Posts Tagged ‘Sports Betting’
The Melbourne Cup is one of the most important days on the Australian social calendar being an opportunity for Australians all around the country to put on their best fashions and check out the race at race tracks all around the country. It is widely known as the race that stops the nation and it is the most watched sporting event in the country. The race was started in 1861 by the Victorian Turf Club and has been going from strength to strength.
Initially it only attracted around 4000 spectators, but now hundreds of thousands come to the Flemington Racetrack, where it is held, to watch the race and millions more view it on their televisions. Flemington is located only 15 minutes from the Melbourne central business district and it is now known as much for the fashions on the field as it is for the horses.
AT first the cup was run on a Thursday, but it was changed to a Tuesday in 1875 and has been run on that day ever since. The race is always held on the first Tuesday in November. By the time that the day of the race was changed the annual crowds turning up to Flemington were exceeding 100,000 an amazing number considering that the population of Melbourne at that time was a mere 300,000.
At the close of the 19th century Australia suffered a huge economic crisis and more than a third of people were out of the workforce and unemployed. As an indication of the hard financial times there was no cup trophy presented between the years of 1894 and 1898.
When the 20th century arrived it came with renewed economic vigor and confidence which would last until World War I arrived in 1914. It was in 1906 that the Melbourne Cup was won by one of the most famous winners Poseidon, the only horse to win the cup, the Caulfield Cup, AJC and VRC Derby in the one racing season. This was a feat that set the racing world alight and attracted big crowds to the race tracks.
In 1930 Phar Lap entered the public conscious and became the most famous cup winner in its entire history. The odds that Phar Lap had coming into the Melbourne Cup in 1930 were the lowest odds that have ever been put on a horse in the cup’s history – 11/8. At a time during the Great Depression when few people had any money people put their last few coins on the horse and were rewarded as it thrashed the competition. At the time Phar Lap was the greatest race horse in the world, but it was to meet a suspicious fate in 1932 when it was found dead in California.
In 1946 the photo finish was introduced to the race and was needed in 1948 to decide the winner Ray Neville a 15 year old jockey with only nine previous rides up his sleeve.
The Melbourne Cup has grown to become one of the most important social and cultural events on the Australian calendar throughout its history and has become internationally acclaimed and attracts the best race horses from all over the globe who come to try for glory at Flemington.
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There’s not much ‘middle ground’ when it comes to the desirability of betting NFL preseason games. The overly conservative handicappers suggest that its a poor wagering opportunity, while the ‘boiler room’ sports touts try to suggest that short of a fixed game there’s no more sure thing than preseason football. There’s a degree of truth in both views. Handicapping preseason NFL football is a unique discipline unto itself, but with knowledge and caution it can be a profitable endeavor.
The opponent of preseason wagering would suggest that its a bad wagering opportunity by its very nature alone–simply stated, the games don’t count meaning that the motivation and focus of individual teams is always in question. It’s hard enough to identify teams that are in a desirable ’spot’ during the regular season, the often conflicting agendas of personnel evaluation, playbook testing, and injury prevention found in the preseason makes it impossible. All told, this uncertainty makes it very undesirable to get financially involved with preseason NFL games.
But like the old saying goes “every dark cloud has a silver lining”. And the divergent agendas at play in preseason football can be seen as precisely why it is a good wagering opportunity. For example, say the Superbowl champion Pittsburgh Steelers are set to play an ‘also ran’ team like the Houston Texans. By regular season standards, the Steelers would almost certainly be favored. In the preseason, however, they’ll often have a different agenda for the individual game. A “better” team has more concern about protecting key players. and usually has fewer personnel decisions to deal with. They don’t need to worry about implementing coaching changes, or creating ‘team chemistry’. As a result, ‘better’ teams frequently approach preseason games as a mere annoyance.
Now, lets look at the other side of the equation. A “lesser” team by regular season standards might have a number of starting spots or key backup spots up for grabs. They may have new coaches to impress, or new offensive or defensive coordinators whose schemes they’ll have to implement. Certainly, winning any games”whether or not they count in the standings”are of utmost importance to losing teams trying to turn things around. Finally, a bad team can gain a lot more psychologically from beating a playoff team than the playoff team can from beating a doormat. A struggling team that is destined to lose a lot during the regular season won’t have a lot of bright spots, so a preseason win against one of the league’s elite can mean a lot more.
Even teams that put a low priority on preseason games don’t want to lose them all. For this reason, a longterm winning situation has been to bet on teams that lose their first two preseason games outright. Over the past twenty years, 0-2 teams in this spot have produced a winning percentage right around 60%.
Perhaps nothing determines a team’s approach to the preseason more than the philosophy of the head coach. Some coaches simply hate to lose anytime they line ‘em up to play football, and as a result their teams are usually good preseason bets. Bill Parcells was famous for the preseason focus of his teams. Not surprisingly, many who worked with Parcells earlier in their careers are now carving out their own records of preseason success. This sort of dominance isn’t lost on the linesmaker and a coach like the Giants’ Tom Coughlin (a former Parcells assistant) will have his ATS success will definitely been factored into the pointspread. Still, a motivated team that wants to win is always worthy of consideration.
The smart preseason handicapper makes use of the Internet, and more specifically uses it to follow the local sports media of NFL teams. During NFL preseasons, teams’ beat writers are anxious to write stories and need to fill articles but have little in the way of “real” news to write about. As a result, a handicapper can frequently find valuable details like a coach’s goals for the game, playing time for key players, and specific strategies that will be implemented. Occasionally, coaches will come out and say that they’re more interested in evaluating certain players for certain positions than they are in the outcome of the game. A thorough evaluation of this type of media coverage can often produce not only teams to play “on”, but teams with priorities other than winning to play “against”.
In closing, the best advice is to not be afraid of wagering on preseason football, but to not get too excited about it either. It’s a good chance to grind out a small profit, but definitely not the moneymaking opportunity of a lifetime. There will be plenty of other”and better”football wagering opportunities down the road. Discipline and self-control is always in your best interest when betting on sports, and that certainly is the case in the preseason NFL.
Ross Everett is a experienced freelance writer who covers travel, casino gambling and sports handicapping. He is a staff handicapper for Anatta Sports where he is responsible for providing daily free sports picks. In his spare time he enjoys fine dining, fencing and deep sea diving. He lives in Las Vegas with four dogs and a pet coyote.
Sports betting futures wagers can be an entertaining and profitable investment, but there are a number of pitfalls. These are some things to avoid:
Search for the best price: A common mistake is to assume that the price on a specific futures wager position will be the same at every sportsbook. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, you’ll often see a greater degree of difference between futures prices from book to book than any other form of bet. This is because that books aren’t as worried about what price other outfits are offering as they are about keeping their own financial position balanced.
In a competitive field, don’t obsess with picking the winner: This may sound like a strange concept, but once you understand the theory behind it it makes perfect sense. In a large field–the NCAA basketball tournament is a perfect example–the top few favorites are invariably priced at odds that are less than the ‘true odds’ of them winning. On the other hand, there are always teams that fly ‘under the radar’ available at higher prices that present a betting overlay.
To put this in more theoretical terms, the “true odds” of Duke winning the NCAA Championship are almost certainly higher than the price we’re getting. Obviously, determining the “true odds”, or actual probability of a future event is an inexact science but think of it this way: if the NCAA tournament was played 100 times would Duke wind up winning 50 of those? Given the number of other good teams and the propensity for upsets along the way, its doubtful. For the sake of argument, lets say that Duke has a 33% chance to win the tournament. That means that I wouldn’t consider a bet on Duke to be a good value unless I was getting a price that a) accurately reflected the true probability of their winning and b) gave me some compensation for assuming the “risk of the unknown” inherent in taking the position so far in advance. At +500 I might be interested, but at +200 the value just isn’t there.
Note that the more competitive the market, the more difficult it is to find good value on a favorite. In a smaller field, or in a field with one dominant competitor it can be easier. For example, say the UFC were to have a tournament involving heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar and three male figure skaters. Even if Lesnar was slightly injured, or not at the top of his game he’d essentially have a 100% chance of beating the smaller, effeminate men who are untrained to fight. If a book installed Lesnar as a -1000 favorite in this spot, it could still be considered a good value. It’s never easy to risk a lot to win a little, but from strictly a mathematical standpoint it makes sense.
Don’t get seduced by big underdogs: Sports betting is not a place to make the “big killing”. It may happen occasionally, but more often it doesn’t. While a sports book might offer a huge price on a cellar dwelling team to win the World Series, the big payback does not mean its a good value. On a practical level, there’s probably nothing wrong with throwing a few bucks on a wager like this with a huge payback if the impossible occurs. My only problem with this is that making too many bets like this just perpetuates bad sports betting habits. If you’re strictly a recreational player, no big deal. If you aspire to bet professionally, or at least want to pursue it with some degree of seriousness I’ve always maintained that you need to develop discipline that’s not situational. In other words, if you want to be a serious sports bettor you need to approach it with a consistent level of seriousness at all times. If you want to chase a huge, life altering jackpot go to Las Vegas and play the Megabucks slots or buy a Powerball ticket.
On a more theoretical level, a big price alone is no way to justify a wager. The concept of value works the same at the bottom of the barrel as it does at the top: make sure the price you’re getting on an underdog accurately reflects their “true odds” of winning.
Don’t waste your money on ridiculous prop bets: Occasionally sports books offer ridiculous bets to get press or to be funny. For example, a book once offered odds on Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis all hopping into bed together and releasing a video tape of the proceedings. You’d no doubt get a huge payback were this to happen, but the ‘true odds’ of such an event transpiring far exceeded even a big potential payback.
Ross Everett is a widely published freelance writer and noted authority on sports betting odds comparison. He writing has appeared on a variety of sports sites including sportsbooks and betting odds portal sites. He lives in Las Vegas with three Jack Russell Terriers and an emu. He is currently working on an autobiography of former energy secretary Donald Hodell.
The only way to guarantee a sure-fire win for yourself when gambling is if you could place a bet on a 100% certainty carrying a 100% commitment of being paid when you win. Let’s face it though – that scenario will never arise in your entire lifetime!
Now, before we discuss ?betting to win? in more detail, let’s begin by examining what a ?bet? actually is. To be able to bet requires two parties: the party placing the bet and the party accepting the bet. A bet is a gamble based on the possibility of a particular event occurring or having occurred. Note that not all gambles are bets. This is because the phrase “to take a gamble” generally means to risk something valuable in order to gain something of even greater value, and where the outcome is uncertain to some degree or other. A gamble need not involve another party, but a bet most certainly does.
For example, you gamble not-so-obviously (and do not bet) whenever you lay out money in the simple hope of retaining your wealth (such as buying a house or putting your savings into a higher paying deposit account) and rather more obviously when you attempt to increase your wealth by investing in shares (again not a bet) or by participating in sports betting. As you can see, therefore, all the foregoing are forms of gambling, no matter that some people may attempt to draw dividing lines between them to make their preferred form of gambling more socially acceptable.
Each type of gamble has its own unwritten rules attached, all of which need to be both understood and followed if the specific gambling objective is to be achieved. The main point here is that a bet is just one particular form of gambling, and it’s only the degree of risk that varies from one gamble to another.
When it comes to gambling on the outcome of sporting events, every well-balanced person will readily acknowledge that it is not worth risking all their funds on one single bet, as they could very easily end up with no funds at all. This principle applies whether or not the odds are in the bettor’s favour.
It seems that a majority of bettors would be happy to achieve a small overall return on their bets by the end of a sporting season, generally because the alternative is to sail too close to the wind too often and be in constant danger of losing their entire bank. The sad truth, though, is that most bettors fail to achieve even that modest aim, mainly because their betting is not based on sound principles.
All too often, bets are placed on “gut feel”, and frequently for wildly varying stakes (as opposed to “fixed” (or ?level?) stakes, without proper assessment of the chances of winning, or without adequate consideration as to how a loss will affect the bettor’s bank. Consequently, at the end of each season, the majority of football bettors are poorer than when they started. In view of this, I am now going to make what I consider to be the single most important statement in respect to “Betting to Win”:
To achieve even a modest return on your bets, you need to develop a worthwhile Betting Strategy for yourself.
A worthwhile Betting Strategy incorporates both a reliable Selection System and a sound Staking Plan. You can’t buy a good Betting Strategy, although it may well be true that the individual components themselves can be purchased. Both the acceptance of the need for a worthwhile Betting Strategy and the will to apply it properly must emanate from within you. Once you have acknowledged that satisfying such a need is vital to your betting success, you then have to work hard at (i) finding a good Selection System and (ii) deciding upon an appropriate Staking Plan that best suits your particular style and budget (and which won’t bankrupt you – because many have the potential to do so).
As playing roulette will show you (because inherently it doesn’t allow the possibility of a Selection System to operate, since any given number or colour can come up at any time), very few Staking Plans on their own will consistently allow you to increase the amount you started with (meaning that you are simply in the hands of Lady Luck on the night).
So that you can emerge as a winner, I strongly recommend that you should approach football betting just as seriously as you would when investing in shares or a house purchase. In respect to the latter, remember that the three prime considerations to ensure a first-class investment are Location, Location and Location. This means that if location fails on any single point, you have not found a “star” property. There is a very similar rule applicable to betting: before you gamble, the three most important considerations should be Selection, Selection and Selection!
About the Author:
This article is written by Woz Salmon, a specialist in risk analysis and mitigation techniques, whose primary aim is to help the average football bettor significantly improve his/her chances of winning more money from the Bookies. Woz Salmon runs http://www.predictawin.com ..Helping you bet to win!