Sports Betting Guide – Rules and Conditions Every Punter Should Know
Betting in moderation should be fun, but we all want to win. Winning enhances that experience, and that’s why all punters are looking for a betting guide with tips and strategies to help them succeed.
Instead of looking for that sports betting guide, players could just look for tips around the internet. That’s a lazy way of doing things, and while some tipsters can have a reasonable record, results can often be very mixed.
Betting Markets & Strategies
- Betting Odds Explained
- Arbitrage Betting Explained
- How Hedging Bets Work
- Kelly Criterion Betting Strategy
- Moneyline Betting in Sports
- Parlay Betting Explained
- All about Point Spread Betting
- Meaning of Over Under Betting
- Understanding Outright Bets
- What Prop Bets are About
- Explaining a Bet Accumulator
- Making Betting Permutations
- Role of Basic Probability
The betting community reports better results from applying their own strategies to the sport in question. As a form of betting guide for beginners, those strategies should start with lots of research into the teams or individuals involved in the event.
If we take football as an example, we want to look at the form of the two teams involved: How have they been performing in their recent matches is the trend to look for and the advice that should kick off any guide to sports betting.
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Head to head outcomes are also important, and we want to know details of results between those two sides over the last few seasons. This is a betting guide in its most elementary form, and if you don’t do that type of research, then you set yourself up to fail.
Once you’ve mastered that, it’s time to go out into the world and consider some tips and strategies from those who have tried them out. In this online betting guide, we will go through some of the more popular strategies on the net. We would stress that as far as we are concerned, none are foolproof and we are not guaranteeing a profit, but they have been used effectively at times by many punters.
Guaranteed Profits with Matched Betting
At some point, many betting guides will touch on the subject of matched betting. This is a practice where customers use free bet offers, starting with welcome deals, in the hope of nailing a certain profit.
The art of matched betting involves making the qualifying bet and then betting with the free bet token. In each case, the bet is then laid off at a betting exchange and, if the system is followed accurately, then a profit should drop in. There are lots of in-depth sports betting guides to matched betting which will go into this in further detail. If followed correctly, profits can land, but mistakes can be costly, and the fluctuation in odds also means that we wouldn’t say that returns are guaranteed.
The Back to Lay Strategy
The back to lay method works in a similar way to matched betting, but here, there are no free bets involved. Punters are using their own money at all times, and this system will usually appear at the start of any betting guide for beginners.
A betting exchange must be used here and back to lay involves an initial bet in the ante post markets. Once the event takes place, the bettor switches to live betting to see if they can stake in such a way that a profit is guaranteed. Betting guides to back to lay go into greater depth but experts in the field can use this system in a manner that will lock in a profit every time.
The Martingale System (or, Doubling Up)
There is another basic theory that can appear in an online betting guide, and it involves doubling stakes until you eventually find a winner. Anyone who has placed a bet at the casino might be familiar with a method called ‘Hawks’ which relies on mathematical probability, and the sports version is fairly similar.
It involves taking a top football team such as Barcelona or Manchester City: the bettor simply stakes on the best side to win, and if the bet lands, they collect a profit in the usual way. Alternatively, if the team loses, they just double their stake, making any small adjustments for fluctuations in odds, and then go again the following week.
The theory here is that eventually, the bet will land, and a profit will be made.
Treble Delight with a Trixie Bet
The next strategy in our betting guide is also mainly applied to football, but it can be used in any team sport where there is a perceived home advantage. Punters will need to look at a schedule from a weekend’s matches and identify three away teams that are priced at odds on to win.
Having selected those three teams, they then need to be combined into a Trixie bet: As any bet guide will tell you, a Trixie is a three selection combination that actually comprises of four bets – three doubles and a treble. There are no singles here so if just one team wins then you lose, but two or more will generate a return. Two winners will just about see your stake returned, but if all three come in, then it should land a nice profit.
This strategy is based on a theory that odds-on away teams will win more often than not. In that sense, it is far from foolproof, but many bettors like to employ this method.
Risk-Free Bets with Arbing (Arbitrage Betting)
An arbitrage bet can apply to any sport, and as any guide to sports betting will explain, it can lead to a definite profit if used properly. It usually involves a sport such as tennis where there are only two possible outcomes, but it can also switch to football where a draw takes that number up to three.
Arbing involves using two or more bookmakers who have declared odds for the same event and the job of the bettor is to stake in such a way that they guarantee a profit whatever happens. In-depth betting guides have been set up to explain arb bets in more detail, and players can even set up alerts and follow real-time prices that show arbing possibilities as they come in.
The method can be foolproof if followed correctly, but like all options in this sports betting guide, there are risks. Prices can change very quickly, and if a bookmaker realises, they have set up an arb, they are likely to amend their odds immediately.
Fade the Public
One strategy that attracts less coverage is known as fading the public. It’s described in many an online betting category, and it means not following the herd who may allow their heart to rule their heads. For casual punters, betting can sometimes be a popularity contest: Let’s say that Tiger Woods has declared himself fit to play in an upcoming golf tournament. The public might then get behind Woods, backing him more on reputation rather than current form.
Fading the public in this instance would mean heading to the exchanges and laying Tiger Woods or simply betting on someone else. Of course, Woods could win that tournament, so this is far from foolproof, but the strategy is based on statistics and trends, and it does have a good following.
Value Betting
A lot of professional gamblers will tell anyone who is prepared to listen that they make their money by looking for value. This concept can be hard to quantify, but the theory here is that odds involved can be better than the probability of an event coming in.
For example, some sports have a coin toss and many bookmakers issue markets for this. It should be a straight 50/50 call between heads and tails and the odds provided by the bookmakers are likely to reflect this. However, if there were to be an occasion when the odds provided reflect a higher than 50% chance, this is a value price and something that the pro gambler may jump on.
Bookies aren’t going to make that elementary mistake on a coin toss, but there are real-life situations where the value will drop in. Study this element carefully if you are going to look beyond gambling as a hobby and look towards something a little more serious.
Conclusion
As we’ve stated throughout this betting guide, no system is foolproof, but the above strategies have all been used by punters at times to return levels of success. It’s claimed that matched betting, back to lay and arbing can guarantee a profit, and while that may be the case, this guarantee comes in at expert level, and no betting guide for beginners would be so certain.
However, all of these methods can be trialled with small stakes. Not all options will work for everyone but use them at a low level to see which ones work for you, and they can then be harnessed to help turn the odds in your favour.