Archive for the ‘betting’ Category

Sports Betting Tips – Understanding the Concept of Value in Betting

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Many inexperienced sports bettors don’t look into the concept of value well enough or completely ignore it when choosing a manner of play. An even more concerning fact is that despite its crucial role in sports betting, wager value is often overlooked by veteran bettors as well, which often leads to poor decision making and wagering errors even among the ranks of the seasoned players.

With both offline and online betting, the concept of value isn’t always dependant on the probability of a bet to translate into a win. Therefore, especially when wagering on the underdog with money line bets, betting opportunities offering good value don’t necessarily constrain the team you are wagering your money on to win that particular sporting event.

To illustrate this idea, let’s stick to football betting and suppose you pick a NFL team set at +200 in the sportsbooks. Now, if you expect this team to win 40% of the contests in the league, then you will still have a fruitful wager, despite the slightly negative initial prediction. In this example, if the team at +200 manages to snatch four victories out of ten games played, it means you will seize a nice profit. With this scenario, if you bet $100 to cash in $200, you will lose $100 six of the ten times (which is in fact the estimated negative record of 60%), but win $200 the other four times, which means in the end you earn a consistent profit of $200.

If you are familiar with the world of horse race betting, then this concept shouldn’t be completely new to you. Commonly known as an “overlay” among horse racing bettors, this type of bet gives you the chance to earn a better profit on your wagers whenever the odds are readjusted in a way that is favorable for the bettor – for instance, a horse originally rated with a 3-to-1 chance gets a 5-to-1 shot after the odds are recalculated.

The same hypothesis also applies in sports handicapping with money line sports bets. Moreover, the best part is that the rule doesn’t involve wagering exclusively on the underdog. For instance, when the best pitcher in an experienced baseball team is throwing against a poor pitcher in an average or weak team, the line may be set somewhere at -300. Supposing that your handicapping information suggests the favorite will claim victory in four out of five games played, it means you are seizing a wager that is both safe and profitable. You will have four out of five chances to earn $100 and one chance out of five to lose $300, in which situation you still get to walk away with $100 profit.

Concerning the best approach to finding value in point spreads, the rules are even less rigid here, as each team has a theoretical 50-50 chance of covering the spread bet. In the world of sports betting, finding value when wagering against point spreads means nothing more than placing money into a line considered to be a few points too high or too low, depending on the situation.

In case a team is rated with the first chance by five points over the opposition and the bettor thinks the correct line should in fact be nine points, then the value shifts to wagering on the favorite. In the opposite were true however, then the recommended course of action would be to place your money on the underdog.

Finding good value in sports betting is one of the main prerequisites to making good profits. As long as you keep a close eye on the odds and lines provided by online betting resources and place your bets at the right time, chances are you will be able to seize more winning opportunities.

Are You a Fan of Sports Betting?

Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Betting is a great hobby and it is really no wonder that people from all countries and cultures enjoy sports betting as a way of combining their passion for a certain sport with the chance to win some money. A very nice thing about sports betting is that if you decide to put in some effort into learning its subtleties you can transform it into a steady source of money. Of course, it is not really an easy task to do so and it takes a little effort but the reward has a very large potential. Most people, however, do not want to become ‘pros’ and are just content with viewing sports betting as a great hobby and this is just as fine but in both cases bettors need to pick their sportsbook wisely because there were quite a few cases when customers had trouble with withdrawing their winnings. This, of course, occurred primarily in the case of some shady online sportsbook websites operated by beginners in this trade and that do not have the necessary experience that is required to provide customers with a truly professional sports betting service.

The thing about the internet is that it provides truly equal opportunities to anyone interested in starting an online sportsbook and it is your duty as a sports betting enthusiast to do your homework before creating an account with an online sportsbook and sending in your money. The technology behind these services has evolved quite a lot during the past decade and so it is really easy for people to indulge in their sports betting passion without any kind of effort whatsoever. The services provided by an online sportsbook are pretty much the same as the ones you get with any regular sportsbook located in the state of Nevada, with only a few more benefits such as direct access to a large selection of resources and useful information which can be prove to be of a great use to you when sports betting. Both the betting lines and spreads are created by taking into account a multitude of factors and if you want to increase your success with sports betting you have to also learn how to read these special factors and analyze all the various situations that might influence the end result of a game.

Many online sportsbook companies decide to share a great deal of this information directly on their sportsbook sites but you if you want to be a little more thorough you can do your own extra research to find out important details about individual players, relationships within the team and so on. If you decide to go for the larger online sportsbook websites than you won’t have to worry about not receiving your payments on time but you should show some interest for other important issues such as approved payment methods, customer support, and so on. You also should consider the bonuses that online sportsbook websites are welcoming their new customers interested in increasing their funds reserved for sports betting a bit.

How to Identify Winning NFL and College Football Picks

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Whether you favor NFL picks or college football picks, football betting can be both very entertaining and lucrative, as long as you do your homework and know how to select the best possible options. With most football clashes being scheduled for weekends, there is plenty of time in between the matches to gather the handicapping information needed to nail down the winning picks, so make sure you do so.

Although for the regular player betting on the outcome of the Super Bowl game is the most tempting wager decision of the season, most experts strongly advise against this due to the crowds of occasional bettors that also decide to try their chances at it, thus seriously messing up the odds. Despite the abundance of NFL picks proposed by the sportsbooks each year on the outcome of the Super Bowl title contest, in many cases it may be better to avoid betting on these types of matches, or at least to keep your wagers small, in case the odds or sports lines happen to turn against you. By contrast, with so many other football games to choose from during the season, don’t hold back from getting as many well-informed weekly NFL picks as you can.

To come up with more winning NFL picks, you need to monitor all the information that you think might be relevant in helping you make the best betting decisions. Depending on the case, this information can range anywhere from fundamental things like player and team forms or home and away records to variables like weather, pitch conditions or refereeing. Additionally, try to make game trending work in your favor and bet on the teams that seem most determined to perform well and win. Good examples might be a strong team eager to rebound from a recent loss with a decisive win, a team with a cohesive game play, or a team with a tight, solid defense.

As a guideline, expect powerful teams to recover from a loss more quickly than others and be more driven to emerge victorious in the following game, and struggling teams that somehow manage to snatch an occasional win to return to their losing spree sooner rather than later. Other recommendable actions are wagering against teams that have freshly appointed coaches or those that are victims of one too many off-the-pitch conflicts and media scandals.

Although both approaches are similar to a point, the way you would normally come up with your weekly NFL picks should differ slightly from how you decide your college football wagers. The first and most sensible difference lies in the larger number of wager options that you usually get with college football tournaments, compared to professional football competitions. If you want to seize more of these additional betting options, it means you also have to work harder to gather useful handicapping and team trending information. Additionally, the crude age of the players involved in college football tournaments often translates into poorer on and off-the-pitch discipline, less composure, and weaker motivation.

Such additional factors sometimes render college football picks more difficult to predict, but some professional sports bettors don’t see this as an impediment and actually specialize in betting on the outcome of college football games. However, if you favor a safer approach, it might be better for you to stick with professional football betting and decide your NFL picks after proper handicapping and rigorous study of NFL scores, sports lines and odds.