The concept of odds – the key to sports betting:
Before you understand the different betting markets, you need to understand what’s a football odd. The odds are multipliers that determine your potential profits.
Because they represent the demand of the market for a specific event, they are compared to prices by sports betting specialists.
We’ll have a specific guide comparing different styles to display odds such as the decimal odds, the fractional odds, and the moneylines, but for now, we’ll the most simple system out there which is the decimal system.
If you believe PSG has 50% of chance to win the upcoming game, no matter the adversary, then the odds should be 2.0 according to your calculation. This is because of the formula below
100% (all possible results) / 50% (PSG chances to win) = 2.0
If the odds available are for example 2.5, it means the odd contains value, that is, the market is miscalculating PSG’s chances in case you are right. Professional bettors chase value as it is the essence of soccer betting profits. This is the basic explanation, but for more information we’ll have an advanced guide to value betting coming soon.
The soccer betting markets
A betting market is a selection that you can bet, for example, the 1×2 results of a game. You can also bet on the number of goals of a game, the goals of the 1st or second half, the number of corner kicks, and whether there will be a red card in the match or not.
You can also bet on the upcoming winner of a specific competition like Ligue 1, UEFA Champions League, or the 2022 FIFA World Cup which is about to start.
A market is simply a type of bet. The term may be confusing, it doesn’t mean a different betting shop or group of shops.
How to profit with soccer bets: using your knowledge
The key to profiting with football betting is simple, you need to be ‘more right’ than the market. The odds as you now know are calculated according to the underlying percentage that represents the perceived chance of an event happening.
In other words, there are ‘degrees’ or ‘depths’ of knowledge. Let’s use an example that two people that I met in the past told me. A professional punter from Uruguay, very profitable and who used to live off his betting, told me he had discovered back in 2008 that at that time, if a football game had one goal until the minute 23 of the first half, then it was very likely that this game would have another goal before half time.
The optimal odds to this system were circa 1.85 back at the time. But then my boss and mentor told me ‘Lucas, you need to be very certain to bet on the first half, it’s a very specific market, bet only, for example, if a specific team or player is prone to do so based on recent events observation’.
Both investors were right, they had different degrees of market knowledge.
But they knew what they were doing. It doesn’t mean you can’t just bet based on gut feeling and have fun. But it’s also important to know if you’re seriously chasing profits, or simply having fun, understanding your own situation is the key to responsible gambling.
Now that you know more about sports betting, open an account with one of our trusted partners and have fun!
