Sports betting is a lucrative way to make money, but it also requires some skills and a keen eye. It’s a fast-growing industry in the United States, with legalization happening rapidly after May 2018. While it’s easy to become intimidated by all the jargon, there are some key strategies you can use to improve your chances of making long-term winnings.
Developing Your Sense of Betting Value
If you want to increase your odds of winning, it’s important to develop a sense of betting value that you can trust. This is a skill that takes time and practice to master, but it’s well worth the effort.
One of the best ways to develop this skill is by focusing on leagues and tournaments that you’re familiar with. This will help you develop a sense of what makes a team good or bad, and what kind of odds they offer that will give you the most value.
The first step is to choose the right online sportsbook for you. Ideally, you’ll find a site that offers a wide variety of wagers on the games and events that interest you most. You’ll also want to check out the types of bets that are available, including point spreads, moneylines, and parlays.
Predicting Winning Probabilities
Unlike public bettors, professional bettors spend hours each day dissecting data and statistics, as well as head-to-head matchups. This is why they can often pick teams that have a better chance of winning than you might think, which can be an excellent way to make your betting money.
This technique works especially well in the NFL and other sports with a large amount of money at stake. It’s also a great tool for analyzing and predicting how high-scoring games will be.
Another tool that can be used to predict the probability of a team winning is the Pythagorean Wins Stat. This statistic is based on the number of points a team has scored against the total number of points they’ve allowed.
A team with a high Pythagorean Wins Stat is likely to have a lot of momentum and be in good shape. In fact, from 1988 to 2004 11 out of 16 Super Bowls were won by a team with the highest Pythagorean wins stat.
It’s also important to consider that the odds for an event can move dramatically if a popular team suddenly takes an unexpected lead. Depending on the market, this can make the team more or less appealing to bettors and can make a big difference in your bottom line.
When this happens, you can bet against the team that’s moving in your favor to get extra points on the spread or pennies on the dollar on the moneyline. This is a powerful strategy that’s rarely seen in the public, but it’s highly profitable when used correctly.
The next step is to find a betting app that shows betting odds for a range of sportsbooks. This will allow you to shop around for the best odds for a given game or event, and it’ll also let you see how a sportsbook rates each team before you place your bets.