Since time immortal, one of the favorite pastimes of sport freaks has been gambling. Gambling is exciting, taking into consideration the risk involved, the luck factor and also the chance to make a lot of cash in a couple of hours. Online gambling has become popular with millions of men and women throughout the world, with more visiting betting sites and online casinos popping up on the internet than previously. One great good thing about having this facility online is of course, that it is accessible from any place which has an active internet access. This has made gambling a sport in itself, available to millions of new people.

There has been a boom within the online betting industry as well as the kind of profits many sites are enjoying now is unimaginable. Online casinos are not to be left behind, as there is a rapid explosion of these as well. Actually, online poker gives gambling, a glamour quotient by roping in celebrities for high profile tournaments. What this means is reaching out to a whole new market in itself.

But as always, the most successful story will be the rise of sports gambling betting. Fans that have enjoyed betting on games like soccer, football, polo, baseball, hockey and horse racing, can now do so online with the help of these sites. A whole new number of professional sports are cropping up to encourage the already soaring popularity of online betting. It may be correct to claim that audiences are now enjoying the betting experience without being at the field themselves. Welcome to the world of virtual reality.

You will discover innumerable so-called gambling experts ready to dish out information of their systems to ‘beat the bookie’ or to make a second income from gambling, for a cost of course. I won’t do that. I will simply give you information regarding bookmakers, odds and gambling that you should use (or forget) as you see fit.

The very first thing to mention is the fact that the majority of people who engage in gambling will be net losers over time. This is the very reason there are numerous bookmakers making so much cash through the world.

While bookmakers can sometimes take big hits, for instance if a favourite wins the Grand National, they spread their risk so widely and they setup markets that incorporate a margin, so they’re going to always make money over the medium to long-term, if not the short-run. That’s, as long because they got their sums right.

When setting their odds for a particular event, bookmakers must first evaluate the probability of that event occurring. To do this they us various statistical models according to data collated over years, sometime decades, about the sport and team/competitor in question. Bear in mind, if sport was 100% predictable, it could soon lose its appeal, and as the bookies tend to be spot on with their assessments of the probability of an event, they may be sometimes way off the mark, mainly because a match or contest goes against conventional wisdom and statistical likelihood.

Just look-at any sport and also you shall find an occasion when the underdog triumphs against all of the odds, literally. Wimbledon beating the then mighty Liverpool in the FA Cup Final of 1988, by way of example, or perhaps the United States beating the then mighty USSR at ice hockey within the 1980 Olympics are two illustrations of when you would have got handsome odds on the underdog. And could have won a good wedge.

The big bookmakers spend a whole lot of time and money ensuring they have the right odds that ensure they consider the perceived probability of the event, and then add that extra tiny bit that gives them the profit margin. So if an event has a probability of, say, 1/3, the odds that reflect that probability would be 2/1. Which is, two to one against that event occurring.

On the flip side, a bookie who set these odds would, over-time, break even (assuming their stats are correct). So instead they would set the odds at, say, 6/4. In this way they have built-in the margin that ensures, over-time, they’re going to make the most of people betting on this selection. It really is the exact same concept as a casino roulette.

So, just how can you spot the occasions when bookmakers have got it wrong? Well, it’s easier said than done, but far from impossible.

A proven way is to get excellent at mathematical modelling and setup a model that takes into account as many of the variables that affect the outcome of an event as it can be. The problem with this tactic is that however complex the model, and however all encompassing it seems, it can never account for the minutiae of variables relating to individual human states of mind. Whether a golfer manages to hole a major-winning five foot putt on the 18th at St Andrews it is as much down to their concentration as to the weather or day of the week. In addition, the maths can start getting pretty darn complicated.

Alternatively you can find yourself a sporting niche. Bookmakers will concentrate their resources on the events that make them the most money, generally found to be football (soccer), American football and horse racing. So trying to beat the bookies while betting on a Manchester United v Chelsea match will be tough. Unless you work with among the clubs, or are married to among the players or managers, it’s very likely the bookmaker setting the odds may have further information than you.