Betting on sports or simply betting in general, is often deemed an unwise pastime. Many people frown upon the actions of a gambler. Why is this? There seems to be a stigma attached to betting, an overall disapproval which generally comes from the ignorance of people who fail to understand, that when carried out correctly, betting on sports can be both a highly enjoyable and potentially lucrative experience. However it pays to get some tips and avoid some of the biggest mistakes gamblers make when sportsbetting
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Sports betting and line tracking:
Most squares view sports betting as an extremely simple affair. Those who are completely in the dark about it believe that all it takes to show a long-term profit is to guess the winner. Those who know a thing or two about how things work in sports gambling know that it’s not nearly that simple. Of course, you can bet on the line in which case you only do need to guess the team to emerge victorious, but the bookie has ways to squeeze the value out of both sides of such line bets too. The bulk of the betting is done on the spread anyways, as the most popular sports (the NLF and the NBA) are both predominantly bet on this way. In all cases, the bookmaker’s goal is to balance match-ups, which means that he moves his lines in such a manner that he makes both sides of every match-up equally (un)attractive. Part of becoming a successful sports bettor is understanding how the bookie operates.
One needs to have such an understanding in order to be able to reverse-handicap match-ups. Reverse handicapping is about understanding the line-movements from the bookmaker’s side of the deal. Why do you need to understand that? Once I make my point in this article, you’ll understand why. Let’s start with the beginning though. What’s the bookie’s objective and why is he hell-bent on balancing every match-up he offers? By getting an equal number of bettors onto both sides of the match-up, the bookie will have relatively equal amounts of money on both sides. This way (as one of the sides always wins and the other loses) he’ll be able to pay the winners with the money dropped by the losers and he’ll keep the vig to himself without any sort of risk involved.
The setup is kind of reminiscent of the poker rake, which online poker rooms take off the pots their players win, again: without any risks involved. While poker players can turn to rakeback and poker prop deals featured by sites, there’s not a whole lot sports bettors can do about the vig, which means that on well-balanced match-ups, square bettors play with negative EV. Even if you’re not particularly versed in gambling, poker and sports betting, you can probably sense that negative EV is bad news. The good news is, positive EV can be secured in sports betting, although the lengths you need to go to for that are rather extreme. Without understanding why the bookie moves his lines though and without being able to track the lines, you will not be able to ever take your bets into EV+ territory. The bookie may move his lines for several reasons.
Side notes are the most frequent reasons for line movements, but they do not hide any extra value, and that makes it all the more difficult for the bettor to make heads and tails of lines movements that do. Meaningful line movements are those brought about by square money pressure. Such movements happen when squares flock onto one side of a deal for whatever reason, getting their monies into the middle en-masse. This upsets the balance set by the bookmaker, who then scrambles to restore it by making the other side of the bet more attractive. How does he achieve that? By adding value that he would otherwise not add, called the hidden value.
The hidden value is just about the only way to make sure the long-term expected value is on your side. Once the EV+ is secured, you need to focus on bankroll management to make sure you give the EV a chance to work for you.
