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 common UK adult or the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling every year. But they are nowhere near the Australians (the most prolific bettors) which 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 per 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 when compared with the time expended by punters themselves. Look at 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 sporting events daily.

But could this effort be better utilised?

You will find only two things which determine the expected payout of a bet. The very 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. Still, for all the effort expended attempting to predict the correct result, it appears 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 even guessing at the likelihood of a particular result will be extremely hard. At least some of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event would be better spent comparing the odds offered by the many bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the 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. You will find even a lot of services around that may 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 most effective odds before they place a bet. However the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds provided by his usual bookmaker. This is a large oversight and trusted quality casino also 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.