Apparently we’re pleased to stake our cash on everything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that the normal 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) who shall 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 per 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 deal with their risk in real time.

However, 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 within your mind before you place it and then multiply that through the range of bets placed each day. Tens of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of professional sports daily.

But could this effort be better utilised?

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

This is hardly logical. It really is not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence and also guessing at the probability of a particular result is very hard. At least several of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event will be better spent comparing the odds provided by the different bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the most effective return on this specific bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many fantastic online football sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. You will find even an abundance of services around that can do it for you for free.

Professional gamblers often have accounts with multiple bookmakers, pay close focus on the odds offered by each, and seek out the top odds before they place a bet. But the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds provided by his usual bookmaker. This really is a sizable oversight and a costly missed opportunity.

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