Apparently we’re pleased to stake our money on everything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that an average UK adult or even the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling every year. But they’re nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) whom 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 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 manage their risk in real time.

Alternatively, all this effort from the bookmakers is nothing in comparison to the time expended by punters themselves. Look at the time you spend turning a bet over in your mind prior to deciding to place it and after that multiply that by the range of bets placed each day. Hundreds 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 discover only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The very first will be the likelihood of the predicted result and the second will be the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves the expected return of the bet. Nonetheless, for all the effort expended attempting to predict the correct result, it seems that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the top possible odds.

This really is hardly logical. It is not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence and trusted quality casino even 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 could be better spent comparing the odds offered by the many bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the very best return on this type of bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many online sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. You will find even plenty of services around that can do it for you for free.

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

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