Since time immortal, one of the favorite pastimes of sport freaks has been gambling. Gambling is exciting, taking into consideration the risk involved, the luck factor and the chance to make a lot of cash in a couple of hours. Online gambling is now popular with millions of folks world wide, with more visiting betting sites and online casinos popping up on the internet than ever before. One great advantage of having this facility online is bear in mind, that it is accessible from any place which has an active internet access. This has made gambling a sport in itself, available to millions of new people.

There’s been a boom within the online betting industry and the sort of profits many sites are enjoying now is unimaginable. Online casinos are not to be left behind, as there is a rapid explosion of these as well. In fact, online poker gives gambling, a glamour quotient by roping in celebrities for high profile tournaments. Therefore reaching out to a whole new market in itself.

But as always, the most successful story is the rise of sports betting. Fans that have enjoyed betting on games like soccer, football, polo, baseball, hockey and horse racing, can now do so online sports bookie with the help of these sites. A whole new variety of sports events are cropping up to encourage the already soaring popularity of online betting. It may be correct to say that audiences are now enjoying the betting experience without being at the field themselves. Welcome to the world of virtual reality.

You will discover innumerable so-called gambling experts willing to dish out information of their systems to ‘beat the bookie’ or to make a second income from gambling, for a cost of course. I won’t do that. I will simply give you details about bookmakers, odds and gambling for you to use (or forget) while you see fit.

The very first thing to mention is the fact that a large proportion of men and women who engage in gambling will be net losers over-time. This is the very reason you can find so many bookmakers making so much money throughout the world.

While bookmakers can sometimes take big hits, for instance if a favourite wins the Grand National, they spread their risk so widely and they set up markets that incorporate a margin, so they are going to always make a profit over the medium to long term, if not the short-term. That’s, as long because they got their sums right.

When setting their odds for a particular event, bookmakers must first evaluate the probability of that event occurring. To do this they us various statistical models based on data collated over years, sometime decades, about the sport and team/competitor in question. Bear in mind, if sport was 100% predictable, it would soon lose its appeal, and while the bookies are often spot on with their assessments of the probability of an event, they are sometimes way off the mark, mainly because a match or contest goes against conventional wisdom and statistical likelihood.

Just look-at any sport and also you will find an occasion when the underdog triumphs against all of the odds, literally. Wimbledon beating the then mighty Liverpool within the FA Cup Final of 1988, by way of example, or even the United States of America beating the then mighty USSR at ice hockey in the 1980 Olympics are two illustrations of whenever you would have got handsome odds on the underdog. And could have won a good wedge.

The big bookmakers spend a lot of time and money ensuring they possess the right odds that ensure they bear in mind the perceived probability of the event, and then add that extra little bit that gives them the profit margin. So if an event has a probability of, say, 1/3, the odds that reflect that probability will be 2/1. That is, two to one against that event occurring.

Alternatively, a bookie who set these odds would, over-time, break even (assuming their stats are correct). So instead they might set the odds at, say, 6/4. Inside this way they have integrated the margin that ensures, over time, they will profit from people betting on this selection. It is the exact same concept as a casino roulette.

Now how can you spot the occasions when bookmakers have got it wrong? Well, it’s easier said than done, but far from impossible.

One of the ways is to get very good at mathematical modelling and setup a model that takes under consideration as many of the variables that affect the outcome of an event as is possible. The problem with this tactic is that however complex the model, and however all inclusive it seems, it can never account for the minutiae of variables relating to individual human states of mind. Whether a golfer manages to hole a major-winning five foot putt on the 18th at St Andrews it is as much down to their concentration as to the weather or day of the week. Moreover, the maths can start getting pretty darn complicated.

Alternatively you may find yourself a sporting niche. Bookmakers will concentrate their resources on the events which make them the most money, generally found to be football (soccer), American football and horse racing. So trying to beat the bookies while betting on a Manchester United v Chelsea match will be tough. Unless you work for among the clubs, or are married to among the players or managers, it’s very likely the bookmaker setting the odds will have additional information than you.