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 average UK adult or perhaps the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling each year. But they are nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) who will lose more than $1,400 for every adult this coming 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 on a yearly basis. 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 in comparison to the time expended by punters themselves. Consider the time you spend turning a bet over within your mind before you place it and after that multiply that by the range of bets placed each day. Tens of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of sports every day.

But could this effort be better utilised?

You’ll find only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The first will be the likelihood of the predicted result and also the second will be the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves the expected return of the bet. Nevertheless, for all of the effort expended attempting to predict the proper result, it seems that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the top possible odds.

This really 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 likelihood of a particular result is very 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 top return on this particular bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many quality online football gambling site sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. There are even a lot of services out there 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 top odds before they place a bet. However the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds offered by his usual bookmaker. This is a sizable oversight and a costly missed opportunity.

Bookmakers often post noticeably different odds for the same event and it is common to search out mismatches of up to 10% from one bookmaker to another. This percentage is there for the taking and it mystifies me that lots of individuals aren’t shopping around for better odds.