Apparently we’re happy to stake our money on everything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that the common UK adult or even the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling on a yearly basis. But they’re nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) which will lose more than $1,400 for every adult this year.

All these losses add up and popular sports betting markets like English Premier League soccer, NFL football, NBA basketball, NHL hockey, and MLB baseball turn over billions of dollars each year. And, as in other billion dollar industries, the competition for your custom is fierce. Online bookmaking operations today are slick, sophisticated, and making a killing. They employ expert staff to set appropriate starting prices and use complex statistical models to manage their risk in real time.

On the other hand, all this effort from the bookmakers is nothing with regards to the time expended by punters themselves. Think about the time you spend turning a bet over in your mind prior to deciding to place it and after that multiply that through the range of bets placed each day. Tens of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of sporting events daily.

But could this effort be better utilised?

You will find only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The first will be the probability of the predicted result as well as the second will be the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves the expected return of the bet. Yet, for all of the effort expended attempting to predict the correct result, it appears that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the most effective possible odds.

This really is hardly logical. It’s not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence and also guessing at the likelihood of a particular result is incredibly hard. At least some of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event would be better spent comparing the odds provided by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the best return on this specific bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many trusted online casino sportsbooks, compare odds, and locate a better offer. There are actually even a lot of services around which will do it for you for free.

Professional gamblers often have accounts with multiple bookmakers, pay close attention to the odds provided by each, and seek out the most effective odds before they place a bet. Although the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds provided by his usual bookmaker. This is a sizable oversight and also a costly missed opportunity.

Bookmakers often post noticeably different odds for the same event and it is common to seek out mismatches of up to 10% from one bookmaker to another. This percentage is there for the taking and it mystifies me that more people are not shopping around for better odds.