The popularity of sports betting is growing in the present day, with several countries legalizing betting for the first time and opening up new markets. More and more people are embracing it for the first time, with record numbers of women betting in a field that was previously very male-dominated. Long-standing bookmakers and finding a new lease of life online, while more modern names like in2bet.com.cy are gaining in popularity all the time. It’s a beneficial time to be better, as the increase in competition between companies means it’s easier to find one offering what you want and need.
By comparison with other forms of betting, sports betting also has plenty of advantages. Chief among these is the fact that it is possible to be good at betting on sporting events. If you know a certain amount about sport, then you can leverage that knowledge to find betting opportunities that others haven’t picked up on, using up-to-the-minute information to make the smartest bets and have regular wins. For anyone serious about betting, the process is all about value – and knowing how to find value bets can make a real difference to your success levels.
Stick to what you know, initially
It may seem obvious that you should only bet on things you know something about, but it’s more nuanced than that. If you want to make real value bets, you should use expert knowledge. By this, we mean that you should look for value in markets you know intimately – ideally, more than even a pretty keen sports fan. Let’s say you have an interest in Icelandic football; that’s a fair niche area and there’s a good chance that you have knowledge that even the oddsmakers won’t have considered. Maybe you’ve been reading about an injury crisis at Breidablik and can confidently predict they’ll struggle in a match they would otherwise win. To bet successfully, it’s useful to exploit any in-depth knowledge you have.
Understand probability
Looking at the odds for a sports matchup gives you an idea of how likely the bookmaker thinks a certain outcome is. If, for example, the bookmaker is offering odds of 3/1 or 4.00 on a specific team winning, that means they think there is roughly a 25% chance of it happening. For most sports fans, it’s not that hard to visualize what we think the percentage chance is of something happening. If you deem that something has a 50/50 chance of happening, and the bookmaker prices it up at 2.50 – an implied 40% probability – then there is excellent value in that bet from your standpoint. To get the implied probability of something, divide 100 by its decimal odds.
Learn something from each bet you make
If you want to do this seriously, it is important to treat betting like an occupation, or at least an academic subject. When you win a bet – and when you lose – it is important to look at what went down and consider why this was the case. In any test or quiz, it’s useful to be right, but it is more useful to know why you were right – and even more so to know why you were wrong. Bettors make mistakes: some common ones are letting their biases rule their judgment or giving too much weight to recent forms. If you want to keep betting, learning from your mistakes is invaluable.
