Before we get into strategies, we have to explain some concepts of betting
Betting on sports can be seen as a market of demand and supply. The higher the demand the lower the supply, the lower the demand the higher the supply. In all of the sports betting sites the odds are calculated based on the demand and supply, and also, based on other difficult quantitative analysis (which you do not have to know ;)). The odds on a game or a match give you an indication which team or player is favorite to win.
What are odds?
So, let's say team x is playing against team y and you think team x is going to win, so you put 100 dollars on team x. So, how much money are you going to win? well that depends on the odds.
Remember that a market price depends on a buyer and a seller, both the buyer and a seller are exposed to odds.
Basically, odds are like a coin, there are two sides of a coin, thus there are two sides of odds. Have you ever heard "may the odds be in your favor"? Well basically this refers that a certain event may happen too according to what you predicted. In any game that you will make a bet, there will be "odds for" or "odds against". When the odds are "in your favor" you are more likely to win, when the odds are "against you", that means that your are less likely to win.
Which odds are good?
Let's go back to the example of "team x" and "team y". Team x has a odds of 1.45 and team Y has a odds of 2.70 which team is favorable?
One tip that can be given for beginners is that the team with the lowest odds is the favorable team to win
Team x is the preferred team to win with odds of 1.45. Odds can be seen as a multiplicative factor. Odds of 1.45 mean that if you put 100$ for team x and team x wins you get 145$ in return (100$odds= 100$1.45=145$).
The profit you make in odds is money in return- money invested
Now lest explain how much profit you can make by showing both of the scenarios
Scenario 1
The profit you make if team x with odds of 1.45 wins and you put 100$ is 145$-100$= 45$. So you made a bet of 100$ and you got 145$ in return giving you 45$ of profit.
Scenario 2
Instead of putting your money on team x, you think that team y has shown potential in the last games so put your money on team y. Putting 100$ on team y with odds of 2.70 and if team y wins it gives you 270$ in return. If you bet on team y and team y wins this gives you a profit of 270$-100$=170$ of profit.
As you can see you are making more money by putting your money on team y. However, as the odds suggest, team y is less favorable to win, so if you put money on team y the odds are against you!
The picture above is a illustration how it feels when you win and the odds are against you.
So you may be asking yourself, how about if I just keep putting my money for the favorite team?
In reality life is not that easy. Even a team or a player with odds of 1.02 can have a bad day and can end up loosing. Odds of 1.02 are indicating that the team or player is a huge favorite in winning. Even so, the team or player can still loose. Besides odds there are also other factors can give you an indication which team or player you should put your money on.
Besides odds I have seen fractional and American, what's that?
Well, these are other indicators of showing which team is the favorite or which team is not the favorite. They are the same as odds, but are measured in another way. Tomorrow we will discussed these two and will also explain "risk". On Thursday or Friday, we will start explaining some strategies that can be useful for betting on sports.