Sports Betting Tips

Decide Before You Leave

Deciding on what to bet upon after arriving at the sports book may complicate the process and make things difficult. The book is probably not the place to try to accomplish all your handicapping. There may not be enough time, or peace and quiet, or resources for that. In addition, without some basic idea of which contests are interesting for betting action, it will be difficult to decide if this is the right book for you, and if the propositions are reasonable. Limiting the universe of betting possibilities from the almost infinite down to the manageable is indeed a job that can be accomplished on the day or evening before the trip to the sports book.

Shop Around

Once the decoding of betting propositions has become second nature, it will be possible to know which sports books have more favorable lines than others. This is not idle browsing. After a while it may become intuitively plain that certain sports books more reliably provide value for the sorts of propositions you want to wager, and others do not. The choice may depend on what the contest is all about.

Some books have good lines, for example, on international soccer games. Other books may not have them, or present unrealistic odds. The really experienced wagers will go to certain books for certain sports, and to others for other sports. Rarely is it possible to find such a difference in lines that one can arbitrage, basically betting one way in one book, the other way in the other book, so both outcomes are covered, and then standing to win a little or at least break even, no matter what happens. Differences amongst sports books are usually not so great as to overcome the cost to make the bet. But if you want to bet on the Yankees at home against the Cubs, and one book is at -300 and another is at -270 (whilst you are at -400 in your judgment), the better edge is the book at -270. The difference in edge is ten percentage points - 16.67% versus 6.67% (a profit of $50 versus $20 on a $300 bet).

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