How to Win at Sports Betting

Even though a lot of people take pleasure in a flutter, only a small portion of them understand enough to keep winning while gambling in the long run. If you are a casual punter, you probably regularly bet on your favorite team on the team who you think is better, without considering several very important factors. This is why we decided to write this article, we will go through the most crucial things you have to know to become a successful sports bettor.

Betting Odds

The most common mistake that losing punters make is not considering the odds that they are being offered. When they decide their bets, they just try to figure out who is going to win and just wager on them regardless of the odds. The mass of people do not understand the concept of value when considering sports betting and do not take their time to get the best odds.

For example, consider that Scotland are playing against Spain in Soccer. A lot of people will think that Spain will win, so they bet on them. This should not be how you make such decisions. Betting on Scotland may be a great idea. For example, you might get 50/1 on Scotland to win, will you consider it as a good wager? How about 1000/1. In these cases, you will probably have a small bet on Scotland since the odds show better value.

Each match-up has odds which represent the actual chance of the event to happen, and if you can get better odds, then you will be placing a bet that will make you more money. In the example we gave you, you might expect Scotland to beat Spain perhaps 1 out of 10 times, which means that if you get odds better than 9/1, you should place the bet.

Making the wager that represents good value and not just betting on the team who you think will win is one of the toughest concepts for newbie punters to accept. However, some people struggle with finding the proper event to wager on. If you are one of them, just go to the site of Topratedbettingsites.co.uk and view the variety of online bookmakers and competitions they cover.

Find Great Value Wagers

Now that you know you have to find wagers that represent value, how will you go about finding great value wagers? The first thing you have to do is convert the odds on offer to implied probability. If you are being offered 2/1, just put the bottom number over the total of the bottom and top numbers and turn it to a percentage to find out what the implied probability is. Thus if you get 1/3, you will have 33.3%. Another example is 4/11, which is 36.3% in percentage.

If you think that the probability of the event you are gambling on exceeds that which is indicated by the odds, then you will have a good value wager and should place money on it. For example, if you think that there is a 60% chance that the Giants will defeat the Patriots and the odds are evens, then for every 1$ you bet, you can expect to make a 20c profit.

Sports Research

The last thing that you will need to master if you want to win at gambling is figuring out the probabilities that you need in order to compare with the odds that the bookies are offering. The only way you can do this is by a lot of research and hard work.

If your favorite sport is basketball, and you are deciding which team will cover the spread or weighing up a game, you will need to factor a number of things to your decisions. These are things like if one of the teams is on a losing or a winning streak, injuries, individual player match-ups, and results of previous games between these two clubs.

If you want to, you can go into a massive amount of statistical details. And a lot of pro sports punters keep quite the detailed logs and analyze players and teams in every single detail to come up with their bets. The amazing thing about this age that we live is that the internet offers you unlimited access to all of the statistical data you may need, so all you need to do is analyze it. A couple of excellent sites you can check out are topratedbettingsites.com and ESPN.

If you want to be a winning punter, you will be better off staying with one or two sports and study them in detail. This way you will have the best chance to gain an edge over the bookmakers and make some cash.

Special Offers

Another thing you should keep an eye on is money back specials. These are much more common for the European bookmakers rather than the US ones, but they represent another chance for you to pick winning wagers. For instance, Paddy Power love showing their Irish pride, so they might make a Money back on all Irish players if Rory MacIlroy manages to win the Masters. The effect of these offers might make the difference between a bad bet and a good one, so you should study them and do the mathematics on them to check out if they are worth your time.