Using head to head matches in sports betting

Sports bettors in some aspects should have it easy with regards to sports betting. You can pick and choose your points of confrontation and also what sport you wish to bet on. My favourite sports to bet on are sports where there are only two competitors. I like to base my bets around the even money guideline and it is this where you can find value.

I will explain what I mean a little later but in a sport like horse racing for example then things get a little more complex by comparison. There will be multiple runners in all events so picking the winner needs to be approached using clearly different strategies. In horse racing then you can use the complexity of the sport to your advantage if you are shrewd enough.

In sports betting though you can often take advantage of differences in bookmaker opinion in events where the competitors are basically on a par with each other. If two boxers were about to fight for a title and the betting market found them hard to separate then a profitable opportunity may arise here or at least one where the punter can find value.

If the professional opinion of many is that this is an even fight then the fair odds would be 2.00 for either competitor. If odds compilers and bookmakers want to argue the difference then fair enough but the variables are so complex that finding exact theoretical probabilities is impossible in betting.

So often there will be betting firms who will go longer than 2.00 for one of the fighters and maybe as long as 2.20! If this is a true 50/50 fight then 2.20 is value and is no different than getting 2.20 on a coin flip. This is one of the advantages of sports betting in that if you are shrewd then you can use professional opinion and the plethora of betting firms to your advantage.

Of course the good thing about sports betting in this way is that you don’t just have to bet on boxing, it could just as easily be snooker, tennis, cricket, football or any other sport where there can only be two possible winners. Golf would be prohibited from this category unless you were betting on the actual head to head matches. I know of one professional punter called “Dave” who makes between £50,000-£75,000 a year betting like this.

The key behind his operation is in identifying the true even money shots and this isn’t as easy as what it sounds on the surface. It is a full time job for Dave but the money that he makes is all tax free so in that sense he is making very good money.

In fact I believe that I even mentioned on my blog how finding good value prices and tissue prices is easier when you know that a price is wrong and it is easier to know that prices are wrong than to know what their correct theoretical price may be.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson