The National Hockey League is one of the most popular sporting leagues in the world. Every year, thousands of hockey fans around the world sit down in their office chairs, pour themselves a cold drink, and put their thoughts to paper as to who they think will win the upcoming games. They do this by placing bets on the games they love through online bookmakers. It is estimated that 10% of all sportsbooks’ worldwide revenues come from hockey betting. This figure could easily be doubled if one includes social betting (sharing platforms like Twitter).
For those looking to get into the hockey betting business, the world’s biggest sportsbook, Pinnacle, has created a detailed guide to becoming a successful hockey bookmaker. The guide covers everything from how to get started to how to make money in different ways. It also looks into the different types of bets available and how to avoid common blunders that new sportsbook entrants make. Let’s take a closer look at how to make money betting on hockey:
Start With A Small Bankroll
It’s no secret that starting a betting business is difficult. It requires significant investment in software, hardware, and staff. One big mistake new sportsbooks make is to think that they will earn money immediately. This could not be further from the truth. It can take a long time to get your money back. In fact, it could take years. As a result, it’s advisable to start small and build your client base slowly.
Pinnacle’s guide encourages new sportsbooks to take the time to build a small team of experienced traders before venturing into the world of NHL betting. This way, you can be confident that your team is properly equipped to handle all types of bets—whether they’re popular or not. The more you trade, the more you learn. In the end, this is the only way to become a successful sportsbook. The more you trade, the more you learn. Experience is the best teacher.
Learn The Lingo
Another mistake new entrants make is not learning the language of sports betting. Just because your bankroll is small doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn the terminology. It’s a completely different ballgame when you’re trading with experts. For this reason, Pinnacle’s guide suggests new hockey bettors learn about odds and line movement before getting involved in betting. Knowing the lingo will help you communicate with the experts effortlessly and will give you an edge over the competition.
There are three basic terms used in sports betting that you need to know: trading price, outcome, and odds. Let’s examine each one in detail.
Trading Price
Every trader will always have a ‘feel’ for the market. Sometimes, you’ll feel that the market is over-heated and there’s no chance of an outcome. Other times, you may feel that the odds are ridiculously in your favor. There’s no exact mathematical formula to determine when to enter and exit a trade, but there are general guidelines that you can follow.
In short, when you have a good feeling about a particular trade, you should enter it. Otherwise, you should refrain from entering a trade unless you have a very solid understanding of the line movement and how the odds have shifted from one side to the other. The worst thing you can do is to get invested in a trade that you feel is going against you. Even if it turns out to be a good trade in the end, you’ll have a bad taste in your mouth from the experience. Never, ever put yourself in a situation where you might lose more than you can afford to lose. It’s always better to sit this one out and come back later when you’re feeling more confident. You’ll have more success if you follow this guideline to the letter.
Outcome
What is the result of the game or event you’re betting on? This is the part that people most often get wrong. They’ll often bet on the outcome of a game that hasn’t happened yet. For instance, if they’ve seen Player X perform well in previous games, they might think that he’s going to have an excellent outing against Team Y, even though these games haven’t taken place yet!
The best way to avoid getting misled by outcomes is to focus on the results of games that are already played. If you want to bet on the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup this year, you should set your eyes on the results of games that they’ve already played. What is most important is not whether they’ll win or lose the remaining games, but whether they’ve won or lost. The odds will then reflect these results.
Odds
Finally, we arrive at the part of a betting trade that everyone is most familiar with: the odds. Odds are simply the odds of an outcome happening. For example, if you bet on the Montreal Canadiens to win the Stanley Cup this year, the odds will be somewhere in between 1 and 13 (1 to 5 for the Habs).
The main purpose of the odds is simply to give the bettor an idea of the likelihood of an event happening. In a nutshell, the lower the odds, the more likely the event will happen. Conversely, the higher the odds, the less likely the event will happen. This is all a matter of probability. In the case of the Montreal Canadiens, if you had set your sights on them winning the Stanley Cup, you would have placed a bet on them to win at odds of 1/13 or 0.008 (8%)
One of the most critical things for a new bettor to do is to learn how to use a hockey calculator. These are available for download for free from any major sportsbook’s website. Calculators will determine the profitability of different NHL betting strategies and let you know exactly how much money you’ll need to make in order to cover your costs. Learning to use these tools correctly is a lot easier than trying to do it manually. It takes some time to get used to working with a computer, but after you do, you’ll wonder why you didn’t use it sooner. Automating your trading will save you a lot of time and effort. Plus, it will create a paper trail which can be very beneficial if you’re ever audited by the government or tax authorities.
Being a successful NHL bettor is all about learning from past mistakes and increasing your winnings with each successive year. There’s no specific timeline that one must follow in order to achieve this. It all depends on how much you’re willing to put in. The more you trade, the more you’ll learn, and the more you learn, the more you’ll profit.