Since time immortal, one of the favorite pastimes of sport freaks has been gambling. Gambling is exciting, thinking about the risk involved, the luck factor and the chance to make big money in a couple of hours. Online gambling has become popular with millions of individuals around the world, with more visiting betting sites and online casinos popping up online than in the past. One great advantage of having this facility online is as always, that it is accessible from any place which has an active internet access. This has made gambling a sport in itself, available to millions of new people.

There’s been a boom within the online football agent betting industry as well as the sort of profits many sites are enjoying now is unimaginable. Online casinos are not to be left behind, as there has been a rapid explosion of these also. In reality, online poker gives gambling, a glamour quotient by roping in celebrities for high profile tournaments. Therefore reaching out to a whole new market in itself.

But simply, the most successful story will be the rise of sports betting. Fans who have enjoyed betting on games like soccer, football, polo, baseball, hockey and horse racing, can now do so online with the aid of these sites. A whole new number of professional sports are cropping up to encourage the already soaring popularity of online betting. It may be correct to state that audiences are now enjoying the betting experience without being at the field themselves. Welcome to the world of virtual reality.

You will discover innumerable so-called gambling experts prepared to dish out information of their systems to ‘beat the bookie’ or to make a second income from gambling, for a price of course. I won’t do that. I will simply give you details about bookmakers, odds and gambling that you can use (or forget) while you see fit.

The first thing to mention is the fact that the majority of folks who engage in gambling will be net losers over time. This is the very reason there are numerous bookmakers making so much money through the world.

While bookmakers can sometimes take big hits, for example if a favourite wins the Grand National, they spread their risk so widely and they setup markets that incorporate a margin, so they will always make money over the medium to long term, if not the short-term. That is, as long because they got their sums right.

When setting their odds for a particular event, bookmakers must first study the probability of that event occurring. To do this they us various statistical models based on data collated over years, sometime decades, about the sport and team/competitor in question. As always, if sport was 100% predictable, it might soon lose its appeal, and while the bookies will often be spot on with their assessments of the probability of an event, they may be sometimes way off the mark, simply because a match or contest goes against conventional wisdom and statistical likelihood.

Just look-at any sport and also you will find an occasion in the event the underdog triumphs against all of the odds, literally. Wimbledon beating the then mighty Liverpool within the FA Cup Final of 1988, for instance, or the United States of America beating the then mighty USSR at ice hockey within the 1980 Olympics are two illustrations of whenever you could have got handsome odds on the underdog. And could have won a reliable wedge.

The big bookmakers spend a whole lot of money and time ensuring they possess the right odds that ensure they take note of the perceived probability of the event, and after that add that extra tiny bit that gives them the profit margin. So if an event has a probability of, say, 1/3, the odds that reflect that probability will be 2/1. That’s, two to one against that event occurring.

On the flip side, a bookie who set these odds would, over-time, break even (assuming their stats are correct). So instead they would set the odds at, say, 6/4. In the way they have built in the margin that guarantees, over-time, they’re going to benefit from people betting on this selection. It really is the exact same concept as a casino roulette.

Now how can you spot the occasions when bookmakers have got it wrong? Well, it’s easier said than done, but far from impossible.

One way is to get great at mathematical modelling and setup a model that takes into account as many of the variables that affect the outcome of an event as is possible. The problem with this tactic is the fact that however complex the model, and however all encompassing it appears, it can never account for the minutiae of variables relating to individual human states of mind. Whether a golfer manages to hole a major-winning five foot putt on the 18th at St Andrews it’s as much down to their concentration as to the weather or day of the week. Furthermore, the maths can start getting pretty darn complicated.

Alternatively you can find yourself a sporting niche. Bookmakers will concentrate their resources on the events that produce them the most money, generally found to be football (soccer), American football and horse racing. So trying to beat the bookies while betting on a Manchester United v Chelsea match will be tough. Unless you work with among the clubs, or are married to among the players or managers, it is very likely the bookmaker setting the odds will have additional information than you.