Apparently we’re pleased to stake our money on anything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that a typical UK adult or the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling each and every year. But they’re nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) that 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 yearly. 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 deal with their risk in real time.

Conversely, all this effort from the bookmakers is nothing in comparison to the time expended by punters themselves. Look at the time you spend turning a bet over in your mind before you decide to place it and then multiply that by the range of bets placed each day. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of professional sports daily.

But could this effort be better utilised?

There are only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The very first will be the probability of the predicted result as well as the second will be the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves the expected return of the bet. Nonetheless, for all of the effort expended attempting to predict the proper 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 exceedingly hard. At least several of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event could be better spent comparing the odds provided by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the best return on this specific bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many safe online football gambling agency sportsbooks, compare odds, and locate a better offer. You will find even an abundance of services around that will do it for you for free.

Professional gamblers often have accounts with multiple bookmakers, pay close focus on the odds provided by each, and seek out the most effective odds before they place a bet. Though the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds offered by his usual bookmaker. This is a sizable oversight and a costly missed opportunity.

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