Tag Archives: betting odds

Online betting

Online betting has been rapidly gaining ground over the years. The reason why it is so popular is simply because it is convenient. You can sit at home in front of the PC, have a cup of coffee and start betting. Setting up an account is very easy and you can place the betting odds anytime you want and from anywhere you want. Sports’ betting is real fun. Usually people bet for the teams they are supporting and against the teams they are not. But like everything else, online betting is also a game of chance. You can win if you place the right bet or even lose in case you don’t. So there is a possibility of losing that you have to always consider. Hence, it is important to do your lessons on sports betting before you place the bet.

To get a hang of how online sports betting works, it is essential to know about the basic concept of sports betting. The concept is really not that difficult to understand. Once you get a hang of it, you can become quite an expert and win some really good bets. All you have to do is predict which teams or animals, in case of sports involving use of animals like horse racing, is most likely to win at the game. Then you need to wager a fixed amount of money on that team or animal. Other people will too place their own wagers on the team they think will win. These wagers might be the same as the one you have placed or they might be placed on other teams. In the case of your team winning the game, you will win all the money that the others had wrongly wagered or vice versa.

Sports’ betting has become very popular and widespread these days. In fact, it has given rise to another popular business and that is, bookmaking. Bookmaking helps in bringing the risks involved in betting to a minimum without which betting would become very risky as the betting odds are placed against events which nobody has any control over.

The Internet has come into picture in sports betting and this has led to the increase in popularity of online betting. Online betting combines sports betting with bookmaking and technology available over the Internet that makes it possible for people all over the world to take part in events that may be happening in other parts of the world.

Due to the introduction of bookmaking, online betting is less risky. Here the odds of a player, animal or team of winning the game or event are worked out and then priced appropriately. This way you place the betting odds on a particular team or against a team. Any which way you end up winning at least some amount even for a wrong bet.

The betting odds are decided upon by considering factors like weather conditions, location, quality of the teams, injuries, motivation to win etc. Depending on these factors, the bookmakers form a betting number. They chose a number whereby they will encourage the people betting to bet on the side which is weaker. The betting odds are also calculated depending upon the every day information of the game. These factors are worked upon with the help of formulas in order to arrive at power rankings. One look at the power rankings will tell you which way the game is heading. So make sure you check them before you place your bet.

Betting Tips and Money Management in Soccer Betting

Soccer experts provide you with betting tips, the media publishes the latest news about the opponent teams and their key players, bookmakers support hundreds of betting methods… However, when you finally place your huge wager on a sure favorite, this is the time to start praying… Unfortunately, the world of soccer betting is quite unpredictable. There are thousands of factors playing against us. How can we cut our betting losses? The only way to do it is by using money management strategies.

This article summarizes the methods and strategies of betting money management and provides a statistical comparison of their performance based on betting odds and match results of top European leagues.

The most common betting money management strategies in our days are: Martingale, Row of numbers and Kelly criterion. While the first two do not require any prior information, Kelly criterion requires the punter to know the probability of a win.

DEFINITIONS
Before presenting the performance analysis, a brief description of the above-mentioned strategies is necessary:

— Martingale strategy means doubling the stack after a loss and returning back to the starting stack after a win. This strategy is the most popular today and promises positive profits, but requires intensive money investments.

— Row of numbers means planning a series of constant profits. Given betting odds, the punter calculates each stake in a way that will allow him to make the planned profit. In case he loses, he should increase the next stack in such a way the profit will return both the money already lost and the planned profits for the lost games. This strategy is less aggressive than Martingale but still dangerous.

— Kelly criterion: mathematically proven to be the best strategy in the long run. However, it requires knowing the probability of a win. The stacks are calculated in proportion of the size of your funds and according to the relation between the probability of a win and the betting odds. When probability and odds are high, a high stack will be placed and vice versa.

DATA AND METHODS
In order to evaluate the performance of each strategy, we analyzed the betting odds set by bookmakers for the top European leagues. Imagine that bookmakers are punters who place a stake on a favorite with minimal betting odds. One can easily estimate the probability of a win by dividing the average number of home/draw/away outcomes by the total number of games in a season.

The betting odds and results are taken from the four European top leagues playing in the 2008/2009 season: English Premier, French Ligue 1, German Bundesliga 1 and Spanish Primera Division.

SUMMARY
— The results show that Kelly criterion is the best money management strategy of the three with an average profit of +5% compared to +1% (Row) and +1.2% (Martingale).

— The most profitable was the French Ligue 1 with a betting profit of +22% (Kelly), +9% (Row) and +10% (Martingale).

— The least profitable was the English Premier League with a betting loses of -10% (Kelly) ), -9% (Row) and -8% (Martingale).