The bookies' ten for tonight

With the bookmakers correctly placing the majority of the favourites from the first semi-final in the successful top ten, how does the betting sheet look for tonight�s hopefuls? Here we take a last-minute look at which countries are attracting the most confidence ahead of the second semi-final of 2008.

Odds from the bookies can be seen as a kind of collective prediction on the part of thousands of punters who place their money on the songs they believe will do well. This year, a cross section of several online betting agencies reveals again that the intuition of the betting pundits closely follows many fan predictions.

Dead certs
Ukraine, Sweden, Bulgaria and Turkey are currently within the top five of all major online bookmakers, with Ukraine leading as the ‘dead cert’, much as Russia did in Tuesday’s odds.

Many people are putting their money behind highly-regarded Portugal too, as the country hopes for its first successful traversal of a Eurovision semi-final. With all bookmakers it enjoys a top-ten placing currently, rising to fifth favourite with one. Latvia joins Portugal as another solid top-tenner, with the novelty entry widely expected to sail through.

On shaky ground
Switzerland, perhaps surprisingly after enjoying status as a fan favourite, is struggling to stay in the bookies’ top ten, slipping outside it on some betting slips. However, fans of Poland and Israel can testify that long odds are no guarantee of failure, after proving punters wrong on Tuesday and sailing through to the final.

Enjoying similarly hedged bets and not-so-confident support are Iceland, Denmark, Georgia, Albania, Hungary, Croatia and FYR Macedonia, who share the remaining top ten slots across the different bookmakers. Perhaps a sign that it will be amongst these that the big fight for the bottom five final tickets takes place tonight.

The top ten odds across the bookies looks like this, just three hours away from the event: