Apparently we’re 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 standard UK adult or even the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling on a yearly basis. But they’re nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) that will lose more than $1,400 for every adult this 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 on a yearly basis. And, as in other billion dollar industries, the competition for your custom is fierce. Online bookmaking operations today are slick, relevant site 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.

Alternatively, all this effort from the bookmakers is nothing in comparison with the time expended by punters themselves. Look at the time you spend turning a bet over in your mind prior to deciding 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 sporting events every day.

But could this effort be better utilised?

You will discover 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 is the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves the expected return of the bet. Yet, for all the effort expended attempting to predict the correct result, it appears that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the best possible odds.

This is hardly logical. It’s not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence and also guessing at the probability of a particular result is very hard. At least several of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event could be better spent comparing the odds offered by the different bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the top return on this type of bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many online sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. There are actually even a lot 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 offered by each, and seek out the most effective odds before they place a bet. But the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds offered by his usual bookmaker. This really is a large oversight and also a costly missed opportunity.

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