Apparently we’re pleased to stake our cash on everything from bullock racing to a bullfight. The consulting firm H2 Gambling Capital released statistics recently which reveal that a typical UK adult or the US adult will lose around US$400 gambling yearly. 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 annually. 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 in your mind before you decide to place it and after that multiply that by the number of bets placed each day. Tens of thousands of man-hours are spent trying to predict the outcome of sports booking 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 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 right result, it seems that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the very best possible odds.

This really is hardly logical. It really is not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence as well as guessing at the probability of a particular result is very hard. At least several of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event will be better spent comparing the odds offered by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the best return on this specific bet. It’s quick and easy to shop around the many online sportsbooks, compare odds, and locate a better offer. You can find even a lot of services available that may do it for you for free.

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

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