Smart sports betting, and football betting especially, is in line with the skills of the teams involved in contrast to random chance. This difference profoundly affects the appropriate betting strategies or systems. Understanding this difference is what makes a highly effective sports bettor.

Many of the betting systems and strategies available today are based upon general probabilities of a win or loss and are modified versions of systems developed for games of chance. In contrast, sports betting – as well as poker – is just not determined by random chance and Recommended Resource site probabilities, but on the skill of the contestants. Therefore the underlying premise of sport betting is significantly different than betting on games of chance.

Although most gambling strategies designed for games of chance are mathematically unsound, in practice if one has roughly a 50% chance of winning, these systems can at least appear to offer an effective means of betting. Within the long haul, the failure of such systems is more or less inevitable because it is based upon the Gambler’s Fallacy. Gambler’s Fallacy will be the mistaken impression that particular results are “due” based on previous outcomes in a series of independent trials of a random process. As an example, the if one is tossing coins, and heads come up repeatedly, the gambler may conclude that it indicates tails is “due” to come up next; whereas, in reality, the chances that the next coin toss will bring about tails is exactly the exact same no matter the number of times heads has come up already.

In skill-based wagering, the bettor with the most knowledge of the contestants involved has a definite advantage over the bettor that is hoping that the desired outcome “is due” according to probabilities. There isn’t any sound mathematical probability that any specific football team “is due” anything. Just think of Arsenal that won 14 consecutive games in 2002, or Derby County F.C. that lost 37 consecutive games in 2007-08. The critical element of these runs was the skill of the teams, not random chance.

That is not to say that random chance isn’t involved, of course it’s. Any team may make mistakes or have accidents, leading to upsets and surprise outcomes. Nevertheless the smart sports bettor knows that the skill level of the team in question will be much more prone to influence the outcome than chance and luck. This really is what makes a successful sports bettor over the long term. Anyone can get lucky on occasion, but if one learns to make intelligent bets depending on the skills of the teams involved, one is significantly more more likely to win significant quantities of money over the long term.