Looking into live betting part 1

Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the introduction of the betting exchanges has been the most positive thing to hit the gambling industry and sports betting over the past 100 years. They create an environment where punters have a much wider range of choice and in most cases….value! With the prices on the betting exchanges being superior to the prices in high street betting shops on the whole then it is no surprise that the traditional bookmakers loathed the very existence of the betting exchanges.

Unlike the more traditional methods of betting, the exchanges allow the punter to bet in a totally unique way and actually match bets with other punters. In fact another name for it is “matched betting” which sums it up entirely because that is exactly what it is. Of course the reality of the situation is that you are not placing and taking bets with other individuals directly as your stake and winnings will tend to come from “pools” of other punters money rather than just from one individual.

The purpose of these articles is to essentially introduce you to this new exciting high tech betting world and to show you that rather than something to be avoided and feared that it is actually an avenue that is a lot more simple to go down than many people imagine. It is the sheer act of being able to “lay” someone else’s bet that attracts an awful lot of people to the betting exchanges. The thought of acting and operating almost like a high street bookmaker appeals to many people.

Another objective of this series will be to help the punter to avoid many of the common traps that new users and novices fall into when using the exchanges for the very first time.

With the much better average prices and the new found ability for the punter to back and lay, a whole new breed of professional punters sprung to the fore who started to earn a living from the betting exchanges who previously would not have had the opportunity in which to do it.

Once you have downloaded the software in the same way that you would download any other piece of software and opened an account then you really are ready to rock and roll so to speak. But as it has already been stated, when you place a bet then you are not placing that bet with a bookmaker or even with the exchange itself but with another punter or group of punters.

So for instance if you went onto the exchange and saw that Liverpool were priced at 2.0 (Evens) to beat Arsenal in a Premier League game at Anfield and you wanted to wager £50 on Liverpool to win then someone somewhere is willing to lay Liverpool at that price to lose to Arsenal.

One thing that needs to be pointed out before we go any further is how the site operates with regards stating what the prices are. The betting exchange sites use what are called “decimal odds” instead of the more conventional and traditional fractional odds that we in England have been used to since betting began. So for instance a traditional price of 4-1 would be shown as 5.0 (the four and the one combined) and 11-2 would be shown as 6.5 as 11-2 is 5 ½ -1 and 5 ½ + 1 would equate to 6 ½ or 6.5.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
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