When you sit down to have a bet, the odds will immediately jump into your head. But which are the most profitable odds to lay down your cash on? Do you risk it all on the long shot or place your sweet spot on the favorites? What is the most profitable betting strategy? Let’s take a quick look at the most popular sports with examples of each and how you can use statistics to determine which way to bet!
Football
In the U.S., the most popular sport is football. With the Super Bowl being held this year in Minneapolis, MN, it seems like our country has its eyes set on the big game. Between the cold weather and the passion for the sport, it’s not surprising that so many Americans bet on the Super Bowl. Despite the large population involved, the Super Bowl has always had relatively low betting volume. Why? One word: Moneyline. The way the game is set up, there is very little financial incentive for gamblers to wager on the Super Bowl. For every dollar you wager on the game, you’ll win or lose the exact same amount. So for every $100 you wager, you’ll earn $100 or you’ll lose $100. This means you have little to no incentive to pick a team you think will lose just to make a little bit of money.
On the other hand, the game has always had very high betting volume when it comes to the American League Championship Series (ALCS) and the World Series. Unlike the Super Bowl, these games do have moneyline odds — which means you are given the option of betting on whether the team you choose will win or lose. But even then, you have little to no control over which team you bet on. In the ALCS and World Series, you’ll generally find odds of around +150 and +400, meaning you’ll win $150 and $400 for each dollar you wager on the game, respectively. These are exactly the kind of odds you want to see when you bet on a sporting event because they mean you have a very good chance of winning back your original wager. If you’re lucky, you might even make a little bit of money!
Baseball
Baseball is another popular sport in the U.S., and for good reason. The game is incredibly fun to watch, and the chances of winning are much higher than, let’s say, basketball. Baseball is a lot more than just hitting a ball with a stick and watching it go into the stands. There are actually a lot of strategy involved in picking a team and betting on them. It would be best to compare the odds of winning for each sport so you can find the best way to bet. Let’s take a quick look at some of the strategies that are popular with sports bettors.
In baseball, there are four potential outcomes for each game. A win for either team leaves them in first place. A loss, and they’re out of the running. A tie means both teams are still in the race, and the game has to be replayed. This is one of the reasons why baseball has always been a popular sport to bet on. You never know what will happen!
One strategy that is often used in baseball is what’s known as parlaying. Simply put, parlaying is the act of placing bets on multiple teams in a row, usually with the intention of making a profit. It’s considered a very risky strategy because if any of the teams you bet on lose, you’ll lose your entire investment. But if you’re patient and pick the right teams, you can definitely make some money off of this strategy. The key is to keep in mind that in order to parlay, you generally have to bet a minimum of $100 per game.
Basketball
Basketball is a very popular sport in Europe, too. The game tends to be a lot faster than baseball or American football, meaning there’s less downtime between plays. This also makes the odds, as you might imagine, a little bit more exciting. But just as with American football, there isn’t a lot of strategy involved in betting on basketball. The only real difference is that instead of +150 and +400, you’ll generally see odds of around +600 and +1200, respectively. These are much more manageable numbers if you’re betting on individual games, but still relatively high. Nevertheless, there’s still a large audience for betting on the NBA and the ABA because as in other sports, there isn’t a whole lot of strategy involved.
One way to make a little bit of extra cash with less risk is what’s known as layering. Layering consists of making smaller, safer bets on individual games, parlaying between them, and then taking the total bet from all the games and placing it on the winner. This is generally considered among the safer and more reliable ways of betting because you’re not risking a lot — if any — of your original wager on a single game. The downside is that you have to keep track of all the individual games, and there’s still a chance you could lose the entire wager. But as long as you keep the betting within the layers, there’s really no danger of losing your entire investment.
Hockey
Hockey is another sport that has always attracted a decent sized audience in the U.S. But over the past few years, especially since the league established the 0.888 rule — making sure the puck crosses the goal line for a touchdown — the odds have dramatically changed and made the sport more profitable for Bettors. For instance, prior to the 0.888 rule, the minimum wage you had to bet to win was $2. But now you can get $2 plus the price of parking your car for the night. In addition, the rule change has made some games much more exciting to bet on because now there’s actual value at stake. It’s not simply a matter of who you think is going to win.
To take advantage of these changed odds, some sports bettors have started specializing in creating hockey betting lines. These are simply spreadsheets, similar to the ones used for football and baseball, that have all the key statistics for each team — like their win-loss record, scoring average, and so on — laid out in rows and columns. The advantage of these spreadsheets is that they make it easy to keep track of all the relevant statistics for each team, and you can create lines for all the games you prefer to bet on. Plus, you can also track the progress of your team over the course of the season and make adjustments as necessary.
Cricket
Cricket is another sport that has seen a large increase in betting activity and popularity in recent years. It was originally considered a “gentleman’s sport” but now more and more people are seeing it as a real sport you can participate in. Like hockey, the game has changed a lot in the last few years due to rule changes and the value of money and prizes. For example, the minimum wage you have to bet to win has increased from $2 to $10, and there are actually hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money on the line now. These updates have made it much more entertaining to bet on cricket, even though it’s still not a particularly easy game to master.
The favorite strategy used by cricket bettors is a form of parlaying called tailoring. Simply put, tailoring is similar to parlaying in that you’re making smaller more manageable bets, but with the key difference that you can select the winners. For instance, if you choose Liverpool FC as your first selection and then Tottenham Hotspur as your second, your total bet will be on Liverpool. So if you’re picking three teams, your total bet will be on Liverpool, Tottenham, and Everton. If any of those teams win the match, you’ll win your bet. But if any of them lose, you’ll lose your investment. It’s not necessarily a bad strategy, just something to keep in mind.
Another way to make money with less risk in cricket is known as layering. The basic idea behind layering is the same as with basketball — take smaller, more manageable bets and then add them on top of one another. So if you have a $100 to spend on cricket, you might want to try parlaying between £30 and £40 on the England Test team and then put the rest of your money on the World Cup team. If England knocks off both the other teams you have chosen, your total bet will be on England and you will win your bet. But if one of the other two teams wins, you will lose your investment as you have placed more than one bet.