What to look for when sports betting

How to do you homework for Sports Betting · Read the Big News · Focus On The Regular Stats · Incorporate Analytical Stats · Digest Some Betting Stats · Get Opinions. Analyzing a bet involves what to look for when sports betting deep dive into relevant data and statistics, including team or player performance, historical outcomes, and. Learn the fastest and most effective sports betting strategies for betting on the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL. Tips and tricks for winning more betting on sports. How it works: Look for teams with a strong home record and compare it to their performance on the road. Betting on teams with a notable home ice.

Decoding the World of Sports Betting: Key Factors to Consider

Sports betting is not merely a game of chance; it is a realm where strategy, knowledge, and insight converge to determine the outcomes. As enthusiasts delve into this captivating world, there are crucial elements to observe that can tilt the odds in their favor.

The Teams and Players

One of the fundamental pillars of successful sports betting is a deep understanding of the teams and players involved. Researching their performance history, current form, injuries, and head-to-head statistics can provide invaluable insights when placing your bets.

Home and Away Advantage

Home advantage can be a significant factor influencing the outcome of a sports event. Teams often perform better when playing in familiar surroundings due to crowd support and comfort. On the other hand, some teams thrive under pressure when playing away. Tracking these trends and considering the venue can help you make informed decisions.

Historical Trends

Examining historical trends and patterns can offer a glimpse into the future. Look for recurring outcomes, such as winning streaks, rivalries, or underdog upsets, that can guide your betting choices with a hint of foresight.

Understanding Odds and Probabilities

Odds are not just numbers but reflections of probabilities. Understanding how odds work and calculating implied probabilities can assist you in assessing the potential risks and rewards associated with a bet.

Bankroll Management

Effective bankroll management is essential to sustain longevity in sports betting. By setting a budget, establishing betting limits, and avoiding emotional decisions, you can safeguard your funds and enjoy a more controlled betting experience.

In conclusion, sports betting is an intricate realm that blends intuition with analysis. By focusing on the teams, historical data, venue specifics, odds interpretation, and prudent bankroll management, you can elevate your betting game to new heights of success.

What Are the Best Sports Betting Strategies?

How to Bet on Sports: The First 12 Things Beginners Need to Know

To beginners, sports betting can feel at best overwhelming and at worst rigged against you. Not a great place to start a new hobby. I pick on DraftKings to illustrate something scary. They have probably my favorite user experience and navigation of any sportsbook , and if this is what I'd consider the best, how confusing is it everywhere else for someone brand new to betting?

Below, I'll take you through the 12 most important things to know if you're just starting your betting journey — from deciphering all the numbers on the screen to placing your first bet and beyond. When oddsmakers release a betting line on a game or any other bet, the first thing they do is decide which team should be the favorite and which should be the underdog.

The favorite is the team that is more likely to win the game and will get a minus sign next to its odds. The underdog is expected to lose and gets a plus sign. There are two main ways to bet on a favorite or an underdog. The first is the point spread , which is a bet on the margin of victory. The Eagles are a That means anyone betting on Philadelphia needs the Eagles to win by 5 or more points.

Anyone betting on Detroit needs the Lions to lose by points or win the game. Point spreads are adjusted for team ability and many other factors. That's why the Colts are an 8-point favorite on the road against the lowly Texans, while the Eagles are a smaller favorite on the road against the Lions.

Spreads are available in every sport but most common in higher-scoring sports like basketball and football. You can place point spread bets like the example above with FanDuel. To learn more about the sportsbook, read our FanDuel promo code review. The second way to bet on a favorite or an underdog is on the moneyline.

A moneyline bet requires you to just pick the winner of the game, and uses American odds to calculate the payout. Back to Colts-Texans. What to look for when sports betting Oddsmakers believe Indianapolis is the much stronger team. So to bet the Colts just to win the game, you need to risk a substantial amount. You can place moneyline bets and more with any of Action's best sportsbooks , including bet and Caesars.

For more information about bet, read Action's bet bonus code review. To read more about Caesars, check out our Caesars Sportsbook promo code recap. This is called the juice , and it's how sportsbooks maintain their edge over bettors. Moneylines are available for all sports, but they are predominantly used when betting on lower-scoring sports like baseball, hockey and soccer.

In addition to setting a line for the favorite and the underdog, oddsmakers will also set a total number of points scored in a game by both teams combined. Bettors can then wager on whether or not the game will go over or under the total. You're not trying to guess the exact score though that bet is available, too.

Be sure to check out our NFL weather page for the latest updates on the forecast of the game s you're following. But for something like an MLB spread, where the line is almost always Each team will be lined up with its corresponding lines. So in that video, USC was a point underdog against Alabama.

To bet USC, just click the cell across from its name. More than half the U. Others have only in-person betting at casinos, racetracks and other venues. Legalized online North Carolina sports betting is next on the horizon. Sports betting will go live on March Stay up to date and keep track of all of the states with legal sports betting to see what the status of legal mobile sports betting is in your location.

In the end, you have the final say on how much to risk on a game, but a good rule is risk only what you can afford to lose. Sports betting is a marathon, not a sprint. There will be good days and bad days. As a result, we recommend a flat-betting approach. By employing a flat-betting approach, bettors guard themselves against losing their entire bankroll during a bad stretch, but also set themselves up for a positive return on investment ROI when they're doing well.

A parlay is a wager type in which two or more bets are linked together to create one bet with a greater payout, but all the bets must win. Even more popular than traditional parlays featuring multiple games is the same game parlay , pioneered by FanDuel and now offered by almost every sportsbook. This feature allows you to parlay multiple bets from the same game, with the correlation of each event priced in.

As an expert on your team you will be in-the-know in terms of any important news and if you are able to spot something before bookmakers can change lines you can gain value. This is especially true in smaller non-marquee leagues. Think of the point spread like a secondary competition for teams when it comes to gambling.

Good bankroll management is all about protecting yourself from the inevitable cold streaks that come with any kind of gambling from time to time. These might sound like small numbers but if you want to grow your roll over time and avoid going broke, this is the way to do it.

Bill Krackomberger is a strong advocate for good bankroll management. Subscribe to listen to his weekly sports betting tips. The catch is that you have to shop around to find the best deals. The same holds true for sports bets. If you are diligent about shopping lines you can find better value on your bets. Also, by virtue of the fact that you will need to create different accounts at different books you will have the opportunity to take advantage of the different promotional offers upon sign-up and first deposit.

Besides that, discover the best sports betting mobile apps and top-rated sports betting sites to get started. Team and player performance in sports can be really streaky. You can take advantage of hot and cold streaks in your betting and if you can identify them faster than the oddsmakers, it presents a big opportunity. If a team beats a series of lower quality teams while playing at home it may not be the right time to jump on the bandwagon when their next game is on the road against a top opponent, for example.

Keep track of the schedule and factors that can help keep a streak alive. There are opportunities in sports betting where a punter can make a bet that is opposite to his original bet. At a Las Vegas sportsbook, a St. At the time the Cardinals were five games out of a playoff spot with 15 games to play.

A big hill to climb to even just make the playoffs. The gambler was now looking at a potentially massive payday. But what if the Cardinals lost the World Series. He would get exactly zero. What the edge needed to bet on sports This is the perfect opportunity to hedge. By betting opposite to the original wager, he can lock in a profit. With parlays one loss is all it takes to lose the entire parlay.

This process, also known as middling, is when a punter makes an early point spread bet only to see the line move later. By exploiting the line change you can place an opposite bet to your first wager and sometimes win them both. Keep reading for an example to make it really clear. Read our full guide to betting the middle for more information. This is because those leagues use a playoff format when it comes to home and away games.

The higher seeded team plays at home for the first two games, as well as the 5th and 7th, if necessary. The zig zag theory works on two main concepts. First, home teams have a real advantage. Second, when a team is coming off a loss they generally play harder and have a statistically better chance of winning. The zig zag theory works best when a team is at home AND coming off a loss.

There are several betting systems out there that proclaim to have a secret recipe for foolproof winning. Of course, if they really worked then everyone would be rich and casinos and sportsbooks would be bankrupt. Compared to the Martingale system which only requires your last bet to win, this system needs your overall winning percentage to out-number your losses.

If you lose a bet, add the number of units you bet to the end of the sequence. When you win, cross out the first and last numbers in the sequence. Continue until all numbers in the sequence have been crossed out. The truth is, none of these systems can guarantee a win, even if they promise to do just that. If sportsbooks are offering deals that seem too good to be true, it's worth double checking if you're legitimate.

In general, we advise to sticking to proven and safe betting sites. One of the most important things both savvy punters and oddsmakers utilize is data and trend analysis software. These days there are several online options that offer these services for free or for a low fee. It takes a bit of work to learn to use them at first but once you learn how to use these tools they can be an absolute game-changer for your results.

Not only can you figure out how the most common trends are calculated and used, but you can also explore your own trend ideas and potentially find edges that have eluded the sportsbooks and other bettors. What to look for when sports betting You never know what you might find. Perhaps NHL road underdogs, after long homestands, who start their back up goalie in the first game of a back-to-back are much more likely to cover the puckline.

It may seem random, but with data analysis tools you can find real trends that can help guide your bets. For example, over the past 13 seasons the underdog has covered the spread It measures how teams perform against the point spread, not just against their opponents. Check out our best NFL picks against the spread to get an advantage over the sportsbooks.

That is an incredible stat to ponder. It makes it seem that no matter what strategy you employ, your point spread bet is a coin toss. That extra three percent represents a massive difference for your bottom line so look for those opportunities at NFL betting sites and apps.

One advanced strategy punters use at the start of a new NFL season is the Pythagorean wins strategy, which is a name you might remember from math class in school. It takes into account the amount of points scored by a team and compares it to the number of points scored against them. Amazingly, from to the Super Bowl was won 11 out of 16 times by the team that had the highest Pythagorean wins stat, not just the most outright victories.

Instead of doing the math yourself, you can find the stats for all teams posted at the beginning of the season. You can also find free calculators online that will do the math for you. This is just one example of a more advanced strategy used to wager on the NFL. In basketball, one advanced strategy we really like is going against the grain and betting against the public.

This works especially well with point totals and teams that put up big numbers at home. The common bettor will remember how a team performs at home, how quick their pace of play is, how many points they give up to the opposition, and then simply bet the same way the next time that team plays at home.

This means you can often get a great price betting the underdog or the under on totals in these spots. This works especially well when both teams have had busy workloads or are on the tail end of a back-to-back. Check if your state has legal NBA betting on our guide. If it does, head on over to one of the many NBA betting sites and you're good to go.

Statistics have shown that when a total is higher 8. This is also a viable option when the underdog has lost their previous game and the public is swayed by a small sample size and the odds have increased. For more on baseball betting strategy, check out our full guide on how to bet on the MLB.

Check if your state has legal MLB betting. There are lots of reasons hockey is a great sport for more advanced betting strategies. There are also lots of edges for gamblers willing to put in the work. One common example is that the betting public for hockey tends to put too much weight on home ice advantage.

This creates excellent value for those willing to bet on the road underdog. For more hockey betting tips and strategies, read our full guide on how to bet on the NHL. The Kelly Criterion is a formula used to calculate how much to bet when the odds are in your favor. Obviously, in sports betting, it is going to be difficult to know the precise probability of success or failure of an event.

However, with research and solid deduction we can make some reasonable guesses and then apply the Kelly Criterion to see how much of our bankroll to bet. Say, for example, that you think the chances of Rafael Nadal beating Roger Federer on Clay are , and the decimal odds available at your sportsbook are 1. Some are great quality while others might steer you far wide of your target.

The information you gather along the way is really what matters most. As we stated above, it is best to be a master of one field than an average Joe across the board. Find your niche and then develop or employ strategies that work best for that sport and for the teams or players you know best. Risk-free betting offers are also a crucial decision-making point when it comes to deciding which sportsbook you want to open an account with.

Risk-free betting offers can double the number of bets you can make with your first bet. It pays to learn about risk-free betting offer so check out our guide on risk-free betting offers. For more information on the current sports betting laws in every state, check out our comprehensive guide to US legal sports betting.