Archive for the ‘sports betting’ Category

Sports Betting Information – Vegas Lines Explained

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Sports betting lines play a huge role in the world of sports betting, as they provide the very foundation for placing sports bids. Each sport that allows wagering can have multiple sports betting lines, and successful betting requires placing wagers against the one that seems most advantageous. Vegas lines are the backbone of the sports wagering industry in the US, having a strong influence on the way sports odds are decided and thus helping determine the value of all sports betting options available.

The first thing the sports betting line indicates is the status of the team/ athlete you wager on – In football for instance, having a look at Vegas lines is a great way to pinpoint the favorite and quantify the advantage it holds over the opposition in any game. Vegas lines also indicate the odds each team has of winning, telling bettors how much they need to wager in order to earn a particular payoff.

Whether set by Vegas oddsmakers or other external sources, sports betting lines can vary greatly with both categories of online and offline sportsbooks. This is due to each sportsbook running its own policy for balancing wagers, which involves tuning the odds based on Vegas lines movements and according to the sportsbook’s own financial interests.

Moreover, each sport comes with its own distinctive selection of lines, as each sport builds on a different set of rules, has its own objectives, and a specific scoring system. Therefore, while most football betting action revolves around point-spread wagers, baseball for instance offers profitable opportunities with other types of bets, created using very even lines that generally differ by only a small fraction.

The following is a concrete example of a Vegas line set for a baseball game: Brewers (+145) vs Cardinals (-160). This indicates that if you wager $160 on the Cardinals to win, and they seize the away victory, you earn a payout of $100. If you choose to bet the Brewers and they do manage to snatch victory over the favorite on their own ground, your initial bet of $100 will earn you a payout of $145. Many expert sports bettors posit that sticking with Vegas lines that go beyond the dime might turn out to be disadvantageous on long term, so be careful how you build your sports betting strategy around sports betting lines.

As you can see, understanding and using the movement of Vegas lines is crucial for identifying valuable bets. Therefore, if you want to be a successful bettor you need to make a habit of shopping the sports betting lines on popular online sports betting venues, while also paying attention to the sports odds and having a look at sports scores, game statistics and professional handicapping tips. Since the way you select your Vegas lines fully reflects in how capable you are at identifying and seizing fruitful wagers, make sure you address this aspect with utmost importance and research for the best wager deals in a rigorous manner.

How to Identify Winning NFL and College Football Picks

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

Whether you favor NFL picks or college football picks, football betting can be both very entertaining and lucrative, as long as you do your homework and know how to select the best possible options. With most football clashes being scheduled for weekends, there is plenty of time in between the matches to gather the handicapping information needed to nail down the winning picks, so make sure you do so.

Although for the regular player betting on the outcome of the Super Bowl game is the most tempting wager decision of the season, most experts strongly advise against this due to the crowds of occasional bettors that also decide to try their chances at it, thus seriously messing up the odds. Despite the abundance of NFL picks proposed by the sportsbooks each year on the outcome of the Super Bowl title contest, in many cases it may be better to avoid betting on these types of matches, or at least to keep your wagers small, in case the odds or sports lines happen to turn against you. By contrast, with so many other football games to choose from during the season, don’t hold back from getting as many well-informed weekly NFL picks as you can.

To come up with more winning NFL picks, you need to monitor all the information that you think might be relevant in helping you make the best betting decisions. Depending on the case, this information can range anywhere from fundamental things like player and team forms or home and away records to variables like weather, pitch conditions or refereeing. Additionally, try to make game trending work in your favor and bet on the teams that seem most determined to perform well and win. Good examples might be a strong team eager to rebound from a recent loss with a decisive win, a team with a cohesive game play, or a team with a tight, solid defense.

As a guideline, expect powerful teams to recover from a loss more quickly than others and be more driven to emerge victorious in the following game, and struggling teams that somehow manage to snatch an occasional win to return to their losing spree sooner rather than later. Other recommendable actions are wagering against teams that have freshly appointed coaches or those that are victims of one too many off-the-pitch conflicts and media scandals.

Although both approaches are similar to a point, the way you would normally come up with your weekly NFL picks should differ slightly from how you decide your college football wagers. The first and most sensible difference lies in the larger number of wager options that you usually get with college football tournaments, compared to professional football competitions. If you want to seize more of these additional betting options, it means you also have to work harder to gather useful handicapping and team trending information. Additionally, the crude age of the players involved in college football tournaments often translates into poorer on and off-the-pitch discipline, less composure, and weaker motivation.

Such additional factors sometimes render college football picks more difficult to predict, but some professional sports bettors don’t see this as an impediment and actually specialize in betting on the outcome of college football games. However, if you favor a safer approach, it might be better for you to stick with professional football betting and decide your NFL picks after proper handicapping and rigorous study of NFL scores, sports lines and odds.