Soccer matches are priced up by all the big bookmakers and some nice guaranteed profitable bets are available if you know when and where to look. Sports bookmakers never miss a trick when thinking up new ways to extract your hard earned money from you and there are many inventive bets on offer.

Soccer can in lots of ways be about timing. The earlier the price appears the more likely there will be a sure-bet or arbitrage opportunity (arb).

Bookmakers clearly do a whole lot of research as soccer has now become a big earner for them. They have to do this because they are just too aware that the serious punters are becoming much shrewder in this market and also will exploit any snippets of news that can give them an edge. They advertise heavily within the tabloids.

Whereas in some minor sports there can be just one odds compiler doing work for the bookmaker soccer is too profitable due to this any many odds compilers will work feverishly setting prices for the big bookmakers. Any European bookmaker worth its salt will offer odds on soccer, its a high revenue turnover sport.

Such is their turnover on the ever increasing playing soccer online betting market that Ladbrokes and other such big bookmakers are prepared to take a ‘big’ bet on the outcome of a match. This is clearly very good news for the arb maker. Therefore the maximum bets they’re going to accept on a bet are a lot higher.

There are several types of soccer bets. Firstly there will be the match winner. This really is split into 3 results, win, lose or draw. Then you’ll find the very first goal scorer and also the precise match score. The less obvious bets are half-time, full time results, total corners, total throw-ins, total numbers of yellow and red cards and so on. In fact anything where odds can be set to shall offer a betting opportunity.

So which are the top soccer bets to look for? Firstly forget about predicting the match score, you’ll find too many outcomes. The first goal scorer is a waste of time too. Both these kinds of bets are heavily advertised but are for mug punters only, the odds consistently being offered are poor, the bookmakers regularly taking over 15% profit on the book. These bets have far too many possible outcomes. We are trying to find bets with ideally 2 or 3 possible outcomes.

Other sorts of bet can throw up the odd arb although the main source of arbs is on the match result over 90 minutes. This is where we should concentrate most of our efforts. Clearly this falls into 3 results, win, lose or draw.