Betting is far from the simple game of chance that many tend to think it is. In almost any form of betting, be it online through sites like TopBettingSites Ireland or offline, there is a lot of important decision making that goes into every bet made. Knowing how and when to place your bets can really make the difference between a fun way to make a sport more interesting, and a way to bring in reliable income.
How to get the best odds at betting isn’t always a simple task, though—so let’s look in to how to know the good odds from the bad odds.
1.Calculating odds
The first and most important step will be getting to know a simple formula for the numbers themselves. Firstly, it’s important to recognise that odds and probability are not exactly alike. They’re similar, but probability just represents the chance that any given outcome will happen.
Odds, on the other hand, look to take all outcomes into account. This is where you’ll start with calculating. Knowing all the possible outcomes will allow you to form a ratio of favourable to unfavourable outcomes.
You can then know how to calculate the odds for or against your chances of winning. For example, odds of 1:2 are in favour of winning, and 2:1 are odds against winning.
So, it is a numbers game—but that is not all there is to it.
2. Sport/event knowledge
Knowing the numerical odds is one thing. Being able to calculate that and have a rough idea of your odds is vital, but it often won’t serve you very well in your betting career if these numbers are divorced from any real context.
For the best chances of getting ahead with betting, you’ll do yourself a lot of favours by getting to know the sport you’re betting on. If you already have knowledge of the sport that’s great, and if you’re just getting started, it’s best to pick a sport you think you could become interested in.
Armed with deeper knowledge of the actual game itself, you can make better judgements about the odds given by bookmakers. Though they’re generally very careful, bookies don’t always get it right—you can capitalize on this if you know the game well.
3. Analysis of past results
Finally, the last thing you can do to improve your chances of getting the best odds in the future is to record and analyse your past performance. Taking a wider view at your performance, you can see when your strategies worked and when they didn’t.
Knowing the odds themselves is one thing, but knowing when it is prudent to bet on shorter or longer odds is the next step. This, mostly, will come from knowledge of the sport and knowledge of how you have performed in the past.
That analysis could take many forms, and it depends on how numbers driven you are. The simplest is to track successes over time, and judge the efficacy of a strategy on the total amount won, or the number of individual bets won.
Getting the best odds is certainly not simple, then. But at the end of the day, it’s a simple numbers game. Even if you aren’t mathematically minded, there’s a really simple and easy to follow formula that will allow you to calculate the favourability of odds on the spot, sites like bet365 are known to provide free calculators for free. At the same time, it’s vital that you really get to know the sport or event you’re betting on. The better you know the sport, the more likely you are to have a full picture of how favourable it is.