Apparently we are 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 normal UK adult or perhaps the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling annually. But they are 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 and every 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.

On the flip side, 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 prior to deciding to place it and then multiply that through the range of bets placed each day. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of sports events every day.

But could this effort be better utilised?

You’ll find only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The very 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. But, for all of the effort expended attempting to predict the right result, it appears that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the best possible odds.

This really is hardly logical. It really is not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence as well as guessing at the probability of a particular result is exceedingly hard. At least several of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event will be better spent comparing the odds offered by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the very best return on this specific bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many casino online sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. There are even lots of services around which will 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 most effective odds before they place a bet. Though the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds provided by his usual bookmaker. This is a large oversight as well as a costly missed opportunity.

Bookmakers often post noticeably different odds for the exact 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 more folks aren’t shopping around for better odds.