There is a very fine line that thinly and very gracefully separates the entertainment and profit-seeking valences of sports betting. Each edition of a competition is an entirely different, often separate market of opportunity that can yield the chance to establish a new rapport with staking, winning, and mastering this activity.
Many believe that investing in all kinds of things, from stocks to cryptocurrencies, is a form of gambling that considers too many outside circumstances, resulting in high volatility. In this sense, investing is a gamble made of educated guesses and diversified tactics that are all about maintaining a relevant cash flow.
In this sense, sports betting feel very much the same. Sports events see outcomes based on trackable abilities, tangible or not, which are on full display and that can pan out strongly enough in order to turn into online winnings. However, unpredictable circumstances and unexpected blips bring a level of risk that makes such betting a true marker of gambling.
You may look into this reality and find romanticism in it, especially given how easy it is to see it as the magic of sports. If you’re the type who values winning bets even beyond the simplicity of enjoying sports, there are certain strategies that can give you the legs to run in an efficient direction.
Each of these tactical plans has its own upsides and situational difficulties, and none of them is a surefire method of fast wealth. In this sense, we will showcase them for the sake of proper knowledge.
Establishing definitions and key characteristics
We need to talk about each strategy as a separate point of emphasis. Given that each of them has a certain principle stepped in the investment spectrum, they are somewhat related from some points of view. Moreover, they represent certain approach that have individual upsides, but also have native levels of minimum investments.
As we’ve mentioned in the introduction, each strategy has its own downside. While all of them are specific methods of minimising (and even eliminating) risk, they do not have the same winning margin that traditional gambling has (which is more in tune with boom-and-bust economic principles).
In the end, know that these tactics require a certain level of patience. Our explanations are tentative introductions meant to familiarise you with their principles, but you still need to learn more about them through research and theoretical applications.
Portfolio betting — spreading your bets for eventual upside
This is the simplest type of strategy as a matter of principle. Rather than looking to have a fine balance between different bets on the same event, you are spreading your wagers thinly across the market.
As you may know from the world of financial investments, having a spread-out portfolio means that you are dipping your hand in several cookie jars without the risk of losing tremendous amounts of money. If one of your bets (outcomes) hits, it covers for all the bets that you’ve made and lost.
This type of strategy is quite similar to arbitrage betting because it has a fine margin for profit, but the hardest part is to identify opportunities. In this case, you would have to find all kinds of betting opportunities that, even with a small initial stake, can yield very high wins. You should have many options in your betting portfolio, and each of them requires a stake that can turn into a profit that pays for the rest of the bets.
The more bets you place, the better the chances are that one of them hits. However, each sport has its own particularities, which is why understanding the odds is vital. For example, using accurate football predictions to determine which odds do not reflect the real winning probability for a team is the chance to place a bet with high chances of hitting despite the odds not being truly reflective of the on-field probability.
Like other portfolio-style investments, you would need a system that helps you identify the best opportunities on this market. It requires tool-like assistance and plenty of research, but spreading yourself in such a way that minimises risk is an innately safer choice.
Arbitrage betting — the art of sure bettin g
In online betting, arbitrage opportunities are those that you take advantage of when there are breaches in how bookmakers create their offerings.
Arbitrage betting represents the strategy of placing bets on all outcomes of a sports event. If there is a win-loss or win-draw-loss format, you would need to place bets on each outcome, making sure that at least one bet turns into a winning one. When there is double-chance betting (at least two winning outcomes out of a higher number of them), things are easier.
The profit that comes from this strategy is in the margins of error left by bookmakers. Surveying the market for all kinds of odds means finding the most attractive ones for a certain outcome. You bet at the bookmaker that provides the best odds for a certain outcome, with multiple bets placed across different sportsbooks.
Every time an outcome dictates a successful bet, the winnings from that bet cover the losses suffered from the bets that do not hit (the sacrificial stakes), but also incur a profit. For this reason, they have the ‘sure bets’ moniker: you always end up with a winning bet.
However, most cases show that the margin for profit is somewhere between 1% and 5%, meaning that you need a healthy budget to start with if you are to create a moneyroll that can support fellow arbitrage opportunities.
Matched betting — taking advantage of offers
This is more of a specialised circumstance because it requires using a different kind of arbitrage principle — one that requires and involves exchange betting.
In this case, you would need to take advantage of online casino offers for sports betting. These are on-deposit promotions that require you to place a stake on events with a certain minimum odds. Once you place that bet, you cover an outcome, such as betting on team/athlete A to win; you are placing a back bet.
For the other part, you would need to place a lay bet on team A to lose, essentially placing a bet on the other outcome, covering both scenarios. You would have to do so with the Exchange tool, especially purchasing a bet with higher odds than those provided by the bookmaker.
The other side of the betting phase is to use the betting credits awarded by the offer. Essentially, you are placing the same types of bets as you did with team A, but you do so with house money. In this case, you’ve covered all possible outcomes with different bets.
The value with matched betting is by seeking the discrepancies between the bookmaker and the exchange market (integrated by the bookmaker). In this sense, you’re covering the margins with bets on both outcomes, exploiting another system of odds.
Conclusion: What to remember when you bet on sports
As we’ve said multiple times, there will always be inherent risk when it comes to sports betting. There are completely out-of-the-blue circumstances that can lead to lost bets when an event is cancelled for some reason. There are also cases when you don’t find exchange opportunities, or if your home market does not have exchange mechanics.
There are also cases when the money does not work since you don’t have the budget to bet high enough to cover all opportunities. Additionally, you may run out of offers to use for matched betting.
Ultimately, the last two entries in this list are also quite frowned upon by bookmakers, seeing these strategies as blatant acts against the spirit of the gambling services that they provide. Rarely do they have provable cause to ban you, but they may impose restrictions on your ability to ban multiple outcomes of the same event.
However, the most important part of this discussion should be responsible betting. Such strategies require quite a lot of time and effort, which can ensnare you in a way that is not conducive to responsible gambling. As such, make sure to bet responsibly, regardless of your chosen strategy!