies with accessibility expertise, such as the U.S. Access Board or HHS. The EAC, which is working to expand its institutional accessibility expertise and already helps develop the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) for election-related technology, could also be a good fit for the new laboratory. Alternatively, the lab could be housed within NIST or the National Science Foundation (NSF), which already have some of the built-in infrastructure. NIST, like the EAC, helps develop the VVSG and has recently requested public comments “about barriers to private and independent voting for people with disabilities,” while President Biden has proposed a new technology directorate for the NSF. Disability rights advocates have voiced concern over a lack of disability and accessibility expertise at both NIST and NSF; the two agencies will need to substantially improve staffing expertise in these areas before they can house a laboratory of this kind.

All responsibilities currently residing with NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory pertaining to accessible voting technology and evaluations of accredited voting-equipment testing institutions could be transferred over to this new lab. Additionally, the Democracy Technology and Resilience Lab would develop secure and accessible election equipment as well as rights-respecting sociotechnical technology standards for emerging election-related innovations. This entity should work in close consultation with the U.S. Access Board and could be tasked with developing formulas that lawmakers and election officials can rely upon for determining how many accessible voting machines are needed at each polling place. Developing a free accessible machine calculator based on population size, voters’ needs, and past voting patterns would greatly assist jurisdictions in determining their procurement needs and protecting voting access within their communities. Jurisdictions should be legally required to adhere to the formula, and HAVA’s one-machine-per-polling-place rule should be amended to read “each polling place shall have a sufficient number of accessible voting machines determined by the formula, but not less than one.” Importantly, any government entity responsible for developing election technology and setting election technology standards must be subject to oversight by an independent authority and be staffed by people with civil rights backgrounds covering accessibility, privacy, cybersecurity, racial and gender equity, and LGBTQ rights, among other things. Disability advocates must be employed by the lab and must be consulted on all matters pertaining to technology development and voting solutions.

There are other ways the federal government can drive innovation around accessible voting solutions and technology. Federal agencies—such as HHS, NSF, NIST, EAC, and the U.S. Access Board—can initiate a series of new Challenge.gov prize competitions for developing and studying accessible voting technology and programs to drive participation among the disability community. The America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 allows any federal agency head to carry out prize competitions with the potential to spur innovation. As of 2020, more than 1,000 prize competitions have been carried out by federal agencies; in fiscal year 2018, total prize money awarded through federal competitions exceeded $37 million, with a median prize amount of $80,000. Federal challenge competitions have “produced concepts for the next ‘lunar loo’ (space toilet), an improved digital wallet user interface, protecting fish from water infrastructure, opioid detection in international mail, and ‘getting out the count’ for the census” as well as for self-driving cars. Prizes can be monetary and/or nonmonetary in nature. Besides money, the winner could be formally recognized by President Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris as part of an official ceremony honoring other democracy heroes.

Future winners of these prize competitions could be in the running for the National Medal of Technology and Innovation or the National Medal of Science. The National Medal of Technology and Innovation is administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Patent and Trademark Office and awarded to “those who have made lasting contributions to America’s competitiveness, standard of living, and quality of life through technological innovation, as well as those who have made substantial contributions to strengthening the Nation’s technological workforce.” The National Medal of Science is administered by the NSF and awarded “to individuals deserving of special recognition by reason of their outstanding cumulative contributions to knowledge in the physical, biological, mathematical, engineering, or behavioral or social sciences, in service to the Nation.” Nominees for these awards are submitted to the president for consideration by committees comprising leading experts in engineering, computer science, mathematics, and social sciences, among other topics. Surely, solving technological tensions between security and accessibility and expanding access to voting for disabled voters is worthy of such esteemed honors.

Crowdsource low- and no-cost accessible voting solutions

High-tech solutions for improving election accessibility and keeping elections secure are necessary. But developing them will take time and could even be cost-prohibitive if Congress fails to provide continuous election funding. Considering these realities, election officials and voting advocates must work together to develop low- and no-cost solutions for making processes for registering to vote and casting ballots fully accessible. Over the years, local election officials have come up with cost-effective, straightforward fixes to address accessibility challenges. For example, in 2020, election officials in Iowa created an accessibility Quick Check guide for polling places statewide that doubled as a measuring tool for ensuring polling place doorways and internal and external spaces meet ADA accessibility standards. It was a simple but highly effective solution that required only those materials that every polling place already had on hand. It is this kind of cost-smart ingenuity that must be promoted in the immediate and near future. Jurisdictions should improve communication across state lines to crowdsource their low- and no-cost ideas since the accessibility challenges found in one jurisdiction can often also be found elsewhere. Thus, while jurisdictions and Congress must invest in new safe and accessible technology, obstacles in accessibility can also be addressed by simply being more creative and innovative with resources already on hand.

Enhance enforcement of federal voting laws

Finally, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) must prioritize enforcement of federal laws protecting disabled Americans’ voting rights. The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division was severely underutilized and its mission subverted during the Trump administration. Voting rights violations against disabled and nondisabled voters were not prioritized. Federal mandates requiring election accessibility under the ADA, HAVA, NVRA, and other statutes cannot protect disabled voters if they are not enforced. The DOJ bears responsibility for ensuring jurisdictions operate in full adherence to federal law. Federal enforcement proceedings or even threats of legal action for violations of federal voting laws are powerful tools for improving compliance. Past enforcement actions by the DOJ have resulted in expanded voter registration opportunities at state disability services offices, improved polling place accessibility and poll worker training, and enhanced access to accessible voting equipment at voting locations. President Biden has already demonstrated a strong commitment to protecting the fundamental right to vote and has nominated seasoned and dedicated civil rights lawyers to top positions at the DOJ and to spearhead the agency’s Civil Rights Division. There is every reason to believe that this new DOJ will be fully committed to enforcing federal voting laws and protecting disabled voters’ right to vote. But after decades of having their rights overlooked, many disabled voters may remain skeptical of the government’s commitment to enforcing federal access requirements. The DOJ must prove itself to be a trustworthy ally in the fight for full and equal voting access, and it can accomplish this by aggressively enforcing federal voting and accessibility standards.

Conclusion

Although research shows that voting access for disabled voters is improving, there is still much work to be done. Making U.S. elections more accessible will require hard work on the part of lawmakers and election officials as well as significant input from affected voters and community advocates. Policymakers will need to make difficult decisions that weigh myriad goals and interests, such as accessibility and security, privacy, and independence. Ensuring that disabled voters have full and equal access to the ballot box is not optional—it is a federal mandate that must be realized. Policymakers have numerous tools available to improve election systems and make them more accessible, and they must employ them now with all urgency before the next major election.

About the authors

Danielle Root is the director of voting rights and access to justice on the Democracy and Government Reform team at the Center for American Progress.

Mia Ives-Rublee is the director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center.

Euro 2020 Quarter-Final Predictions (Ep. 1040)

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Euro 2020 Quarter-Final Predictions

The guys (@GamblingPodcast) are back talking footie with the host of the Soccer Gambling Podcast Billi Bhatti (@SGPSoccer). The guys recap a profitable Euro 2020 Knockout Round of predictions before getting into their Euro 2020 Quarter-final Predictions. Plus they hit on the big upset of France getting knocked out of the tournament. They close things out with their lock, dog and something spicy when it comes to their Euro 2020 preview.

Podcast Timecodes

1:04 – Intro/Welcome

2:29 – SGP Contributor Billi Bhatti

2:54 – Biggest Upset from Round of 16 Knockout Stage

5:09 – Thoughts on England’s Road to Finals

7:14 – Penalty Kick Strategy

13:23 – Final Thoughts on Round of 16 Knockout Stage

15:48 – Switzerland v. Spain Preview

24:39 – Belgium v. Italy Preview

32:32 – Czech Republic v. Denmark Preview

40:28 – England v. Ukraine Preview

46:35 – Lock, Dog, and Spicy Predictions

Euro 2020 Quarter-final Odds

DATE TEAM ML TOT TOADV Top2 Win 7/2 Belgium 240 2 120 280 700 12:00 PM Italy 135 -155 175 370 90′ draw > 210 7/2 Switzerland 450 2.5 230 950 2500 9:00 AM Spain -150 -300 150 320 90′ draw > 280 7/3 Ukraine 900 2.5 400 1200 3300 12:00 PM England -250 -590 -205 205 90′ draw > 350 7/3 Czech Republic 300 2 140 750 2500 9:00 AM Denmark 110 -180 330 1000 90′ draw > 225

Podcast Video

Podcast Transcription

Speaker 0 (0s): This Euro 2020 quarter final edition of the sports gaming podcast is presented by win bet. Get started today and you’ll get a risk-free bet up to $500 terms and conditions apply. Get the details@wyandnbet.com and download the app today. We’re also brought to you by prop swap America’s number one app to buy and sell sports bets. Use promo code sup on your first deposit and receive up to $500 in bonus cash. That’s prop swap.com promo code S G P. We’re also brought to you by underdog fantasy.

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Speaker 1 (50s): Hey, what’s up? You’re degenerate dabblers. This is bill Burr, and you’re listening to S G P N let it ride, baby.

Speaker 2 (1m 32s): Welcome

Speaker 0 (1m 32s): Everyone to the sports gambling podcasts. I’m Sean stacking. The money green was my partner in pigs, Ryan, real money Kramer what’s happening, crime dog.

Speaker 3 (1m 41s): I’m sorry. Can you please address the audience by your God-given name? Soccer?

Speaker 0 (1m 46s): Sean goes, Sean reporting here with some amazing predictions from the knockout round or dominating performance, almost pitched to clean sheets of winter. It was in full of Sweden and Croatia not advancing oh, in France. It’s totally screwing us, but we, we had a great, a knockout round made our, made our clients a ton of cash. And yeah, we, we got the quarterfinal preview coming up. Of course we will be joined by the great Billy Bahati, but before we do want to make sure we shout out win bet.

Oh man, these Euro 2020 picks have been straight fire. I mean Czech Republic at plus four 30. Imagine if you’re over at Winton bed, getting down on that and not only are we giving you out winners, we’re also giving you a sweet, sweet bonus here in the form of a $500 a risk-free a sports bet terms and conditions apply. Get the details at w Y and, and bet.com download the app today, but they got it all the generous promos, the yachts, the parlors, it’s all happening on win bet.

W Y N N let’s go and let’s bring them all on the host, the soccer gambling podcasts on the sports gambling podcast network. Billy Bahati, Billy what’s happened

Speaker 1 (3m 5s): To my, you did better than me. Then you should take over the family.

Speaker 0 (3m 10s): Did I did ask you on your website. If you guys need any soccer handicappers, I’m looking at pretty fits almost a clean sheet, dominating performance on the pitch. Wow. Billy let’s let’s get into it. Cause I, you know, overall, I think we, we gave out a decent number of winners. What, but I mean, for me, at least France, not advancing and losing to Switzerland. That was the, would you say that’s the biggest subset or, or was it, or was it Netherlands losing the Czech Republic? What do you got is the biggest upset of that?

Speaker 1 (3m 42s): No, it was undoubtably far France, especially when you look at the situation and I even mean beforehand because you’re playing your neighbors. This is like Switzerland, the little brother or France, where they’ve never won anything apart from, you know, Roger’s better into tennis, but in soccer terms, they WellWell underneath France. It’s like England Scotland right there. So for that to happen with those two teams, plus the situation area where there were three, one down with, with 15 minutes to go, that has to be the biggest. Do you know that the tie was 66 to 185 to one to qualify?

Speaker 0 (4m 19s): That’s insane. Oh, so like when they were down three, one that’s that’s what the price, this was

Speaker 1 (4m 24s): 185 to one to qualify. 66. We took my, I gave my clients to tie on both the Spain game and the France game, but both at three, two, so nine to one and eight to one. So we hedged out of our money line. So we were okay there. So I’m doing was messaging me about how terrible I was. So I’ve managed to raise eight years of work in this guy’s opinion, which is, which is completely fair because that’s how it works.

Well,

Speaker 0 (4m 56s): Billy sarcasm directed towards the trolls is always our

Speaker 3 (4m 60s): Favorite. I mean, we can, you’re talking France. I mean the more important thing and Sean, I’m surprised you didn’t lead with this Belgium. No, I was going to say, I told you they were going to be over eight and a half to give that out to the scam. I locked it up and there

Speaker 0 (5m 15s): Were 13. Are you kidding me? That was over soccer shows and easy cash. And of course we are a team Belgium. We have a Belgium winning it all in the FSG futures pool. So we really need, we need Belgium to take this home. Obviously, France getting knocked out helps us. If we can get past Italy, where are you looking right now, Billy? As far as, yeah, I mean the other side of the bracket, I know you gave out, you were on England to advance.

We were all in England to advance, but then you also throw out that the basically you should take either England or Germany, kind of whoever you like also take them to make it to the, the 2020 final. It sounds like from, you know, reading your texts and your tweets, you were pretty happy with the aggressive strategy. The Englishman were able to put out there on the pitch,

Speaker 1 (6m 8s): Correct. But once they made the changes, they didn’t start like that. When Vance wrote out the first 60 minutes, as soon as girlish come on, who should have been a star in the first place, then they really showed how they could get at this German team. And he could have implemented that from the beginning, but they are taking this very conservative approach to not get beat. I think they’ve come up against four teams that they’re better. And I was better than I was a hundred percent competent when I came on it that they would be Germany because I don’t like this, this German team. And I’m a hundred percent confident.

There’ll be everybody in front of them. That’s why I said, if you go to the England or Germany, Germany, future, just take the team to advance to the final. And now England arts, two to one favorites to win the tournament. Now odds on favorites, the reach, the vinyl. And I gave you that at what was it? Plus three 50 at the time I

Speaker 3 (6m 57s): Was going to say it was plus three 50. It’s now minus 2 0 5. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (7m 4s): Can you do again? Yeah, you’ve been time do fall, baby. Yeah. And again, of course, thanks for the props off. Shout out, go to prom, soft.com, promo code SGP. Perfect time to buy and sell some of these, a Euro tickets again. If you, if you took a, you know, England to get to the final or England to win at all, maybe maybe you want to hedge. I mean, it sounds like Billy’s still high on them. I’m still high on them to, to get to the final. I think Belgium beating England is still my a, is still my pick here for the final, but again, make sure you check out props off.com promo code SGP.

Get up to a $500 deposit bonus over there real quick. Before we start getting into these quarterfinal predictions, Kramer and I watching that, watching that France game live. And again, you nailed it. Make sure you’re following Billy on Twitter at SGP soccer.

Speaker 3 (7m 52s): Thank you. Tell everyone what I said before. It happened

Speaker 0 (7m 55s): That well you, you said it and Billy tweeted it out that we thought, or you guys thought that France was going to lose in penalty kicks and Strat. And of course I forget the guy’s name who ended up missing in Bombay choked at the end there Paul Pogba, Paul Pogba, the guy is a beast. Billy. Why, why wouldn’t you want to end with the guy? That’s a beast like pod guy, I guess you want to start out good.

But to me, you know, the, the situation of closing strong with your best goal score, why, why would France not have Pogba take PKS last?

Speaker 1 (8m 35s): I’m so glad it’s finally happened to somebody because you see all the time. It’s not, it’s messy. Messy would never do it. Cause messy doesn’t have that kind of ego, but you do see it with a Rinaldo Neymar and you saw it here within Baca. They step up to take a kick number five. What if there isn’t a kick number five? What if you either lose the game or the game is won already because two of those cakes could have been saved. If somebody could ask before him, you put your, you front, load it with your best penalty takers, which embark is supposed to be. So he put all of that pressure on his own shoulders with the picture in his head that he had a terrible game.

He missed chances during that game. They should have won it, but especially in extra time. And the picture in his head was I’ll compensate by getting the image of me winning this game with the last kick and that, and the last players that need that, ah, Ronaldo, Neymar, and ambapo, they don’t need any more glorification. They, they get to celebrate goals. They’re the highest paid, separated by everybody. Everybody has their names on their shirts. I don’t think they need to do this. So I’m so glad to see someone doing it. I’m not happy because I was writing a future on France to reach the, the semifinal.

I glad I got at tweet outlets and restore some credibility, not in the eyes of the guy that messaged them. But yeah, that, that’s just, that’s just the way it goes in. Now. Obviously it all opens up for everybody else on both sides. It almost makes the tournament more interesting because I think France are 100% complacent. They showed they were the best team in this competition because first of all, the biggest problem going into that game was the players managed the team. I don’t know if you saw it coming into the press.

Oh no, I missed that. Well, they wanted to play their own formation. So it gave more of them, freedom pod, but wanting more freedom. Adam back-pay wanted more freedom to get into the middle. So they played wide wingbacks, which means that back-pay doesn’t need an Griezmann. They don’t need to go wide and get the ball. So they go three at a back, which gives them more secure and four across midfield. And those, those two wide midfielders, they come in and put the crosses in and the three people can stay in attack, get the glory and Pogba can push up as well.

So they’re all thinking about how they could do more, get more attacking Liam boat. They didn’t think about how bad they would be defensively. And at half time the manager decided Paul Pogba should not be managing the team,

Speaker 0 (11m 0s): But Pogba did have a great game. He had two goals,

Speaker 1 (11m 3s): Right? One goal and one, but he did have, he did have a good game, but he shouldn’t be influencing and managing and say that personal performance was as poor as they could be. They look completely disorganized. Like he didn’t know what they were doing. And then in the second off, obviously they give away the penalty, but then they move up a couple of gears, go three, one up. They just, they looked, that was the best. Any team had looked for a, for a 25 minute period in the whole tournament. And then all of a sudden they come down and get complacent and then it gets a three-three. They deserve to be out 100%.

They deserve to be out. But I’ll tell you, now that start, the next world cup is favors.

Speaker 3 (11m 40s): Honestly, like I, I wanted to step, like I get it. You want one of your best bringing it back to the penalty kicks. But like you saw it in his eyes. When he walked up, he was telling a joke. He didn’t want, like, he didn’t want that pressure in head. And then he took a poor kick. I just, I mean, again, a championship level, youth soccer coach over here. But when you’re looking at the psychology of the guy you want taken the last kick or the girl, it’s someone who isn’t going to buckle under the pressure, like a giant pussy. And I saw the way that he was, he was rubbing his quad and it just made me think maybe LeBron James needs to send him Bobby A. Little prayer.

Maybe there was a little tweaked quad. That’s why they didn’t get it all the way to the side netting. Oh,

Speaker 1 (12m 22s): I thought I saw something out on ESPN where they were showing everybody would, that would, that run ups. And everybody took around about 30, 40 seconds to take their kid, take their cake. And from the time of backpack received the ball to taking it, he only took 12 seconds. So he wanted it over and done with like he wanted, he wanted that moment to be gone. That doesn’t inspire confidence at all. No.

Speaker 0 (12m 44s): Yeah. And, and I guess I do understand the strategy now of like, basically you want to load up top because like Billy’s saying the fifth kick may not even matter,

Speaker 3 (12m 54s): But if they’re taking the kick, especially in this case where they’re the second, the second team going, it becomes the most pressurized. So you have to pick all five right away. Okay.

Speaker 0 (13m 5s): So you, you lock in your five, as soon as penalty kicks start, you can’t kinda cause it would add another level of strategy if you could pick the guy as it goes, honestly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13m 15s): Just to let you know, you’re looking 10 because of sudden death orders

Speaker 3 (13m 19s): And that’s also where it gets interesting. Like when you get to the bigger pressure kicks, it’s the guys you didn’t want taking the initial kick. So I mean, honestly like what, I’ve had six, again, youth soccer championship level, coach,

Speaker 0 (13m 31s): Goalies, goalies have

Speaker 3 (13m 33s): The testicular fortitude and the confidence to go up there and make a kick. And oftentimes the pressure won’t bother them as much. Cause they’re, they’re on the other side of all five kicks for the other team. So maybe the France manager can take a, take a lesson from me. I

Speaker 0 (13m 48s): Liked that. I liked that. All right, Billy, before we move over to the quarterfinal, any, any other thoughts from the knockout round a worth a crowbar name here?

Speaker 1 (13m 57s): No, I mean, I enjoyed the England game yesterday. I gave out a couple of free picks on my Twitter for that. Oh, I’ll keep doing that through the, through the tournament. But yeah, I mean that one pretty much played out as I, as I expected it to be, whereas a kg game between those two. I think looking ahead, getting that team look England could have in Belgium, France, Italy, they could have been any top team. And I still wouldn’t have been as confident in that because they do manage to always squander these opportunities.

That team has beat them so many times in so many situations in games that England had even dominated. And it’s gone through to penalties like day of horn in England since 1966 in England won the world cup. There’ve been very few times where they’ve, they’ve managed to progress or get positive results against Germany to do that to them. And so comprehensively because gentlemen, I know they had a couple of chances, but England looked fully in control. I think the beat them in that manner of performance and the psychological hurdle of, okay, if we beat Germany, you don’t to be scared of Ukraine.

You know, there’ll be scared of Denmark or Czech Republic. You’re not even going to be scared of her weights in the final because you beat the team that always beats you like these players, they got the monkey off their back. Exactly. And these, these young players, I don’t think that they’ve been influenced by everything that the other players came in. The more senior players who have been beaten jerk by Germany before they, or they see that name and they feel intimidated by it. I don’t think these players had that. I don’t think that was something that they were bothered by it. I think for them it was a case of look, all this bullshit happened in the two thousands in the nineties when we weren’t even born or we were very, very young and it’s a relevant source and they made it irrelevant to them.

They made that history relevant to them. And I think that’s definitely a good thing moving forward. I don’t think there’s England team are going to crack or, or be massively complacent at times. Like I, but I think if you see England struggling at any point, I don’t think it’s going to be down to the fact that the players are complacent. They have to do what the managers set out. And I still think this is a very overly cautious manager. We’ve got players on the bench that could be being in his teams, more convincingly and scaring him. And we’ve got some scary players not starting to go like relish.

Yeah.

Speaker 0 (16m 12s): Put girlish in the starting line up I’m with Billy. All right, let’s get to the quarter final preview. The predictions kicking things off Friday 9:00 AM on the west coast, Switzerland, Spain, Switzerland is a plus four 50 dogs, Spain, minus one 50 draw plus two 80 total sitting at two and a half. And of course reminder for the newer American soccer betters the total, it is only a 90 minutes. So if it goes to extra time, PK, obviously that doesn’t, it doesn’t count to the goals to advance.

Switzerland is a, a plus two 30 dogs. Spain minus 300. Spain is now a plus three 20, a favorite. One of the favorites here to win it all with only eight teams left Billy. To me, it seems like Switzerland is the, is the team that’s happy to be here? Or did you see enough at a Switzerland that makes you, makes you think maybe there’s a shot that get it to a draw or, or even to advance? Where are you at here?

Speaker 1 (17m 9s): Yeah. I agree with you. I think they’re happy to be here. They’re also amazing. They’re their captains out suspended with too many yellow cards. So I think that being France is, is they’re winning the winning the tournament kind of thing. I think we see this a lot in all sports. So we often, we weren’t even seeing it now in Wimbledon where, you know, people, people upset massive seeds in the next round and they often do go out. It’s, it’s a consistent theme in all sports. Look, Spain have been inconsistent in themselves. They, they, they take him far, far too many chances to score goals, but they will, they will create them and they will come and they will concede them as well.

So I do think sweet Switzerland will be competent here. I just think it’s like a hurdle too far Spain of now, as you scored 10 goals across their last 210 minutes of action. So that’s going to be difficult to contain with this team or creating chances and clicking so much, but at the same time. So it’s an, a scored now seven goals and conceded eight in four games at his tournament. So this game could be like a lot more exciting than it was supposed to be coming into the tournament because these teams were heavy on the owners.

Now, all of a sudden like this is the thing that situations have presented themselves and statistical data, it goes out the window. I’m not saying that it’s a guaranteed over anything because obviously they will. They could reserve back to, to what they were before, which is Switzerland, Switzerland, Switzerland, going into the tournament would be approaching this with a, with a kg approach and looking at this bed team and sitting in with a lot of the stuff we’ve seen, I’ve been pointing. I’ve been sending you guys pictures in a group chat where I’ve been saying, well, look, this is what explaining mailing to Sean and say, this is why when, when I talk about these teams sitting in and trying to get through the first 45, 60 minutes, you can see those lines of players out camp, outside the box that makes it really difficult for you to score.

But at some point, these teams go one hill down or, or they decide that they or they aura in Holland’s case, Holland went down to 10 men and the Czech Republic decided, okay, we’re going to come and try and beat you now. Cause you got a man list. And that doesn’t sound like anything. But in soccer it makes a massive difference when you’re covering one position. So one, one player who’s there to do an entire role is no longer on the pitch. So this is now being shared around by people. It always says what everyone that a lot of people said, what is 10 men versus 11 makes such a difference? Why do they nearly always lose the game?

But that’s, that’s why, because I mean, if, if you’re a team like Manchester city and you have tons of the ball possession, it doesn’t make as big a difference. But I think in this game, we’re gonna, we’re gonna go back to seeing Switzerland, sitting in Spain, having all of the ball. And as much as these teams have scored goals, I do think it will take time. I do think it will. We won’t see much happening here in this first half, but we may, I don’t know. I haven’t actually looked. We may get some generous over underlines here on the first half. Like instead of taking a Neil Neil half, maybe we just need to play this at on the one.

Maybe there’s an Asian handicap line of one, 1.25, 1.5 because I, I don’t see two goals in his first half.

Speaker 3 (20m 12s): Who was the, let me ask you this. Who’s the home team in this game.

Speaker 1 (20m 17s): There, there all these core vitals are neutral grounds. So even England though, traveling. Yeah. Oh

Speaker 3 (20m 22s): It it’s interesting. One of the sites I’m looking at, they have total. I wanted to bring you to the total corners prop market, because I’ll just go to the total team because the, the HomeAway split seems odd, but eight and a half for this game over minus one, 10 kicks. Spain has Spain has 28. Switzerland has 27 in the tournament so far do do a little basic math. They’re showing they’re averaging seven, a game seven plus seven is 14.

14

Speaker 0 (20m 54s): Is super low to me. This is a span, gets it done in, in 90. I, I think Switzerland again, what’s that number? That was the super bowl for Switzerland. They, they felt like they won the tournament. Spain minus one 50 and 90 is a, is a generous price for me, I think. And Billy’s making a good case on the, on the goals, but I don’t know. I’m not going to touch the total here. It is two and a half in the 90. I agree with Billy. If you can get a under on the one for first half, maybe there’s some value there, but I’m going to keep it simple.

Just go Spain, minus one 50 Kramer. You like the corner kicks. Anything else? Or like under

Speaker 3 (21m 31s): One is minus one, 10 for the first half. Okay.

Speaker 0 (21m 35s): You know what? I’ll throw that in there under one first half push is, feels worst case scenario there. Kramer, what else do you like besides the corner kicks? Are you just special? You

Speaker 3 (21m 46s): Heard me when we were watching Spain, nothing worse than betting on Spain, Billy,

Speaker 1 (21m 51s): What do you, what do you like here? Yeah. When you have a target man, which is a Marotta who plays for Spain? Not, not a lot, not all teams have a traditional target man in this tournament, but Spain do have one. When I say target, man, that means you either send the ball up to him and he holds it up and attackers join him. Or you get crosses into him when it crosses get into players. What the defenders tend to do is just put it back out, which is how you ended up with corners. So I think it’s where you’ve got target men in, in teams. The corners bets do look better.

So for me, my main bet, as much as I want to talk about how many goals these teams are scored and what kind of tactical matchup it will be. The Moneyline is really easy to play. I think in both instances in the, in these particular qualifiers, when you’re looking at England and Spain, you’re, you’re looking at yes, Spain played 120 minutes, but they, they use their squad better. Then, then Switzerland dead Switzerland’s was more emotional. Spain also don’t get as tired and don’t ride as many Ks when they have the ball. The whole time you, you spend more at USAA, you exert more energy chasing the ball, which is what Spain make everybody do.

And I just think they’re gonna just tie this team out. And I don’t see any way that they don’t get this done in a hundred and sorry, in 90 minutes, especially with jacket missing for Switzerland as well. Now are still fans of me listening to this and go, well, Jack is terrible for us, but, but this is the thing. There’s a lot of players here that are much more influential and important for their countries. We’ve reached a level in soccer now where there are a lot of club teams where you’re looking at, you know, Barcelona, real Madrid. You then as, I guess, buying Munich, Paris and Japan, Maggie IAA, Chelsea, all the paint, all the ETL teams there, the club scenes are better.

Then you can argue a better than the countries, especially this. That’s why they were going to go into a super league because they have all of the players. So don’t bring up the super league that is triggering. Yeah. But in this sense, it’s like, you know, the, the Cobb size do have the stronger players. So these players, they’re not superstars at their clubs because they’re surrounded by so many superstars because of the amount of money that teams play. So when Jaka moves away from everybody else and then goes to B’s his club, he’s quite the country, captain, sorry.

He is a really important player and they, and they will miss him. So that’s the case when Garrett bale sits on a bench for Tottenham, and then he goes and plays for Wales, he’s the most important player in the country. So there’s a lot of that going on here. I mean, if you could look through the, the England team, that’s the case for a lot of players there as well. So, so yeah, I, I can’t look past Spain here on the money line. I just don’t see why that doesn’t hit other than the fact that people will think that this Switzerland team on an emotional high, but if you gamble for a long time, you know, that, that ends up turning into a letdown.

Whereas people like people like to ride the high too much.

Speaker 3 (24m 43s): I mean, this is the we talk about this, right? Like this is Dame limit Lillard jumping up on the scores table and just to put a bow on what Billy said earlier, Spain is leading the tournament by a massive margin with a 67 and a half percent possession. Second was Germany and they’re under 60. So just to show you how little they’re running those hundred 20 minutes compared to the competition,

Speaker 0 (25m 5s): Move it over to the next game. Belgium, Italy, tipping off, kicking off whatever the phrase is there at noon west coast time on Friday Belgium plus two 40 Italy, plus 1 35 draw plus two 10 total Sydney to Belgium now 7 0 1 to win it all Italy, plus three 70 interesting here, because it’s, you know, the Belgium to get into the top two is plus two 80, but Belgium just to win a 90 is plus two 40 to me again, I’m just going to keep riding this Belgium team.

I’m going to keep it simple. Give me Belgium in 90 a plus two 40 Billy, what is your, what is your non-biased handicap of this game is, is Italy. I, it seems like you’ve been calling out Italy as a little over hyped, but what do you think of them in this particular matchup?

Speaker 1 (25m 58s): I think in a very, I don’t think that particularly over-hyped the record speaks for itself, but they haven’t played anybody like who who’s a massive danger. So the danger comes here. This is a, this is a game that I identified very early on in my future show and said that this will be a matchup. They’ve got pretty clear routes. I did not expect that third-place team, that Belgium played when I did my previews to be Portugal, to be honest with you, cause Portugal, we’re about a team on paper in Belgium and they outplayed him in that last 16 game, but they managed the bandage to get past that.

So they’re more battle-hardened dear to Natalie in terms of coming through a bigger team, they’re also the number one ranked team in the world. Now, Italy, I have a record of day, one beaten, but Belgium is still ranked. Number one. What that tells you is the strength of ball position has been better for, for Belgium coming into this competition. Eden has art is going to miss the game, but he’s not been massively influential. We’re still waiting for news on Kevin Detroiter, but they have a decent squad where they can bring players in defensively. They have it. So I would be more concerned if they had defensive injuries at Belgium, but they have attacking injuries and they do have attackers that they can bring in.

Plus the way that they sat up in the last game, it was very much a case of not to get beaten. I think that when you’ve already overcome Portugal, you don’t have to fear it. So it’s like, don’t have the superstars air. This pricing of Italy being favor is really weird to me. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Cause Belgian came into the tournament as a, as a stronger favorite in Italy. They’ve won every single game in night. And then the two teams come up against each other. After we just saw Italy struggle and they make, they make Italy a massive Beirut.

I think Italy were a bigger favorite yesterday than they are today. I saw them at four to seven to qualify with Belgium mats plus 1 25. I think that’s changed slightly. And it’s coming in a little bit because people are looking at that and thinking it is a bit odd, but for me, it’s definitely, definitely odd. As I said, there’s no, there’s no superstars here in the Italy team. The teams are very, very, even if anything, I’d put more. If I was doing a combined 11, I would stick more Belgium plays in. You’ve got and the Belgium team he’s just won the league in Italy.

He’s been diff destroying these defenders for a whole year, so they don’t want to see him play. And then that’s what’s happening. He’s going up against the two old men in the center back at the second, the back parent of Italy. So yeah, I think there’s a lot to like hear about Belgium as an, as an underdog, a hundred percent go baby.

Speaker 3 (28m 35s): Yeah. I was going to say like, it does, it does seem like considering that, oh, you know, also I, I would imagine most casual soccer fans in this country even are like, oh yeah, Belgium, like there’s players on the team that you might know. And you know, of course I am going against my Italian American heritage. So we’ll, we’ll see how we’ll see what the family has to say about that. But I stay loyal to my money. We have the Belgium future. It’s shocking to me that you can take Belgium plus two 40 to win a 90 minutes.

They’ve done it every time. They’ve beaten teams like Denmark and Portugal. Can’t find anyone that Italy’s beaten. That that’s worth anything they barely got by the, by whales. I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 (29m 16s): So it’s very odd to me. Like if you look at the, the most, who’s the most influential player in the NFL, which would increase the handicap line. I would say Aaron Rogers is one about seven and a half points, but okay. So it says seven to seven and a half. So in this instance, the favoritism is switched off the back of the, of being a, maybe an Eden hazard. Who’s had a really, really bad couple of, of room with dread not being available for this game. To me, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, I don’t think we would see this kind of flip for, for key players missing it in other sports.

And I don’t think these players are worth that kind of switch because the people that come in are still competent players that would feature in the early teams. So it’s not a case of this mate, this giving, it gives you more of an advantage, but it doesn’t give them a massive advantage that that warrants, this swing, nothing here, warrants, this swing a lot that it’s only played 120 minutes. Italy came into the tournament with them as, as week of favorites. Then Belgium, Italy had played a weaker opposition is that doesn’t make any sense. I can’t make it make sense.

I’ve tried to, but I can’t.

Speaker 0 (30m 23s): It’s a good time. Are you going to Belgium in 90 at two 40? Or do you just like them to advance?

Speaker 1 (30m 31s): I light into advance. I think what I saw last time from both of these teams, it’s like Italy didn’t play the same way they played in the group stage building Belgium’s mentality was let’s not get beat against Portugal where they, they, they identified were now though, as a threat, they allowed Portugal to have more of the ball. That was a different way to, I’ve seen Belgium play and they played very, very much like England, but like England, they came away and they stopped the good team from scoring.

So these for me right now are the two teams that I didn’t could get to the final, just in terms of the way that they’re setting up to win the tournament. They not setting up to look good or, or to also entertain you. And that’s exactly what both of them are doing before the tournament Eaglin and Belgium were hitting overs. I like it was free money, but they’re not now

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Speaker 3 (32m 1s): Hold on. Oh, what else do you want to Belgium one Italy. 0 0 7

Speaker 0 (32m 5s): Exact exact result. I like,

Speaker 1 (32m 7s): Yeah, I think that would, that could be close. I liked the under, in this game, four of Belgium’s last six games have actually had a under two and a half goals and we all know Italy kept those 11 clean sheets in a row. And that was only undone in extra time. So across 90 minutes they’ve actually got 12 in a row. So I don’t think everyone’s, like I said, what do you remember? I said, for Belgium, Portugal, everybody said, this is going to be the game of the round. It wasn’t was, it was, it was pretty much exactly.

As I said, it would be a, and this is, this is again, the game of the round, the one that everybody’s going to have their eye on, they both will be aware of exactly what each other are going to do. So I don’t think this goes over either.

Speaker 0 (32m 51s): Yeah. To, to I, yeah. Gun to my head.

Speaker 3 (32m 55s): I would also go under it. I think if bill Jim can, oh man, let’s go.

Speaker 0 (32m 59s): Let’s go. Baby Czech Republic, Denmark kicking off July 3rd, 9:00 AM on the west coast Czech Republic plus 300 Denmark plus one 10, a 90 minute draws a 2 25 total Sydney to both these teams, long shots to win it all Denmark at 10 to one Czech Republic, 25 to one Czech Republic. Of course I, I predicted coming off a big upset win, but now are they in a similar spot as Switzerland where they it’s a letdown spot or is Denmark a bit fraudulent as well?

And maybe Czech Republic is alive dog here as well in this game, Billy, where are you at with Czech Republic and Denmark?

Speaker 1 (33m 40s): This, this one is not as easy as everybody would think that it would be where you’re looking at the I, first of all, I don’t think this is the biggest letdown spot for Czech Republic. As it was Switzerland, France, you have the rivalry there. It was very, very emotional with Holland and with Holland versus Czech Republic. That was a tech that was a tactical nightmare from Frank, the ball. He legitimately did not know what to do when he went down to 10 men. Now the very standard thing to do.

There’s one exception to the rule. If you’re a team like to sit your Barcelona and you go down to 10 men, but you already have all of the bull anyway. So if you have like 67, 70 7% possession and you go down to 10 men, it’s not going to really affect you as much Holland would not in that position in this game. But Frank, the board didn’t make any tactical adjustments to it. And they just got overran and Czech Republic ended up winning the game. He was too arrogant to ident, to look at them as a threat and think, okay, like we need to put men behind the ball.

Maybe we do need to get a title here and look at when looking at 120 minutes of football here, maybe we need to look at a 120 minute game, but he did nothing. He literally just bought. If I put this in the hands of my better players, we’re going to create a chance to win this game. Like he played the lottery with when a situation that required a very simple tactical adjustment. That’s why he’s one of the worst managers in the world. I mean, he’s ETL rent was seven and he was fired in like record time. So he struggled when he was moved up.

He only has this job because the real Dutch manager who was successful Kumon could not resist the Barcelona job because he was an ex Barcelona player. I guarantee you, if he had been at this championship, this team would still be playing today.

Speaker 0 (35m 28s): My, my instincts were to take, to roll the dice here with Czech Republic at plus 300 to win at 90. And, and Billy’s kinda, kinda talking me into that. It’s not that massive down spot Kramer. Where are you at? If you watch,

Speaker 3 (35m 40s): If you just forget any sort of handicapping and you get out of the spreadsheet, Sean, and you get out of your love of soccer, you watched a team and Czech Republic who looked like they, they felt like they should have been beating the Dutch. And I didn’t see a team that was celebrating. Like they had just won a Superbowl or jumping on the scores table. I saw a team that was just like, fuck you Dutch people. Like we’re better. We’re bigger. We’re strong. What I saw was a team that was bigger, stronger. And when it came time to, to take care of business, they took care of business.

And so I, I don’t know enough, honestly. Like I don’t, I guess I don’t know that all that much about Denmark, but I wouldn’t be certainly willing to take a shot on a team like the Czech Republic, but the way that they stepped up and you know, Billy, I think is about to say they have one of the guys who’s really kind of emerged as one of the players of the tournament. Right? What, what’s his name? Chick I can shake. Yeah. So, I mean, they have a lot of the ingredients. Like they certainly didn’t seem like a team that was over-matched and the Dutch has talent on the field, whether or not the coach is a, is a, is w w Mike McCarthy, Ben McAdoo clone,

Speaker 1 (36m 48s): But they’re very well organized. And that’s the thing that you’ve seen that they’re organized and they’ll rely on their players that can win you. The game have won them the game, like they’ll rely on those players when they get a chances to do what they get. They, they, they, they were, they were bad for like 10 minutes against England, but I don’t think there’s a, there’s a theory that nobody wanted to win that game, that group anyway, because of the difficulty of the tie that you’d get in the next round. So England went ahead and win it. So I don’t know if we saw the full Czech Republic, but they, they beat Scotland. They drew against Coratia.

They looked very, very organized against Holland. Denmark had a better team. So there might shoot win this game. But look at the Denmark situation, your, your aim is to start a tournament. What’s the reach, the quarterfinal you’re you’re the best player nearly died on you. In the first game, he came back 90 minutes later and lost the game and decided to play and lost the game. You shouldn’t have lost. So they’ve gone on such a rollercoaster where they were supposed to do well, then they looked like they were out because they lost against the one of the worst teams in the competition.

Then they put on an amazing performance against Russia and emotionally managed to stay in a competition. They carried that on against Wales. Now from being dead and buried. You’re now expected to be in the 70 vital. Everybody expects. There’s no expectation in Czech Republic. They’ve gotten further than they had. And Denmark have gone from there being no expectation. Please, please, please let us get on the group two. Okay. We can beat Wales. Okay. Look at the root. Now we were all penciling in Denmark versus England.

Now all of a sudden, and this team, I’m not a hundred percent sure we’ll be able to cope with that pressure. England have premier league players who have played in champions, league finals. It’s different, but Denmark to be a favorite to reach a European semifinal. I think that’s a weird mental state to be in. I’m not saying they’re going to lose. I think they should win this game, but the price on the checks is way too big. It’s too. It’s too big to pass up for a little bit of money.

Speaker 0 (38m 49s): Dogs are barking. Give me a Czech Republic. Plus 300 Billy. Billy, what are you going to do here? Are you just going to take Denmark? I mean, Denmark to advance at minus 180. Probably not a bad price, but I I’m. I’m going dog here. What about, what, what do you feel is like your, or maybe you go total here?

Speaker 1 (39m 8s): Yeah. I, I think that, I think if I was to take some class money here, I think I liked that I’d like to draw. I think for one of the games that could tie and go all the way to, to penalty kicks or at least get through to the extra time I’m annoyed because I, I saw a proper to start a tournament, which was over 2.5 penalty cakes at plus one 15. But the same prop was over 2.5 games to go to extra time.

And that was at minus one 20. And the statistics, the difference between minus one 20 and one plus one 50. When you look at the statistics of games that get through to extra time, they always nearly always get dependent. It’s like nearly 80%. So the value was in taking the penalty kicks because what you see is teams getting really, really cagey. What? Cause if they can see it in extra time, you don’t have the whole game to get back in and you have like what the, the, whatever, the remainder of the 30 years, and then the team that usually scores if they do score or go in sit really, really deep.

And so that’s why you don’t see the goals. This tournament has been a complete anomaly with those extra time goals. And that’s thrown, thrown off everything that I know about extra time, dag and football. So yeah, I mean, I, I, I regret that, but there was no way to foresee what could have happened. I would have cashed it if I bet it a different way and lay the juice. But the plus one, I mean the plus one 50 still could come in. We just need two more penalty shootouts here. And I feel like if we get just one inch round, we still be in a good position.

Cause that’d be three games left where we could get one. So yeah, I like this to be a tie here, but I won’t take it as far as the penalty kicks

Speaker 0 (40m 54s): Ukraine, England, the last of the quarter final game kicking off noon, July 3rd, west coast, time Ukraine plus 900 to win. And 90 England minus two 50 to win. And 90 draw is a plus three 50 total sitting at two and a half Ukraine plus 400 to advance England, a massive favorite, almost a minus 600 to advance. And like Billy said earlier, England, a two to one to win it all Ukraine, the biggest dog on the board at 33 to one to win it all to me again.

I think Billy, like you said, they came out a little conservative, then aggressive as the game went on with Germany, to me, just kind of handicap it and seeing what I’ve seen of England’s defense, which I thought was pretty strong. And there,

Speaker 3 (41m 45s): I don’t know.

Speaker 0 (41m 46s): I, I honestly, I think maybe there’s some value in the 90 minute draw and then all of a sudden they turn it on. England seems like a team that can turn it on. I’m going to go to the total here instead. I like under two and a half just cause I don’t see England lighting up the scoreboard. I think this could be like an England won nothing England to nothing. I think they can shut down Ukraine. I think they can get a clean sheet from this game against Ukraine. So I’m going to go, I’m going to lean to the total under two and a half for this one, Billy, where are you at with this?

A Ukraine, England matchup.

Speaker 1 (42m 21s): Yeah. I mean, I’ve not been high on England in terms of how they’re playing at, in terms of them really putting out a dominating performance, like they should have these attacking players that they have. They’ve kind of done everything they needed to do. But in this situation I saw so many of those Ukraine players getting cramped and hobbling off and they look really, really like worn out and tired as we approached that 120 minutes, England have got an entire different team that they can play.

I mean the, the permanents now look like they’re going to be a range Sterling Harry Kane. I think Calvin Phillips has played himself in McGuire stones, but the fallback positions are up for grabs. The wide positions are up for grabs. He could rotate without losing any ability here agrees to come in. Rashford could come in. You wouldn’t lose nothing by bringing these players in. So England could put out a, a relatively fresh team if they wanted to. And a and B have a complete advantage over this Ukraine side, who I think I’m just massively overachieved being here.

I do still think it will be under, but I think my play here would be just to continue. I hope you hate your habit as a market, but just to continue taking England to take, keep a clean sheet. And I just think that they will shut this team down. They will control the game. And I think this may be a comfortable thing. I mean, usually I’m all for hedging, especially when I got a parcel three 50 tickets and I have a four to one hedge here. So if I have two units on that I would be looking at and ensuring that I don’t lose any money.

And that would only take 25. So if it’s, if it’s a one unit play and we had $25 hedge, and if it was a two unit player would be a $50 hedge, I’m not thinking about hedge here. I, this would be an absolute disaster to lose to this inferior. A lot of pressure on England. Well, you have it when you have all these players to rotate. And the only one issue is they’re going to play four games at Wembley, and now they go to Rome. English supporters are not allowed in Rome. So the only

Speaker 0 (44m 30s): Why would they not be allowed or there hooligans? Are we worried about some hooligan activity?

Speaker 1 (44m 36s): It’s the HD terrible way that we’ve managed. COVID in Italy. Won’t allow English into Rome without a one week quarantine. So unless you thinking, oh, I’ll miss the Germany game, which is right at my doorstep. But while do is I’ll head to Haley. Now you are already

Speaker 0 (44m 54s): Starting to quarantine ahead of the time. Yeah, no, that sounds stupid.

Speaker 1 (44m 58s): But then that way the support is there. And if you live in a country, if you’re English and you live in a country, that’s not England. So there are English people that live around Europe, et cetera. You can go to the game. So I wonder if we can fulfill on two and a half thousand allocation by that. But the weird thing is, is that most of the people, the way this tournament is run, when you get to these neutral grounds, they’re selling them to Italians. That don’t support either team. So I don’t know what way the Italians are going to go.

You create a, in the whole political status sort of statement here where it was like going now, we’re here, put some respect on our name. We are not the Ukraine that ended years ago. We are just Ukraine. So it was like, that’s kinda like the kind of stuff that I am I’m saying around. I don’t know what way. I don’t know what way, what way the crowd support is going to go into this one. I figured that they’ll support the underdog, but I also think the England are not really England players are too good to be bothered by that. That reminded

Speaker 3 (45m 60s): Me of when the clipper has changed their court colors and said taken back LA

Speaker 0 (46m 5s): Carlos, completely Brandon Kramer. Where are you at the Ukraine versus the England?

Speaker 3 (46m 13s): What do we do? I, you know, I was going to dig around for something a little bit better. England is score first and win the match minus 200.

Speaker 0 (46m 21s): And is that, is that a, is that in 90? That’s just the wind, the match. So England score first and advance plus 200

Speaker 3 (46m 30s): Minus 200 minus two honor. Oh, okay.

Speaker 0 (46m 33s): But, okay. Cause the minus the, just to advance is minus five 90.

Speaker 3 (46m 36s): I’m with Billy. Again, some of these underdogs, they looked like they were excited or tired or like, like the cramping is a problem. The check team didn’t look like, maybe we need to do some testing. This could be like Rocky four style stuff, but they looked bigger, stronger, and they didn’t necessarily look tired at the end of the game.

Speaker 1 (46m 57s): Wait one 20 though. That’s the thing that is true.

Speaker 3 (47m 1s): All right. All right. Let’s do it. England is going to be in the semifinal. This is getting, this is getting dicey, Billy I’m, I’m nervous for you.

Speaker 0 (47m 10s): Lock dog and something spicy being soccer. Sean, I will kick things off. I’m going to go. Even with my lock, I’m going to go Belgium to win a 90 a plus two 40. Well, cause last time I did France, minus one 90 is my lock and I, and I jinxed it. I do like Spain minus one 50. So plus two 40 for my dog gonna ride those check these, these strong beasts from the, from the USSR. I think, I think

Speaker 3 (47m 40s): Part of it, we used to be once upon a time, they they’ve

Speaker 0 (47m 42s): Changed their ways, but not the doping. They’re they’re still fired up. They’re yoked. Give me check plus 300 to win. And 90 as my dog and for something spicy, I like Ryan’s Belgium. One, nothing plus seven 50. I won’t steal that. I also like Billy’s England clean sheet, but I’m just gonna do a parlay of Spain to advance Belgium, to advance for way all the wine, England to advance all three of those to advance and you know, and check to advance all night for screw you, you know what?

I’ll leave checkout. Cause I’ve already got them at plus 300 as the dogs. So Spain, Belgium, and England to advance as a, as a Moneyline

Speaker 3 (48m 27s): Parlay their Kramer. When he goes gonna, I was going to type in the prices for you to see, well, let’s lock up. Let’s let’s not overthink it. The corner kicks, baby Spain and Switzerland over eight and a half corner kick for my dog. Give me Belgium plus two 40

Speaker 0 (48m 42s): And 90. It love it.

Speaker 3 (48m 45s): And for some spice. Yeah, I think it’s it. It’s the Czech Republic to win in penalty kicks. Oh yeah. I just, I, again, I like them three to one. I like taking that stab, but why not? I really liked the draws so aligned there. So we’re going to take the Czech Republic to win in penalty kicks and I believe that’s 10 to 1 10, 1 14, 1 14 to one, 10 to one. I was right at the first. Okay.

Speaker 0 (49m 9s): That’s a, that’s a solid something spicy, Billy. What? He got locked dog, something, something wild, something spicy.

Speaker 1 (49m 17s): I’m torn between what I do in my locks here. I’ve got a couple. Okay. So I’m going to go for the under, in the Italy, Italy, Belgium gang. I don’t, I don’t think that we’ll get to three goals.

Speaker 0 (49m 30s): Yeah. I’m I’m with you there. I didn’t, I didn’t play it, but I, I agree. I think that’s going to be a low scoring affair and that’s why like, I like Brian’s one, nothing Belgium.

Speaker 1 (49m 41s): Yeah. My other law. Cause something England related. I’m not going to talk about it. I just don’t want to let it go. I don’t, I don’t want to be down on England anymore. I feel like I just want to pocket my, my final ticket and that’s it. Like, I don’t even need us to win it. I just need us to get through to the final and I have a fair bit on that. So I think I’ll just sit there and ride that out. I think I’ve the one thing I’ve been guilty of in this tournament is having loads of futures that are in positions to cash and then trying to play the 90 minute markets and stuff.

I think that has been my mistake. So yeah. I just think I’ll leave that. But yeah, Belgium it’s li I have no futures involved in that and I think there’ll be a tight game for the dog. See, it’s going to be all the way across the board, but I can’t think of anything other than Belgium on the Moneyline other than other than that Denmark time. So if you, if you don’t want me to double, triple down on the same play, then yeah. I’ll take the tie there, but I do love Belgium on my leg.

Speaker 0 (50m 40s): We’ll get, we’ll give you the draw there just to mix it up and then anything, any sort of prop bets, any sort of exact result futures and any sort of wild stuff you see or thrown out there, maybe a long shadow.

Speaker 1 (50m 55s): No, nothing wild. Really. I think that Jay, that Denmark that day mark check game could reach penalty cakes. I even think that Italy Belgium could reach penalty kicks. I feel at one of those two games, other those two games will I also, I like England to win with a clean sheet, but it’s not going to be big plus money. It’s going to be borderline plus money. It’s going to be, I think something along the lines of plus one 20 ish England England to nail, but yeah, I think that’s it.

I think, I think one of those games hitting pain penalty kicks would be the spices. It would go.

Speaker 0 (51m 35s): Yeah. All right, let’s go baby soccer, Sean, this is a soccer. Sean are ready to go.

Speaker 3 (51m 43s): It took a tournament called 2020 in the year of 2021. I got Sean into soccer.

Speaker 0 (51m 49s): That’s all it took. And of course thank you for calling in Billy. Make sure

Speaker 1 (51m 53s): He got okay. One more thing. I want to just point out. It’s just a little tip. I’m not going to give you a specific player, but if you look at the top goalscorer market, the top gold Rinaldo who’s out of the competition on five goals is at six to four. Plus one 50. Everybody below is for one or bigger, including lacak. You’ve got Belgium now, Belgium, aren’t going to go any further. He’s going to score two more goals. So it’s, it’s, it’s worth if you, if you believe in 18 and you know, and then you believe in their striker, Harry Kane, I think is too far back for England.

He’s only scored one range darling in score three. And he does seem to be getting in good positions, but LOCOG who could be the one or whomever else you feel. If you feel that it’s low, you’re going to get to the final. Then a mobile plays already got two goals. There’s loads and loads of value there. Look, I mean, it might, it there’ll be minus 200 to fade Rinaldo and take the field. But I think you can, if you have a gut feeling for a team, you can specifically pick someone here. Even if it’s a Marotta of Spain, he’s missed a load of chances. I think he’d be way down on the market there.

I think he would be a good little sprinkle.

Speaker 0 (53m 2s): Oh right. I like that. Nice little, a top gold score. A prop bet.

Speaker 3 (53m 7s): I mean the Kaka one’s fun because we got Belgium. He’s two goals back on Rinaldo and he’s 71.

Speaker 1 (53m 13s): The paper is saying a home, right?

Speaker 3 (53m 17s): Well, I mean, even looking down the list, right? Ronaldo has five and then Forsberg Benzema chick, and then some dude from the Netherlands or no, have four. And so really it’s just Peter chick is the guy and what’s his price. I mean that we liked him to advance Sean. W how is, what am I missing him on this list? Hold on. I gotta look this up before we get out

Speaker 1 (53m 40s): Of here is the second fiber, isn’t it?

Speaker 3 (53m 43s): Oh, maybe he’s not on my odds for, oh, here he is. Yeah. Five to one, five to one for a chick. And the taco is 7 0 1. So there’s that right?

Speaker 1 (53m 52s): Five to one for Schick who needs two goals to do it. Like he needs two more goals to do it. Like, I mean, he could, if that game is wide open, he’d get it in the next game. And he scores one and they go through, then he’s the main guy to score in the next game as well. The issue is, is that the bookie? Just one thing I will say, you’re looking at this and going, oh, well I’ll at least get a tire. Whatever the bookies tiebreaker is different to FIFA tiebreaker. Oh, you Ava’s tiebreaker. You ain’t. This tiebreaker is assists. The books that paying out the winner as the guy who played the least amount of games, which is, which is weird.

But you, but I still think there’s value there. I still think somebody that can get two or three.

Speaker 3 (54m 31s): And just to point out, you wonder who has an assist and not that it matters only Rinaldo. So he has five plus one. No, maybe that’s why it’s a little steeper of a price. All right. That makes sense. Yeah, I would, I was going to ask the question, cause I was almost curious if they were going to do like dead heat golf rules where you just chop it up between the players. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (54m 52s): All right, Billy, thank you for calling in. Get Billy to follow on Twitter at S G P soccer subscribe. If you haven’t already, I don’t know what the hell you’re doing. Subscribe to the soccer, gambling podcasts, all in the sports gambling podcast network. Almost a decade of a winning bets over there. And yeah, well maybe we’ll get you on for a final as well. Here.

Speaker 1 (55m 16s): We just cashed the over-under on the bill. Cosby not to die in prison. So he’s out.

Speaker 0 (55m 21s): That was, yeah. If you had that as well, bill Cosby is out. So some, even some, a celebrity bedding as well. Thank you for participating in the sports scaling podcast for the sports. Get my podcast. I’m Sean. Second, the money green. And he is Ryan hour about soccer. Sean Kramer led it.

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Speaker 0 (0s): This Euro 2020 quarter final edition of the sports gaming podcast is presented by win bet. Get started today and you’ll get a risk-free bet up to $500 terms and conditions apply. Get the details@wyandnbet.com and download the app today. We’re also brought to you by prop swap America’s number one app to buy and sell sports bets. Use promo code sup on your first deposit and receive up to $500 in bonus cash. That’s prop swap.com promo code S G P. We’re also brought to you by underdog fantasy.

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Speaker 1 (50s): Hey, what’s up? You’re degenerate dabblers. This is bill Burr, and you’re listening to S G P N let it ride, baby.

Speaker 2 (1m 32s): Welcome

Speaker 0 (1m 32s): Everyone to the sports gambling podcasts. I’m Sean stacking. The money green was my partner in pigs, Ryan, real money Kramer what’s happening, crime dog.

Speaker 3 (1m 41s): I’m sorry. Can you please address the audience by your God-given name? Soccer?

Speaker 0 (1m 46s): Sean goes, Sean reporting here with some amazing predictions from the knockout round or dominating performance, almost pitched to clean sheets of winter. It was in full of Sweden and Croatia not advancing oh, in France. It’s totally screwing us, but we, we had a great, a knockout round made our, made our clients a ton of cash. And yeah, we, we got the quarterfinal preview coming up. Of course we will be joined by the great Billy Bahati, but before we do want to make sure we shout out win bet.

Oh man, these Euro 2020 picks have been straight fire. I mean Czech Republic at plus four 30. Imagine if you’re over at Winton bed, getting down on that and not only are we giving you out winners, we’re also giving you a sweet, sweet bonus here in the form of a $500 a risk-free a sports bet terms and conditions apply. Get the details at w Y and, and bet.com download the app today, but they got it all the generous promos, the yachts, the parlors, it’s all happening on win bet.

W Y N N let’s go and let’s bring them all on the host, the soccer gambling podcasts on the sports gambling podcast network. Billy Bahati, Billy what’s happened

Speaker 1 (3m 5s): To my, you did better than me. Then you should take over the family.

Speaker 0 (3m 10s): Did I did ask you on your website. If you guys need any soccer handicappers, I’m looking at pretty fits almost a clean sheet, dominating performance on the pitch. Wow. Billy let’s let’s get into it. Cause I, you know, overall, I think we, we gave out a decent number of winners. What, but I mean, for me, at least France, not advancing and losing to Switzerland. That was the, would you say that’s the biggest subset or, or was it, or was it Netherlands losing the Czech Republic? What do you got is the biggest upset of that?

Speaker 1 (3m 42s): No, it was undoubtably far France, especially when you look at the situation and I even mean beforehand because you’re playing your neighbors. This is like Switzerland, the little brother or France, where they’ve never won anything apart from, you know, Roger’s better into tennis, but in soccer terms, they WellWell underneath France. It’s like England Scotland right there. So for that to happen with those two teams, plus the situation area where there were three, one down with, with 15 minutes to go, that has to be the biggest. Do you know that the tie was 66 to 185 to one to qualify?

Speaker 0 (4m 19s): That’s insane. Oh, so like when they were down three, one that’s that’s what the price, this was

Speaker 1 (4m 24s): 185 to one to qualify. 66. We took my, I gave my clients to tie on both the Spain game and the France game, but both at three, two, so nine to one and eight to one. So we hedged out of our money line. So we were okay there. So I’m doing was messaging me about how terrible I was. So I’ve managed to raise eight years of work in this guy’s opinion, which is, which is completely fair because that’s how it works.

Well,

Speaker 0 (4m 56s): Billy sarcasm directed towards the trolls is always our

Speaker 3 (4m 60s): Favorite. I mean, we can, you’re talking France. I mean the more important thing and Sean, I’m surprised you didn’t lead with this Belgium. No, I was going to say, I told you they were going to be over eight and a half to give that out to the scam. I locked it up and there

Speaker 0 (5m 15s): Were 13. Are you kidding me? That was over soccer shows and easy cash. And of course we are a team Belgium. We have a Belgium winning it all in the FSG futures pool. So we really need, we need Belgium to take this home. Obviously, France getting knocked out helps us. If we can get past Italy, where are you looking right now, Billy? As far as, yeah, I mean the other side of the bracket, I know you gave out, you were on England to advance.

We were all in England to advance, but then you also throw out that the basically you should take either England or Germany, kind of whoever you like also take them to make it to the, the 2020 final. It sounds like from, you know, reading your texts and your tweets, you were pretty happy with the aggressive strategy. The Englishman were able to put out there on the pitch,

Speaker 1 (6m 8s): Correct. But once they made the changes, they didn’t start like that. When Vance wrote out the first 60 minutes, as soon as girlish come on, who should have been a star in the first place, then they really showed how they could get at this German team. And he could have implemented that from the beginning, but they are taking this very conservative approach to not get beat. I think they’ve come up against four teams that they’re better. And I was better than I was a hundred percent competent when I came on it that they would be Germany because I don’t like this, this German team. And I’m a hundred percent confident.

There’ll be everybody in front of them. That’s why I said, if you go to the England or Germany, Germany, future, just take the team to advance to the final. And now England arts, two to one favorites to win the tournament. Now odds on favorites, the reach, the vinyl. And I gave you that at what was it? Plus three 50 at the time I

Speaker 3 (6m 57s): Was going to say it was plus three 50. It’s now minus 2 0 5. Yeah.

Speaker 0 (7m 4s): Can you do again? Yeah, you’ve been time do fall, baby. Yeah. And again, of course, thanks for the props off. Shout out, go to prom, soft.com, promo code SGP. Perfect time to buy and sell some of these, a Euro tickets again. If you, if you took a, you know, England to get to the final or England to win at all, maybe maybe you want to hedge. I mean, it sounds like Billy’s still high on them. I’m still high on them to, to get to the final. I think Belgium beating England is still my a, is still my pick here for the final, but again, make sure you check out props off.com promo code SGP.

Get up to a $500 deposit bonus over there real quick. Before we start getting into these quarterfinal predictions, Kramer and I watching that, watching that France game live. And again, you nailed it. Make sure you’re following Billy on Twitter at SGP soccer.

Speaker 3 (7m 52s): Thank you. Tell everyone what I said before. It happened

Speaker 0 (7m 55s): That well you, you said it and Billy tweeted it out that we thought, or you guys thought that France was going to lose in penalty kicks and Strat. And of course I forget the guy’s name who ended up missing in Bombay choked at the end there Paul Pogba, Paul Pogba, the guy is a beast. Billy. Why, why wouldn’t you want to end with the guy? That’s a beast like pod guy, I guess you want to start out good.

But to me, you know, the, the situation of closing strong with your best goal score, why, why would France not have Pogba take PKS last?

Speaker 1 (8m 35s): I’m so glad it’s finally happened to somebody because you see all the time. It’s not, it’s messy. Messy would never do it. Cause messy doesn’t have that kind of ego, but you do see it with a Rinaldo Neymar and you saw it here within Baca. They step up to take a kick number five. What if there isn’t a kick number five? What if you either lose the game or the game is won already because two of those cakes could have been saved. If somebody could ask before him, you put your, you front, load it with your best penalty takers, which embark is supposed to be. So he put all of that pressure on his own shoulders with the picture in his head that he had a terrible game.

He missed chances during that game. They should have won it, but especially in extra time. And the picture in his head was I’ll compensate by getting the image of me winning this game with the last kick and that, and the last players that need that, ah, Ronaldo, Neymar, and ambapo, they don’t need any more glorification. They, they get to celebrate goals. They’re the highest paid, separated by everybody. Everybody has their names on their shirts. I don’t think they need to do this. So I’m so glad to see someone doing it. I’m not happy because I was writing a future on France to reach the, the semifinal.

I glad I got at tweet outlets and restore some credibility, not in the eyes of the guy that messaged them. But yeah, that, that’s just, that’s just the way it goes in. Now. Obviously it all opens up for everybody else on both sides. It almost makes the tournament more interesting because I think France are 100% complacent. They showed they were the best team in this competition because first of all, the biggest problem going into that game was the players managed the team. I don’t know if you saw it coming into the press.

Oh no, I missed that. Well, they wanted to play their own formation. So it gave more of them, freedom pod, but wanting more freedom. Adam back-pay wanted more freedom to get into the middle. So they played wide wingbacks, which means that back-pay doesn’t need an Griezmann. They don’t need to go wide and get the ball. So they go three at a back, which gives them more secure and four across midfield. And those, those two wide midfielders, they come in and put the crosses in and the three people can stay in attack, get the glory and Pogba can push up as well.

So they’re all thinking about how they could do more, get more attacking Liam boat. They didn’t think about how bad they would be defensively. And at half time the manager decided Paul Pogba should not be managing the team,

Speaker 0 (11m 0s): But Pogba did have a great game. He had two goals,

Speaker 1 (11m 3s): Right? One goal and one, but he did have, he did have a good game, but he shouldn’t be influencing and managing and say that personal performance was as poor as they could be. They look completely disorganized. Like he didn’t know what they were doing. And then in the second off, obviously they give away the penalty, but then they move up a couple of gears, go three, one up. They just, they looked, that was the best. Any team had looked for a, for a 25 minute period in the whole tournament. And then all of a sudden they come down and get complacent and then it gets a three-three. They deserve to be out 100%.

They deserve to be out. But I’ll tell you, now that start, the next world cup is favors.

Speaker 3 (11m 40s): Honestly, like I, I wanted to step, like I get it. You want one of your best bringing it back to the penalty kicks. But like you saw it in his eyes. When he walked up, he was telling a joke. He didn’t want, like, he didn’t want that pressure in head. And then he took a poor kick. I just, I mean, again, a championship level, youth soccer coach over here. But when you’re looking at the psychology of the guy you want taken the last kick or the girl, it’s someone who isn’t going to buckle under the pressure, like a giant pussy. And I saw the way that he was, he was rubbing his quad and it just made me think maybe LeBron James needs to send him Bobby A. Little prayer.

Maybe there was a little tweaked quad. That’s why they didn’t get it all the way to the side netting. Oh,

Speaker 1 (12m 22s): I thought I saw something out on ESPN where they were showing everybody would, that would, that run ups. And everybody took around about 30, 40 seconds to take their kid, take their cake. And from the time of backpack received the ball to taking it, he only took 12 seconds. So he wanted it over and done with like he wanted, he wanted that moment to be gone. That doesn’t inspire confidence at all. No.

Speaker 0 (12m 44s): Yeah. And, and I guess I do understand the strategy now of like, basically you want to load up top because like Billy’s saying the fifth kick may not even matter,

Speaker 3 (12m 54s): But if they’re taking the kick, especially in this case where they’re the second, the second team going, it becomes the most pressurized. So you have to pick all five right away. Okay.

Speaker 0 (13m 5s): So you, you lock in your five, as soon as penalty kicks start, you can’t kinda cause it would add another level of strategy if you could pick the guy as it goes, honestly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13m 15s): Just to let you know, you’re looking 10 because of sudden death orders

Speaker 3 (13m 19s): And that’s also where it gets interesting. Like when you get to the bigger pressure kicks, it’s the guys you didn’t want taking the initial kick. So I mean, honestly like what, I’ve had six, again, youth soccer championship level, coach,

Speaker 0 (13m 31s): Goalies, goalies have

Speaker 3 (13m 33s): The testicular fortitude and the confidence to go up there and make a kick. And oftentimes the pressure won’t bother them as much. Cause they’re, they’re on the other side of all five kicks for the other team. So maybe the France manager can take a, take a lesson from me. I

Speaker 0 (13m 48s): Liked that. I liked that. All right, Billy, before we move over to the quarterfinal, any, any other thoughts from the knockout round a worth a crowbar name here?

Speaker 1 (13m 57s): No, I mean, I enjoyed the England game yesterday. I gave out a couple of free picks on my Twitter for that. Oh, I’ll keep doing that through the, through the tournament. But yeah, I mean that one pretty much played out as I, as I expected it to be, whereas a kg game between those two. I think looking ahead, getting that team look England could have in Belgium, France, Italy, they could have been any top team. And I still wouldn’t have been as confident in that because they do manage to always squander these opportunities.

That team has beat them so many times in so many situations in games that England had even dominated. And it’s gone through to penalties like day of horn in England since 1966 in England won the world cup. There’ve been very few times where they’ve, they’ve managed to progress or get positive results against Germany to do that to them. And so comprehensively because gentlemen, I know they had a couple of chances, but England looked fully in control. I think the beat them in that manner of performance and the psychological hurdle of, okay, if we beat Germany, you don’t to be scared of Ukraine.

You know, there’ll be scared of Denmark or Czech Republic. You’re not even going to be scared of her weights in the final because you beat the team that always beats you like these players, they got the monkey off their back. Exactly. And these, these young players, I don’t think that they’ve been influenced by everything that the other players came in. The more senior players who have been beaten jerk by Germany before they, or they see that name and they feel intimidated by it. I don’t think these players had that. I don’t think that was something that they were bothered by it. I think for them it was a case of look, all this bullshit happened in the two thousands in the nineties when we weren’t even born or we were very, very young and it’s a relevant source and they made it irrelevant to them.

They made that history relevant to them. And I think that’s definitely a good thing moving forward. I don’t think there’s England team are going to crack or, or be massively complacent at times. Like I, but I think if you see England struggling at any point, I don’t think it’s going to be down to the fact that the players are complacent. They have to do what the managers set out. And I still think this is a very overly cautious manager. We’ve got players on the bench that could be being in his teams, more convincingly and scaring him. And we’ve got some scary players not starting to go like relish.

Yeah.

Speaker 0 (16m 12s): Put girlish in the starting line up I’m with Billy. All right, let’s get to the quarter final preview. The predictions kicking things off Friday 9:00 AM on the west coast, Switzerland, Spain, Switzerland is a plus four 50 dogs, Spain, minus one 50 draw plus two 80 total sitting at two and a half. And of course reminder for the newer American soccer betters the total, it is only a 90 minutes. So if it goes to extra time, PK, obviously that doesn’t, it doesn’t count to the goals to advance.

Switzerland is a, a plus two 30 dogs. Spain minus 300. Spain is now a plus three 20, a favorite. One of the favorites here to win it all with only eight teams left Billy. To me, it seems like Switzerland is the, is the team that’s happy to be here? Or did you see enough at a Switzerland that makes you, makes you think maybe there’s a shot that get it to a draw or, or even to advance? Where are you at here?

Speaker 1 (17m 9s): Yeah. I agree with you. I think they’re happy to be here. They’re also amazing. They’re their captains out suspended with too many yellow cards. So I think that being France is, is they’re winning the winning the tournament kind of thing. I think we see this a lot in all sports. So we often, we weren’t even seeing it now in Wimbledon where, you know, people, people upset massive seeds in the next round and they often do go out. It’s, it’s a consistent theme in all sports. Look, Spain have been inconsistent in themselves. They, they, they take him far, far too many chances to score goals, but they will, they will create them and they will come and they will concede them as well.

So I do think sweet Switzerland will be competent here. I just think it’s like a hurdle too far Spain of now, as you scored 10 goals across their last 210 minutes of action. So that’s going to be difficult to contain with this team or creating chances and clicking so much, but at the same time. So it’s an, a scored now seven goals and conceded eight in four games at his tournament. So this game could be like a lot more exciting than it was supposed to be coming into the tournament because these teams were heavy on the owners.

Now, all of a sudden like this is the thing that situations have presented themselves and statistical data, it goes out the window. I’m not saying that it’s a guaranteed over anything because obviously they will. They could reserve back to, to what they were before, which is Switzerland, Switzerland, Switzerland, going into the tournament would be approaching this with a, with a kg approach and looking at this bed team and sitting in with a lot of the stuff we’ve seen, I’ve been pointing. I’ve been sending you guys pictures in a group chat where I’ve been saying, well, look, this is what explaining mailing to Sean and say, this is why when, when I talk about these teams sitting in and trying to get through the first 45, 60 minutes, you can see those lines of players out camp, outside the box that makes it really difficult for you to score.

But at some point, these teams go one hill down or, or they decide that they or they aura in Holland’s case, Holland went down to 10 men and the Czech Republic decided, okay, we’re going to come and try and beat you now. Cause you got a man list. And that doesn’t sound like anything. But in soccer it makes a massive difference when you’re covering one position. So one, one player who’s there to do an entire role is no longer on the pitch. So this is now being shared around by people. It always says what everyone that a lot of people said, what is 10 men versus 11 makes such a difference? Why do they nearly always lose the game?

But that’s, that’s why, because I mean, if, if you’re a team like Manchester city and you have tons of the ball possession, it doesn’t make as big a difference. But I think in this game, we’re gonna, we’re gonna go back to seeing Switzerland, sitting in Spain, having all of the ball. And as much as these teams have scored goals, I do think it will take time. I do think it will. We won’t see much happening here in this first half, but we may, I don’t know. I haven’t actually looked. We may get some generous over underlines here on the first half. Like instead of taking a Neil Neil half, maybe we just need to play this at on the one.

Maybe there’s an Asian handicap line of one, 1.25, 1.5 because I, I don’t see two goals in his first half.

Speaker 3 (20m 12s): Who was the, let me ask you this. Who’s the home team in this game.

Speaker 1 (20m 17s): There, there all these core vitals are neutral grounds. So even England though, traveling. Yeah. Oh

Speaker 3 (20m 22s): It it’s interesting. One of the sites I’m looking at, they have total. I wanted to bring you to the total corners prop market, because I’ll just go to the total team because the, the HomeAway split seems odd, but eight and a half for this game over minus one, 10 kicks. Spain has Spain has 28. Switzerland has 27 in the tournament so far do do a little basic math. They’re showing they’re averaging seven, a game seven plus seven is 14.

14

Speaker 0 (20m 54s): Is super low to me. This is a span, gets it done in, in 90. I, I think Switzerland again, what’s that number? That was the super bowl for Switzerland. They, they felt like they won the tournament. Spain minus one 50 and 90 is a, is a generous price for me, I think. And Billy’s making a good case on the, on the goals, but I don’t know. I’m not going to touch the total here. It is two and a half in the 90. I agree with Billy. If you can get a under on the one for first half, maybe there’s some value there, but I’m going to keep it simple.

Just go Spain, minus one 50 Kramer. You like the corner kicks. Anything else? Or like under

Speaker 3 (21m 31s): One is minus one, 10 for the first half. Okay.

Speaker 0 (21m 35s): You know what? I’ll throw that in there under one first half push is, feels worst case scenario there. Kramer, what else do you like besides the corner kicks? Are you just special? You

Speaker 3 (21m 46s): Heard me when we were watching Spain, nothing worse than betting on Spain, Billy,

Speaker 1 (21m 51s): What do you, what do you like here? Yeah. When you have a target man, which is a Marotta who plays for Spain? Not, not a lot, not all teams have a traditional target man in this tournament, but Spain do have one. When I say target, man, that means you either send the ball up to him and he holds it up and attackers join him. Or you get crosses into him when it crosses get into players. What the defenders tend to do is just put it back out, which is how you ended up with corners. So I think it’s where you’ve got target men in, in teams. The corners bets do look better.

So for me, my main bet, as much as I want to talk about how many goals these teams are scored and what kind of tactical matchup it will be. The Moneyline is really easy to play. I think in both instances in the, in these particular qualifiers, when you’re looking at England and Spain, you’re, you’re looking at yes, Spain played 120 minutes, but they, they use their squad better. Then, then Switzerland dead Switzerland’s was more emotional. Spain also don’t get as tired and don’t ride as many Ks when they have the ball. The whole time you, you spend more at USAA, you exert more energy chasing the ball, which is what Spain make everybody do.

And I just think they’re gonna just tie this team out. And I don’t see any way that they don’t get this done in a hundred and sorry, in 90 minutes, especially with jacket missing for Switzerland as well. Now are still fans of me listening to this and go, well, Jack is terrible for us, but, but this is the thing. There’s a lot of players here that are much more influential and important for their countries. We’ve reached a level in soccer now where there are a lot of club teams where you’re looking at, you know, Barcelona, real Madrid. You then as, I guess, buying Munich, Paris and Japan, Maggie IAA, Chelsea, all the paint, all the ETL teams there, the club scenes are better.

Then you can argue a better than the countries, especially this. That’s why they were going to go into a super league because they have all of the players. So don’t bring up the super league that is triggering. Yeah. But in this sense, it’s like, you know, the, the Cobb size do have the stronger players. So these players, they’re not superstars at their clubs because they’re surrounded by so many superstars because of the amount of money that teams play. So when Jaka moves away from everybody else and then goes to B’s his club, he’s quite the country, captain, sorry.

He is a really important player and they, and they will miss him. So that’s the case when Garrett bale sits on a bench for Tottenham, and then he goes and plays for Wales, he’s the most important player in the country. So there’s a lot of that going on here. I mean, if you could look through the, the England team, that’s the case for a lot of players there as well. So, so yeah, I, I can’t look past Spain here on the money line. I just don’t see why that doesn’t hit other than the fact that people will think that this Switzerland team on an emotional high, but if you gamble for a long time, you know, that, that ends up turning into a letdown.

Whereas people like people like to ride the high too much.

Speaker 3 (24m 43s): I mean, this is the we talk about this, right? Like this is Dame limit Lillard jumping up on the scores table and just to put a bow on what Billy said earlier, Spain is leading the tournament by a massive margin with a 67 and a half percent possession. Second was Germany and they’re under 60. So just to show you how little they’re running those hundred 20 minutes compared to the competition,

Speaker 0 (25m 5s): Move it over to the next game. Belgium, Italy, tipping off, kicking off whatever the phrase is there at noon west coast time on Friday Belgium plus two 40 Italy, plus 1 35 draw plus two 10 total Sydney to Belgium now 7 0 1 to win it all Italy, plus three 70 interesting here, because it’s, you know, the Belgium to get into the top two is plus two 80, but Belgium just to win a 90 is plus two 40 to me again, I’m just going to keep riding this Belgium team.

I’m going to keep it simple. Give me Belgium in 90 a plus two 40 Billy, what is your, what is your non-biased handicap of this game is, is Italy. I, it seems like you’ve been calling out Italy as a little over hyped, but what do you think of them in this particular matchup?

Speaker 1 (25m 58s): I think in a very, I don’t think that particularly over-hyped the record speaks for itself, but they haven’t played anybody like who who’s a massive danger. So the danger comes here. This is a, this is a game that I identified very early on in my future show and said that this will be a matchup. They’ve got pretty clear routes. I did not expect that third-place team, that Belgium played when I did my previews to be Portugal, to be honest with you, cause Portugal, we’re about a team on paper in Belgium and they outplayed him in that last 16 game, but they managed the bandage to get past that.

So they’re more battle-hardened dear to Natalie in terms of coming through a bigger team, they’re also the number one ranked team in the world. Now, Italy, I have a record of day, one beaten, but Belgium is still ranked. Number one. What that tells you is the strength of ball position has been better for, for Belgium coming into this competition. Eden has art is going to miss the game, but he’s not been massively influential. We’re still waiting for news on Kevin Detroiter, but they have a decent squad where they can bring players in defensively. They have it. So I would be more concerned if they had defensive injuries at Belgium, but they have attacking injuries and they do have attackers that they can bring in.

Plus the way that they sat up in the last game, it was very much a case of not to get beaten. I think that when you’ve already overcome Portugal, you don’t have to fear it. So it’s like, don’t have the superstars air. This pricing of Italy being favor is really weird to me. It doesn’t really make a lot of sense. Cause Belgian came into the tournament as a, as a stronger favorite in Italy. They’ve won every single game in night. And then the two teams come up against each other. After we just saw Italy struggle and they make, they make Italy a massive Beirut.

I think Italy were a bigger favorite yesterday than they are today. I saw them at four to seven to qualify with Belgium mats plus 1 25. I think that’s changed slightly. And it’s coming in a little bit because people are looking at that and thinking it is a bit odd, but for me, it’s definitely, definitely odd. As I said, there’s no, there’s no superstars here in the Italy team. The teams are very, very, even if anything, I’d put more. If I was doing a combined 11, I would stick more Belgium plays in. You’ve got and the Belgium team he’s just won the league in Italy.

He’s been diff destroying these defenders for a whole year, so they don’t want to see him play. And then that’s what’s happening. He’s going up against the two old men in the center back at the second, the back parent of Italy. So yeah, I think there’s a lot to like hear about Belgium as an, as an underdog, a hundred percent go baby.

Speaker 3 (28m 35s): Yeah. I was going to say like, it does, it does seem like considering that, oh, you know, also I, I would imagine most casual soccer fans in this country even are like, oh yeah, Belgium, like there’s players on the team that you might know. And you know, of course I am going against my Italian American heritage. So we’ll, we’ll see how we’ll see what the family has to say about that. But I stay loyal to my money. We have the Belgium future. It’s shocking to me that you can take Belgium plus two 40 to win a 90 minutes.

They’ve done it every time. They’ve beaten teams like Denmark and Portugal. Can’t find anyone that Italy’s beaten. That that’s worth anything they barely got by the, by whales. I mean, come on.

Speaker 1 (29m 16s): So it’s very odd to me. Like if you look at the, the most, who’s the most influential player in the NFL, which would increase the handicap line. I would say Aaron Rogers is one about seven and a half points, but okay. So it says seven to seven and a half. So in this instance, the favoritism is switched off the back of the, of being a, maybe an Eden hazard. Who’s had a really, really bad couple of, of room with dread not being available for this game. To me, that doesn’t make any sense. Like, I don’t think we would see this kind of flip for, for key players missing it in other sports.

And I don’t think these players are worth that kind of switch because the people that come in are still competent players that would feature in the early teams. So it’s not a case of this mate, this giving, it gives you more of an advantage, but it doesn’t give them a massive advantage that that warrants, this swing, nothing here, warrants, this swing a lot that it’s only played 120 minutes. Italy came into the tournament with them as, as week of favorites. Then Belgium, Italy had played a weaker opposition is that doesn’t make any sense. I can’t make it make sense.

I’ve tried to, but I can’t.

Speaker 0 (30m 23s): It’s a good time. Are you going to Belgium in 90 at two 40? Or do you just like them to advance?

Speaker 1 (30m 31s): I light into advance. I think what I saw last time from both of these teams, it’s like Italy didn’t play the same way they played in the group stage building Belgium’s mentality was let’s not get beat against Portugal where they, they, they identified were now though, as a threat, they allowed Portugal to have more of the ball. That was a different way to, I’ve seen Belgium play and they played very, very much like England, but like England, they came away and they stopped the good team from scoring.

So these for me right now are the two teams that I didn’t could get to the final, just in terms of the way that they’re setting up to win the tournament. They not setting up to look good or, or to also entertain you. And that’s exactly what both of them are doing before the tournament Eaglin and Belgium were hitting overs. I like it was free money, but they’re not now

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Speaker 3 (32m 1s): Hold on. Oh, what else do you want to Belgium one Italy. 0 0 7

Speaker 0 (32m 5s): Exact exact result. I like,

Speaker 1 (32m 7s): Yeah, I think that would, that could be close. I liked the under, in this game, four of Belgium’s last six games have actually had a under two and a half goals and we all know Italy kept those 11 clean sheets in a row. And that was only undone in extra time. So across 90 minutes they’ve actually got 12 in a row. So I don’t think everyone’s, like I said, what do you remember? I said, for Belgium, Portugal, everybody said, this is going to be the game of the round. It wasn’t was, it was, it was pretty much exactly.

As I said, it would be a, and this is, this is again, the game of the round, the one that everybody’s going to have their eye on, they both will be aware of exactly what each other are going to do. So I don’t think this goes over either.

Speaker 0 (32m 51s): Yeah. To, to I, yeah. Gun to my head.

Speaker 3 (32m 55s): I would also go under it. I think if bill Jim can, oh man, let’s go.

Speaker 0 (32m 59s): Let’s go. Baby Czech Republic, Denmark kicking off July 3rd, 9:00 AM on the west coast Czech Republic plus 300 Denmark plus one 10, a 90 minute draws a 2 25 total Sydney to both these teams, long shots to win it all Denmark at 10 to one Czech Republic, 25 to one Czech Republic. Of course I, I predicted coming off a big upset win, but now are they in a similar spot as Switzerland where they it’s a letdown spot or is Denmark a bit fraudulent as well?

And maybe Czech Republic is alive dog here as well in this game, Billy, where are you at with Czech Republic and Denmark?

Speaker 1 (33m 40s): This, this one is not as easy as everybody would think that it would be where you’re looking at the I, first of all, I don’t think this is the biggest letdown spot for Czech Republic. As it was Switzerland, France, you have the rivalry there. It was very, very emotional with Holland and with Holland versus Czech Republic. That was a tech that was a tactical nightmare from Frank, the ball. He legitimately did not know what to do when he went down to 10 men. Now the very standard thing to do.

There’s one exception to the rule. If you’re a team like to sit your Barcelona and you go down to 10 men, but you already have all of the bull anyway. So if you have like 67, 70 7% possession and you go down to 10 men, it’s not going to really affect you as much Holland would not in that position in this game. But Frank, the board didn’t make any tactical adjustments to it. And they just got overran and Czech Republic ended up winning the game. He was too arrogant to ident, to look at them as a threat and think, okay, like we need to put men behind the ball.

Maybe we do need to get a title here and look at when looking at 120 minutes of football here, maybe we need to look at a 120 minute game, but he did nothing. He literally just bought. If I put this in the hands of my better players, we’re going to create a chance to win this game. Like he played the lottery with when a situation that required a very simple tactical adjustment. That’s why he’s one of the worst managers in the world. I mean, he’s ETL rent was seven and he was fired in like record time. So he struggled when he was moved up.

He only has this job because the real Dutch manager who was successful Kumon could not resist the Barcelona job because he was an ex Barcelona player. I guarantee you, if he had been at this championship, this team would still be playing today.

Speaker 0 (35m 28s): My, my instincts were to take, to roll the dice here with Czech Republic at plus 300 to win at 90. And, and Billy’s kinda, kinda talking me into that. It’s not that massive down spot Kramer. Where are you at? If you watch,

Speaker 3 (35m 40s): If you just forget any sort of handicapping and you get out of the spreadsheet, Sean, and you get out of your love of soccer, you watched a team and Czech Republic who looked like they, they felt like they should have been beating the Dutch. And I didn’t see a team that was celebrating. Like they had just won a Superbowl or jumping on the scores table. I saw a team that was just like, fuck you Dutch people. Like we’re better. We’re bigger. We’re strong. What I saw was a team that was bigger, stronger. And when it came time to, to take care of business, they took care of business.

And so I, I don’t know enough, honestly. Like I don’t, I guess I don’t know that all that much about Denmark, but I wouldn’t be certainly willing to take a shot on a team like the Czech Republic, but the way that they stepped up and you know, Billy, I think is about to say they have one of the guys who’s really kind of emerged as one of the players of the tournament. Right? What, what’s his name? Chick I can shake. Yeah. So, I mean, they have a lot of the ingredients. Like they certainly didn’t seem like a team that was over-matched and the Dutch has talent on the field, whether or not the coach is a, is a, is w w Mike McCarthy, Ben McAdoo clone,

Speaker 1 (36m 48s): But they’re very well organized. And that’s the thing that you’ve seen that they’re organized and they’ll rely on their players that can win you. The game have won them the game, like they’ll rely on those players when they get a chances to do what they get. They, they, they, they were, they were bad for like 10 minutes against England, but I don’t think there’s a, there’s a theory that nobody wanted to win that game, that group anyway, because of the difficulty of the tie that you’d get in the next round. So England went ahead and win it. So I don’t know if we saw the full Czech Republic, but they, they beat Scotland. They drew against Coratia.

They looked very, very organized against Holland. Denmark had a better team. So there might shoot win this game. But look at the Denmark situation, your, your aim is to start a tournament. What’s the reach, the quarterfinal you’re you’re the best player nearly died on you. In the first game, he came back 90 minutes later and lost the game and decided to play and lost the game. You shouldn’t have lost. So they’ve gone on such a rollercoaster where they were supposed to do well, then they looked like they were out because they lost against the one of the worst teams in the competition.

Then they put on an amazing performance against Russia and emotionally managed to stay in a competition. They carried that on against Wales. Now from being dead and buried. You’re now expected to be in the 70 vital. Everybody expects. There’s no expectation in Czech Republic. They’ve gotten further than they had. And Denmark have gone from there being no expectation. Please, please, please let us get on the group two. Okay. We can beat Wales. Okay. Look at the root. Now we were all penciling in Denmark versus England.

Now all of a sudden, and this team, I’m not a hundred percent sure we’ll be able to cope with that pressure. England have premier league players who have played in champions, league finals. It’s different, but Denmark to be a favorite to reach a European se