Smart sports betting, and football betting above all, is in line with the skills of the teams involved in contrast to random chance. This difference profoundly affects the appropriate betting strategies or systems. Understanding this difference is what makes an effective sports bettor.

Many of the betting systems and strategies available today are based upon general probabilities of a win or loss and also are modified versions of systems developed for games of chance. However, sports betting – as well as poker – isn’t based upon random chance and probabilities, but on the skill of the contestants. Consequently the underlying premise of sport betting is significantly different than betting on games of chance.

Although most gambling strategies designed for games of chance are mathematically unsound, in practice if one has roughly a 50% chance of winning, these systems can at least appear to offer a highly effective means of betting. Within the long haul, the failure of such systems might be more or less inevitable since it is based upon the Gambler’s Fallacy. Gambler’s Fallacy is the mistaken impression that particular results are “due” according to previous outcomes in a series of independent trials of a random process. As an example, the if one is tossing coins, and heads come up repeatedly, the gambler may conclude that this means tails is “due” to come up next; whereas, in all reality, the chances that the next coin toss will end in tails is precisely the exact same in spite of the number of times heads has come up already.

In skill-based wagering, the bettor with the most familiarity with the contestants involved has a definite advantage over the bettor that’s hoping that the desired outcome “is due” according to probabilities. There’s no sound mathematical probability that any specific excellent online football gambling site-team “is due” anything. Just think of Arsenal that won 14 consecutive games in 2002, or Derby County F.C. that lost 37 consecutive games in 2007-08. The determining factor of these runs was the skill of the teams, not random chance.

Which is not to say that random chance is not involved, of-course it is. Any team will make mistakes or have accidents, leading to upsets and surprise outcomes. Nevertheless the smart sports bettor knows that the level of skill of the team in question will be much more prone to influence the outcome than chance and luck. This really is what makes a successful sports bettor over time. Anybody can get lucky from time to time, but if one learns to make intelligent bets according to the skills of the teams involved, one is much more prone to win significant quantities of money over the long run.