Betting On Football – A Simple Guide from The Sportsman

Football betting has seen an incredible rise over the last 10 years as the bookmakers have opened up the sport by offering a myriad of markets to bet on from the obvious to the ridiculous. With the World Cup round the corner and the Premiership, SPL and National Leagues following on soon after you might like to be armed with a bit of the basic knowledge so that you can get involved too!

The Sportsman is the UK’s newest daily newspaper and website devoted entirely to sports betting and racing so who better to guide you through the basics?

Betting has an awful lot of jargon but it’s not nearly as complicated as you might think. The most popular bet in football outside of the straight forward who will win the World Cup or Premiership itself is the match betting.

The first thing to remember when betting on a football match is that it’s not a two horse race! A lot of people think that you are betting on, say, England or Sweden to win the match – which, of course you can but forget the draw at your peril. Bookmakers pay out on matches on the score after the first 90 minutes so extra time is not included and anybody who knows football knows that there are plenty of draws so don’t be afraid to back the draw.

Another very popular bet is who will score the first goal. Now whilst this is an obvious and appealing bet it is very hard to get right. Most bookmakers now offer a slightly different bet that gives you a much better chance of backing an all important winner, namely your chosen play to score at any time during the match. With the first scorer option your bet can be finished in the first minute whereas with the ‘to score during the match’ you can win at any time until the final whistle.

Predicting the correct score is another very popular choice though again not as easy thing to get right and again for an easier option most bookmakers now bet on the number of goals there will be in a match. So if you get the right number of goals but they don’t have to be the actual correct score, i.e., Liverpool 2 Spurs 1.

The other factor that often confuses those new to betting is the odds themselves – what does 6/4 mean? Basically, 3/1 most understand – you place £1 and win £3 – but remember if you win you also get your stake back too so your full return would be £4 (a profit of £3). Odds like 6/4 are less complicated than they appear – essentially if you divide the figure on the left by the one on the right and you get what the odds mean to a £1 stake. So in the case of 6/4, divide 6 by 4 and you get 1.5. The example, 6/4, is therefore 1.5/1. If you bet £1 at 6/4 you receive £1.50 profit and your stake back.

We hope this helps but visit TheSportsman.com or read the paper, out every day for more tips and hints.

Bet on Sports Like a Pro

Sports betting is a challenging form of betting and despite its seeming lack of strategy and complete reliance on knowledge of the event, good sports betting actually relies on a great deal of strategy which must be used in order to win. The most important tactics involve a close analysis of the information upon which a sound judgment must be based and thereafter the bet must be placed. A winning strategy takes a few salient factors into account which are:

1. The amount of the bid

2. The kind of bet


3. The odds on offer


Sportsbooks in the US and Bookmakers in UK are entities that accept sports bets. The bets can be placed predicting the outcome of several sporting events like Baseball, Snooker, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, Football, Tennis and hundreds of other sports and atheletic activities. Just to cover some basic definitions: a sportsbook is the one that accepts the sports bet. An oddsmaker is the one who sets the odds of betting.


Betting the Odds
In order to place a bet, you must first select the type of bet and the amount you will wager. This naturally will depend upon the odds that are being offered. Before you go ahead and place the bet, carefully scrutinize the range of available odds.


The odds must be in the ratio of at least 2:1 for the bet to be worthwhile. Another factor that must be taken into account is the amount being given by way of commission to the sports-book. This ideally should be a minimal percentage of the total value of the odds.

Given below is a list of some common kinds of bets:

1. Single or Straight Bet: This is betting in its most basic form and allows you to bet at given odds, upon a winner.

2. Point Spread: Under this bet one can bet on one of two selections that have been equated through the allocation of suitable points. In the Point Spread the number of allocated points are shown with a + sign for the favorable side and a – sign for the underdog. In order that the better wins, the favored team must win by more than the Point Spread. On the flip side, if a bet has been placed on the underdog, that team has to lose by less than the Point Spread for the better to win.


3. Buy Points: This involves moving the Point Spread positively, by paying a price.

4. The Moneyline: This type of bet is simply on who will win. It establishes the odds for each side but is the reverse of the Point Spread, with a – sign standing for the favorite and the + sign for the underdog.


5. Total Bet: This is similar to point spread bets, only in that the better bets on the total points scored.

6. Over/ Under: This is a bet as per which the number of points scored by the teams in any game will be beyond/ over OR below/ under the total set by the oddsmaker.


7. Parlay of Accumulator: This is a way of betting on multiple sporting events in the hope that a big payoff will be made if all win. The picks made are in relation to the point spread. Even if one event does not win or draw, the better loses the entire bet. Huge amounts can be made through parlay betting, in the event of a win.

8. Teaser: A teaser is similar to a parlay, however it has the option of adding or taking off points from one or more than one Spread bets. The odds depend upon the number of points the spread is moved as well as upon the number of teams that are combined to form the teaser.


9. Futures: These are bets on who will win the championship in the event that there are more than two possible teams to bet on. Substantial variations between sportbooks exist in house edge on futures.

10. Buying Half a Point: In this, the straight bet player gets the option of moving the point spread half point to his advantage. The most appropriate time to buy a half point is when one team is favored by 2.5, 3, 6.5 or 7 in football. This is primarily due to the fact that several games end in a 3 or 7 point difference. The extra half point may end up turning a loss to a draw or a draw to a win.



Of all these types of bets, three types of bets are prominent and must be used for the simple reason that they are simple themselves, are easy to win and have a good chance of winning. These are the Straight bet, the Doubles and the Future.

Here are a few Betting tips that will help you to place the Best Bets and push you towards a big win, they are:

1. Always make an intelligent analysis of the odds and the offer of the bet.

2. For a simple bet, stick to the Straight bet as it is non-complicated and has good winning prospects.


3. Bet wisely by keeping your selections limited. Also try to limit the influence of bias in your betting. If you are a fan of a team try to limit the effect of that favoritism when betting.

4. One of the most rewarding bets is the ‘Future’ bet but only if you know a lot about the sport being played and about the players.


5. By betting regularly though systematically and in an analytical manner, one can improve your judgmental ability.

6. Contain the urge to bet with you winnings immediately. If you do not follow the standard rule of 50%, at least put some of your winnings back into your pocket.


7. Make sure your sportsbook is a member of a known Gambling Association, makes a quick payment and is easily accessible. Read in between the lines, about matters pertaining to disputes.

8. Train yourself to look for value odds – you will master this art soon, with time and practice.


9. If deciding between two seemingly equivalent choices, trust your judgment and not that of those who have bet before you. In so doing, choose a selection with a little higher risk so as to hike up the winnings.

10. Bet on games and leagues where the sportsbook’s commission is the least. This is often in the sport or sports with which that sportsbook does most of its business, as it is likely the most efficient in that area.

Be A Sharp Gambler

The gambling world is full of people who just throw down hard earned money without thinking about what they are doing. Are you one of those people who will just go with the flow? If so, you are most likely a losing gambler or you are not winning as much money as you could be. There are three main factors that make up every successful gambler: money management, value and knowledge. This article will take a look at all these of these areas and help you become a sharp gambler.

Money Management

It’s amazing how many people gamble and don’t think, for even one second, about money management. You wouldn’t go on a trip without thinking about what you want to do right? Then why gamble without a goal? When you go on a trip, is your goal to simply go on a trip? Of course it’s not. You at least decide on a destination, time of stay and so forth.

Before you gamble, you should have some goals in mind. Here’s a quick list of a couple goals you want to define.

1.What is your total bankroll for the gambling session?
2.If I am ahead $X, I will leave.
3.If I lose X% of my bankroll, I will leave or I will leave once my bankroll is gone.
4.I will devote most of my time to playing [ insert game ].
5.While playing [ insert game ], my average bet will be around $x.

Defining these five goals will help you keep organized and focused.

Value

The sharp gambler stay way from bets that are for suckers. He or she is only concerned with getting good value. Here’s a list of key bets and activities to stay away from.

1.Slot Machines – The payback percentage is poor.
2.Roulette – Huge house advantage.
3.Proposition bets in Craps.
4.Parlay cards in sports betting that contain a large amount of selections.
5.The insurance bet in Blackjack.
6.The tie bet in Baccarat.
7.Caribbean Stud Poker, which has a large house advantage.
8.Bingo

There’s no law against playing the above items from time to time, but you have to do it in moderation and not make these items part of your main betting activities.

Knowledge
This is one of those factors that separate the long-term winning gamblers from the consistently losing gamblers. If you are going to wager on something, you should know all you can about it. Study the game, learn the tricks and understand everything about it. By being knowledgeable in the game, you will know how to maximize your wagers and your time.

Pick a game you want to play and follow this guide to become a guru.

1.First, research the game by typing in the name at your local search engine. Look for how-to-play articles, tips and strategy. You will find many free resources out there.
2.Find an online casino that offers play money games and go practice what you have learned. If are learning about sports betting or horse racing, find a sports book to get odds from and play bet.
3.Visit your bookstore and look for books on the subject. Sit down at the store and read a little.

Keep reading and searching for the area(s) you like and soon you will become a very sharp player. Knowledge is power, especially in the gambling world.

By improving yourself in these three areas, you will have a great possibility of winning more consistently and you will have more fun because you are organized, focused and education.

Basketball Sports Gambling Strategy

Basketball sports’ gambling is a game of skill and relies on a great deal of strategy, which must be used in order to win. The challenge is to gather and analyze as much information as you can about a game, weigh the probabilities of each team winning, and subsequently compare your opinion to the odds makers. Make the right judgment and you win. To keep the sports gambling simple and fun I am only going to cover straight bets. When gambling on a basketball game, there are two ways to place a straight bet within that same game. You can either bet the line also known to as the side, or how many points will be scored in the basketball game also known as the total. The Straight Bet is betting in its most basic form, which allows you to bet at given odds, upon a winner. The Point Spread can bet on one of two selections that have been equated through the allocation of suitable points. In the Point Spread the number of allocated points are shown with a + sign for the favorable side and a - sign for the underdog. In order that the better wins, the favored team must win by more than the Point Spread. On the flip side, if a bet has been placed on the underdog, that team has to lose by less than the Point Spread for the better to win.
Example:
Detroit
-8.0
Seattle
196

In this example, Seattle is the favored team to win the basketball game by at least 8 points. The underdog team is Detroit, where the listed total for the contest is placed at 196. If you take a straight bet on Seattle, you are betting that Seattle will win by at least by 8 points. Conversely, if you bet on Detroit, you are betting that even if they do not win the game, Seattle will not win by as many as 8.0 points. Say the final score was:

Seattle 100
Detroit 98

If you bet on Seattle, you would have lost, because they did not win by at least 8 points. All of these sports gambling sites offer some sort of bonus for you to do your betting online with them. They are not the outrageous bonuses that you may hear about, but are adequate to start you out. You have to be careful about sportsbooks that offer the unbelievable bonus deals because they may not be able to stay around for the long haul. In most of the sports gambling sites, if you wagered $100 on Seattle, your loss would be $100. On the other hand, if you wagered on Detroit, you would have risked the same $110 to win $100. In other words you are laying 11 to win 10. The odds in the sportsbooks are listed in this manner: 10/11. The left-hand side of the backslash is what you stand to win and the right-hand side is the number you risk losing.

In this basketball game, there was a total of 198 points scored. This exceeded the total of 196 that was predicted by the lines makers, so the game went Over. If less than 196 combined points was scored in the game, the game will have gone Under. On total points at most sportsbooks, once again, the odds are 11/10.

The loser pays more than the sportsbook pays to the winner is the net profit that the sportsbook would make. This is called the juice. When looking for a sports gambling site you should look for a small juice.
A line movement in any direction indicates which team that the people are betting more on. Sports gambling sites will move the line in either direction to try and entice a bettor to bet on the side that is needed to even out the amount wagered on both sides of the game. This is way the sportsbook makes its money on the juice and do not let movements in the line influence your betting. You do not want to place your wagers with a sportsbook that does not move its line, because you would then be dealing with a sportsbook that is gambling and that is poor money management by that sportsbook. The sports gambling sites at SportsGambling4Fun.com are some of the best sports gambling sites to place a basketball bet with.

Are You Handicapped Without a Sports Handicapper?

It’s a conundrum that many ATS fortune hunters face. Sports gambling can be a great leisurely activity for all, but for the well-versed sports prophesier, it can be a lucrative enterprise.

Having twice Chaired international searches for elite sports handicappers, once as GM of Freescoreboard, the first toll-free coast-to-coast scorephone network and than at OffshoreInsiders.com, widely accepted as the foremost handicapping site, I can tell you the quality sports handicappers are few and far between.

There are sharpies and wise guys who do make a lot of money sports gambling, but it takes the ability to both line-shop and forebode the outcome of games to make it profitable.

While my clients’ line-tracking skills are their own, the most important doomsday machine that an odds protιgιe can harbor is knowing the right sides and totals to monitor. As the musician was told on the way to Carnegie Hall, the only solution is practice, practice, and practice.

Let there be no doubt that there are a limited number of qualified professional handicapping experts and we have several of the elite few on OffshoreInsiders.com. Unfortunately the consumer is forced to ferret through the much more commonplace coin flippers with a grandiloquent sales pitch before unearthing the maestro confidants.

Too often desperate gamblers are clay pigeons for a windbag who talks the talk, but cannot walk the walk. Sometimes the other extreme happens. Ironically so many clients thinking they are suave patrons fall prey to the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

They are bamboozled into thinking virtuous means a virtuoso. It befuddles me how these people are the most easily hoodwinked considering how they present themselves as the more discriminating shoppers of sports investment advisors.

I have seen on Internet posting boards for example gamblers assign credibility to handicappers using the bottom rung criterion of merely admitting to losing days. Any huckster can merely come clean on heads covering when he picked tails. Professional gamblers can only sneer at such easily mislead gamblers who keep the bookmakers in business for the rest of us.

The polished magnate is much more concerned with handicappers who have few losers to proclaim than those who think sportsbooks are merely confessional booths. "Bookmaker forgive me for I have lost, it has been three weeks since my last winner." If you can find a bookmaker who accepts “"ail Marys" and "Our Fathers" as payment, more power to you. The rest of you, I would implore you to set the bar much higher when purchasing advice.

In Advertising 101, they teach to "Sell the sizzle and not the steak." But there really is no correlation between hard-sell/soft-peddle and legitimate/illegitimate in this field.
Let me elaborate though. This is not to say that one should give merit to the notorious snake oil salesmen. Rest assured anyone who claims "inside information" or implies that a game is a sure thing; the only forgone conclusion is that you better hope the shyster that you paid used the lucky paper clip.

A sharp player never merely gives the squeakiest wheel the oil, but also does not fall for the faηade of legitimacy that uninformed consumers effortlessly acquiesce to the soft-peddlers.

Some brag because they can do it, others ballyhoo because a sales pitch is all they have got.

Quite often I get an email from someone saying that they want me to give them my premium picks for a few weeks and than if they are satisfied they will purchase a long-term package.

Even though gambling by its mere definition involves, well a "gamble" I wish all the worldly endeavors that by their nature involve less risk than gambling could come with such guarantee and free lunches as requested by the likes that I just mentioned.

Well speaking of free lunches, my only other obsession besides triumphant prognostication is dining. Could you imagine if I went in a restaurant and told them they should give me a few free meals before I determined if I wanted to consent to buying a meal?

Do not misconstrue what I assert, restaurants and many other businesses give free samples. Oh, I am so enlightened on that. My wife saw on television one day about how easy it is to acquire free samples via the Internet. Our life and mailbox has never been the same since. But I digress.

Car dealers certainly allow test drives. Likewise, reputable handicappers allow you to not only get free selections, but also even more importantly enable you to experience, savor and partake in their expertise. Well-informed and experienced handicappers should have no problem proving their proficiency before a game even starts with the profoundness of their accompanied analysis.

What, there was no reasoning and justification given with their free play? Purchase at your own risk. Caveat emptor. If a selection looks like a shot in the dark, it probably is. If a sports stockbroker is well informed, he has no reason not to flaunt it. But if a robber baron is trying to simply pawn off a guess, it is tough to present scrutiny and research when it consists of a wink and a smile.

But again, those who happily make payment for blind faith underwrite the bookmakers so they can painlessly benefact those of us who live and breathe sports betting.

A learned foreteller should have articulate widely published articles on gaming theory and strategy. Any handicapper who wants your patronage would be happy to showcase gaming scholarly doctrine. It is his best sales tool.

An educated buyer is good for both the gambler and top shelf handicapper. But those who want to judge all professional speculators by the actions of the most notorious are doing themselves and the true pros an injustice. Prejudice against members of any profession may be more politically correct than preconceived notions against someone because of their race, color or creed, but it is narrow-minded bigotry nonetheless.

Neither blind faith nor McCarthyism towards professional handicappers will do you fairness. But investing money in the proper middleman is most conducive to making coach potatoism a bull market.

9 Ways To Win At Sports Betting

If you are looking to try your luck at sports betting then know that you do have greater odds of winning in this game than you would in roulette or craps. While those are games of chance, sports betting is a game of predicting a foreseeable outcome. Here are some tips on how to win big at the big game.

9.Place Bets on the Right Sports Book
Statistics suggest that placing bets with the correct sports book will make a big difference, and increase the odds of winning by 3%.

8.Bet Against the Public
There are some that claim that “fading the public” can be profitable. This has led many bettors to bet on the other team than is predicted.

7.Do Your Homework Before the Game
The best way to win sports betting is to research all aspects of a game, especially circumstances and data that others would not consider. Not even bookies will have time to research every sport and every game. Therefore, if you can create a niche for yourself, you could become an expert on a smaller conferences and find yourself winning big money.

6.Choose the Underdog at Home
Statistically speaking, it’s a good idea to bet on an underdog at home. A team will put forth their best effort at home stadium and underdogs have a way of triumphing over the odds in general. Using this strategy you may beat the odds too.

5.Bet at Just the Right Time
Bettors who bet on underdogs usually bet early. Therefore, if you are betting on an underdog try and bet late. If you are betting on the favorite then bet early. Going against the grain in sports gambling is often a smart move.

4.Make Arbitrage Bets
You can make money on sure bets regardless of the outcome of a game with arbitrage bets. The advantage of these bets is that it doesn’t matter what the outcome of a game is, since the only bet you made was on a specific happening.

3.Square or Sucker Lines
Many betters try to stay away from square lines (that is, lines that are designed to lure public opinion into betting a certain way) and in the end, can even make money off these phony wagers if they can closely monitor the betting percentages.

2.Never Gamble While Drinking
This may be common knowledge to some, a great shock to others. However, when you drink an alcoholic beverage, your judgment will be significantly clouded. A drink may also give you that extra “courage” to make a rash and expensive decision.

1.Manage your Gambling Money
Another lesson in common sense that is often ignored when it comes time to put down a wager: never bet more than you can afford to lose. In fact, it is recommended that you set aside a portion of your money for betting and to stick with it, regardless of your winnings or losses. Lastly, try to spread your total among a few smaller bets rather than risk it all on one sure thing that may not be as predictable as everyone thinks.