Whether you’ve been around the sports betting game for a while, or are new and have been following the advice found on this site, chances are you’ve been to sites like Covers.com while doing research on upcoming games. Chances are you’ve also noticed the little « consensus » tidbit next to each game, telling you which team the public thinks will win. You may see that a team has a 70% general sediment and feel like that may be a pretty good bet that you should make. While nothing is ever certain worldwide of sports betting, this feeling is mostly incorrect.

One of the most important concepts to bear in mind when betting on sports is this: in the event the public won more than they lost, sports books would cease to exist. That is simplifying things a little, remember, but most of the time which is a true statement. Casinos and sport books are within business to make money–lots of money. Should they are losing money in a particular area, they will either change the rules or stop offering it entirely. Considering that the world of online sport books is alive and thriving, it is then safe online football gambling agent to assume that they’re making money and that, over time, the general public loses their money.

I have been telling people to subscribe to the theory of reverse general sediment for years now. As is the case with a whole lot of the advice I’ve offered here at SportBooksReview, I’m not suggesting that folks blindly bet against the team with higher public support every night–just keep it in mind when doing your investigation. You will discover some situations where observing the general public consensus and comparing it to line movement may be very eye-opening, and those are the situations in which you can pounce.

As we discussed in our Line Movement article, there are various of factors that may cause sport books to move the line. One such factor is one team getting decidedly more money wagered on it than the other, creating a scenario where the books would lose a large sum of money if one team wins. Books would prefer to have an excellent, even total amount bet on both sides of a game, so that no matter what team wins, they’ll come out on top as a result of the juice (newbies: betting $110 to win $100, the $10 is the juice). This is why it’s a good idea to take a quick peek at the consensus percentages as well as the line movement for the games you want to bet on–there can sometimes be some very useful hidden information to give you a benefit.

When doing your investigation, if you happen to determine a game where the public is quite heavily betting on one team, say 70% or higher, yet the line did not move from it’s original number, in which case you have to ask yourself why that’s. Should the public is betting most of their money on a team, however the books do not move the number to attract betters for another team, then it’s telling you something. Either the books are confident that the public will lose, or perhaps the big-money sharp betters have already made their bets on the additional team. Either way, this is a serious red flag. Again, do not blindly bet your money on this strategy, but there will be situations where these numbers are too strong to ignore.

By and large, I like fading the public–especially when there is a strong public consensus betting on the underdog in a game. While you surely already know, the common theme of my articles is research–we’re speaking about your hard earned money here, so it’s extremely essential that you make every effort to find one benefit before making your bet. As is the case with a lot of my advice, this is not meant to be a one size fits all strategy, but part of a larger overall strategy of doing your homework and eventually finding solid money-making opportunities. If you follow the advice I have offered within this article and combine it with some of my other strategies, you will win money–the only question is: simply how much?