Since time immortal, one of the favorite pastimes of sport freaks has been gambling. Gambling is exciting, thinking about the risk involved, the luck factor and also the chance to make a lot of cash in a couple of hours. Online gambling is now popular with millions of people across the globe, with more visiting betting sites and online casinos popping up over the internet than ever before. One great good thing about having this facility online is simply, that it is accessible from any place which has an active internet connection. This has made gambling a sport in itself, available to millions of new people.

There is a boom within the online betting industry and the sort of profits many sites are enjoying now is unimaginable. Online casinos are not to be left behind, as there is a rapid explosion of these as well. The truth is, online poker gives gambling, a glamour quotient by roping in celebrities for high profile tournaments. It indicates reaching out to a whole new market in itself.

But of course, the most successful story is the rise of sports gambling betting. Fans who have enjoyed betting on games like soccer, football, polo, baseball, hockey and horse racing, can now do so online with the help of these sites. A whole new selection of professional sports are cropping up to encourage the already soaring popularity of online betting. It may be correct to claim that audiences are now enjoying the betting experience without being at the field themselves. Welcome to the world of virtual reality.

You can find innumerable so-called gambling experts prepared to dish out information of their systems to ‘beat the bookie’ or to make a second income from gambling, for a cost of course. I won’t do that. I will simply give you information about bookmakers, odds and gambling that you can use (or forget) as you see fit.

The first thing to mention is that the great majority of individuals who engage in gambling will be net losers over-time. This is the very reason there are actually numerous bookmakers making so much money throughout the world.

While bookmakers can sometimes take big hits, for example if a favourite wins the Grand National, they spread their risk so widely and they setup markets that incorporate a margin, so they’re going to always make money over the medium to long term, if not the short term. That’s, as long because they got their sums right.

When setting their odds for a particular event, bookmakers must first evaluate the probability of that event occurring. To do this they us various statistical models according to data collated over years, sometime decades, about the sport and team/competitor in question. Keep in mind, if sport was 100% predictable, it could soon lose its appeal, and while the bookies are often spot on with their assessments of the probability of an event, they can be sometimes way off the mark, simply because a match or contest goes against conventional wisdom and statistical likelihood.

Just look at any sport and you shall find an occasion in the event the underdog triumphs against all the odds, literally. Wimbledon beating the then mighty Liverpool within the FA Cup Final of 1988, for example, or perhaps the USA beating the then mighty USSR at ice hockey in the 1980 Olympics are two illustrations of when you would have got handsome odds on the underdog. And could have won a quality wedge.

The big bookmakers spend a whole lot of money and time ensuring they possess the right odds that ensure they keep in mind the perceived probability of the event, and after that add that extra tiny bit that gives them the profit margin. So if an event has a probability of, say, 1/3, the odds that reflect that probability would be 2/1. That is, two to one against that event occurring.

On the other hand, a bookie who set these odds would, over-time, break even (assuming their stats are correct). So instead they can set the odds at, say, 6/4. In this way they have built-in the margin that ensures, over time, they are going to make the most of people betting on this selection. It really is the exact same concept as a casino roulette.

Just how can you spot the occasions when bookmakers have got it wrong? Well, it’s easier said than done, but far from impossible.

One way is to get very good at mathematical modelling and set up a model that takes into account as many of the variables that affect the outcome of an event as possible. The problem with this tactic is that however complex the model, and however all-encompassing it appears, it can never account for the minutiae of variables relating to individual human states of mind. Whether a golfer manages to hole a major-winning five foot putt on the 18th at St Andrews it really is as much down to their concentration as to the weather or day of the week. Additionally, the maths can start getting pretty darn complicated.

Alternatively you may find yourself a sporting niche. Bookmakers will concentrate their resources on the events that produce them the most money, generally found to be football (soccer), American football and horse racing. So trying to beat the bookies while betting on a Manchester United v Chelsea match will be tough. Unless you work for among the clubs, or are married to one of the players or managers, it really is very likely the bookmaker setting the odds may have additional information than you.