Apparently we’re pleased to stake our cash on anything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that a normal UK adult or perhaps the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling on a yearly basis. 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 every year. And, as in other billion dollar industries, the competition for your custom is fierce. great online gambling agent 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.

Conversely, all this effort from the bookmakers is nothing in comparison with the time expended by punters themselves. Look at the time you spend turning a bet over within your mind before you decide to 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 sports daily.

But could this effort be better utilised?

There are only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The first will be the likelihood 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. Still, for all 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 very hard. At least some of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event could be better spent comparing the odds provided by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the very best return on this particular bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many online sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. There are actually even lots 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 best odds before they place a bet. Although the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds provided by his usual bookmaker. This is a large oversight and also a costly missed opportunity.

Bookmakers often post noticeably different odds for the exact same event and it’s 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 lots of folks aren’t shopping around for better odds.