Apparently we are happy to stake our cash on everything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that the average UK adult or the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling every year. But they’re nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) who will lose more than $1,400 for every adult this coming year.

All these losses add up and popular sports betting markets like English Premier League soccer, NFL football, NBA basketball, NHL hockey, and MLB baseball turn over billions of dollars each and every year. And, as in other billion dollar industries, the competition for your custom is fierce. Online bookmaking operations today are slick, sophisticated, and making a killing. They employ expert staff to set appropriate starting prices and use complex statistical models to manage their risk in real time.

However, all this effort from the bookmakers is nothing with regards to the time expended by punters themselves. Think about the time you spend turning a bet over within your mind before you place it and then multiply that through the number of bets placed each day. Tens of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of professional sports daily.

But could this effort be better utilised?

You will discover only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The first will be the likelihood of the predicted result and also the second will be the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves please click the next document expected return of the bet. Still, for all the effort expended attempting to predict the correct result, it appears that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the top possible odds.

This really is hardly logical. It’s not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence and also guessing at the likelihood of a particular result is very hard. At least some of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event will be better spent comparing the odds offered by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the very best return on this specific bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many online sportsbooks, compare odds, and locate a better offer. You will find even an abundance of services out there that can do it for you for free.

Professional gamblers often have accounts with multiple bookmakers, pay close attention to the odds provided by each, and seek out the top odds before they place a bet. But the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds offered by his usual bookmaker. This is a big oversight as well as a costly missed opportunity.

Bookmakers often post noticeably different odds for the same event and it is common to locate mismatches of up to 10% from one bookmaker to another. This percentage is there for the taking and it mystifies me that lots of individuals are not shopping around for better odds.