What is the best online Sports Betting Site?

There really is no one best online sports betting site, period. Rather, various betting sites may have their own strengths and weaknesses. One may cater to small time bets for fun while others may cater to professional gamers. Some might be more geared towards one sport than another. In order for betting to be fun and profitable, you need to sports betting websites that work for you.

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Rather than just settling on one, you’ll probably want to keep a few in your bookmarks and check them against each other when you suspect that one might be offering better odds on this game or that one than the other, but all of your favorite betting sites should meet certain criteria…

Legality
Most betting sites are legit, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t want to check the fine print. In the US, it is only legal to run a gambling operation out of Nevada. Throughout most every other country in the world, it is one hundred percent legal, but these days, there’s an internet con game born ever minute. Look for a site with a good reputation, and one that could actually be held accountable if they try to give you a raw deal, because what’s to stop some jerk from setting up a free website, taking bettor’s money, and never being heard from again? The odds of getting ripped off are slim, but they aren’t non-existent.

Options
Obviously, you’re going to want a website with a lot of options. This means a website that, well, at least covers the sports that you have an interest in, and that offers plenty of different types of wagers, at good odds (the bookmaker is always going to come out on top, but look for a site that at least gives you a fighting chance).

Community
One of the best things about developing a new interest is trading tips with fellow enthusiasts and making friends. Many online sports betting sites have community sections such as chatrooms and message boards for users to communicate.

And Finally, Design
It sounds like a trivial thing to worry about, but you want a simple, well designed site. Remember, you’re going to be making a lot of transactions on this site and visiting it quite a bit. You want a website that is easy to navigate, that isn’t loaded with a million pop up ads and flash animated pages and crazy bells and whistles.

Tennis Betting - How To Bet On Tennis

As we’ve said, don’t bother betting on a sport you’re not interested in. This is true ten times over for tennis. The most important thing to betting on tennis is knowing the players.

It’s simply not enough to know the big names. Everybody knows the big names, and you’re not going to get good odds just betting on Federer or Serena Williams every week. Don’t just know the top ten or even the top thirty, know all of them. When you know all the lesser known players, you can accurately predict the less publicized matches, where you’re likely to get better odds. As with any sport: Know the game better than the bookmaker does. This can only come with either a real passion for the game of tennis, or by treating it like a really boring job. Betting has to be fun, so don’t bother with betting on tennis unless you’re somebody who enjoys keeping up with the game.

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Know how your players perform on different surfaces. Some players are good on every surface, others are great on one and weak on another. The four surfaces are hard, clay, grass, and carpet, knowing your players means knowing how they handle the turf, so make sure you know the surface, and how your players perform on it before you place your bet.

As with any sport, you’ll want to keep an eye on statistics, but remember that, with tennis, it’s not a team out there. If a player isn’t doing well, there’s no team to help pick up the slack. A player who has recently experienced a major letdown or disappointment might have their mood affected, and might turn in a performance well below their abilities. It sounds almost superstitious, but a tennis player’s mood is of vital importance.

Likewise, keep an eye on injuries, fatigue, or other physical setbacks. Injuries aren’t always publicly reported as such, but if a player has recently withdrawn from a tournament, missed several games in a row, or has simply been absent for awhile, that’s usually a pretty clear sign that they have suffered an injury, undergone surgery, are suffering fatigue, or something else. Don’t bet on somebody who’s possibly still recovering from physical trauma until you’ve seen them play a few games at peak form.

If you play your hand well, you may find that betting can actually improve the experience of watching a game. It’s simple, really. You may have a favorite player on the turf, but if you have a favorite player AND some money on the line, well, you’re probably going to watch a little more intently.

Online Sports Betting – 7 things to know before you place your first bet

Online sports betting can be a lot of fun. If you’re lucky, you can even make some money out of it, but there are seven, key things you need to take into consideration before you get started.

1) Don’t bet what you can’t afford

The only time it’s safe to bet is when you can afford to lose the money. Betting is fun, but gambling addiction is a serious problem. Do not bet money unless you will be perfectly fine if you lose it all.

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2) Know the sport

Sports betting, oftentimes, relies heavily on the specific rules of a given game. We recommend betting on your favorite sports. Even professional gamers rarely place bets on events that don’t interest them as sports fans.

3) Expect to lose the first time out

You might experience beginners luck, but your first few bets should be seen as an educational experience. As you learn how better to play the odds, you’ll get better at knowing how to place more lucrative bets, but you won’t get that experience until you jump in.

4) It’s a game, not a job

Professional gamblers are few and far between. The healthy attitude to take towards sports betting is simply “I’m doing this for the fun of playing the odds.” Armed with this attitude, betting can be something you do for fun, to relieve stress, and not to burden yourself with more worry.

5) Know your bets

There are a few terms you should know before you get started, a quick glossary as follows…

Straight bet/Single: Betting on the winner.

Point spread: Betting on the winner, but if you bet on the favored team, they have to win by a certain amount of points over the underdog for you to win your bet, inversely, you can win if your underdog team runs a close game.

Future: If you have a good knowledge of the sport, you can make bets well in advance at the start of a season. This means that you can bet on the preferable start-of-the-season odds, rather than waiting until the winning team has become obvious (hence, less profitable odds).

Exotic: Betting on non-sports events. This could be the presidential election, the resolution to a TV show that ends on a cliffhanger, just about anything with more than one possible outcome.

6) Bookmakers make mistakes

Watch how your bet is placed. If someone makes a mistake in placing your bet (it does happen), you don’t want to lose out through no fault of your own.

7) Never borrow and never lend

Once your weekly gambling allowance is done, no more gambling. If one of your friends loses his gambling funds, no more gambling. Smart money management is the only way to facilitate healthy betting ha

Motor Sport Betting – How To Bet On Motor Sport

You can do your betting online, but try to make it out to the races whenever you can. Watching F1 or NASCAR on TV just doesn’t really do it. Attending a race, smelling the octane, feeling the rumble of the seats, hearing the engines, it just doesn’t come across on camera.

When betting on F1, a savvy race fan is at a bit of an advantage, simply because racing is a lower priority for bookmakers, who will tend to focus more on horse racing and football. You’ll see wildly different odds being offered from one bookmaker to the other, so you’re free to shop around and find the best odds for your bet.

Also keep in mind that F1 racing can be wildly unpredictable. One team or racer will tend to dominate a season, but beyond that, it’s very tricky to try and predict the fastest lap and so on. Because there are so many cars and the race goes on for so many miles, anything really can happen. As we’ve said before, gaming has to be for fun first, and as a source of income second. That is especially true with racing, as the unpredictability makes for a lot of fun, but can make it a bit trickier to make serious money with.

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There are two primary methods for making predictions. First, you can simply go on the historical record. If a racer or team have traditionally done very well, many bettors will simply go that route. The other method is… fairly elaborate…

Some of the more serious bettors will take time to analyse statistics such as testing, lap times, sector times and so on, and even check up on post-qualifying interviews with racers and go on what they can gather from that.

You’ll probably develop your own style after awhile based on what seems to work best. Just try to get some experience in hand, make a few bets just for fun and to get ahold of the basics.

With F1 racing, you can make more money on more profitable odds by betting on the Grand Prix before qualifying has taken place. However, this comes with a price, as it is much harder to predict the race so early in the game. All it takes is a few mechanical problems to completely derail your pick. What is recommended is placing your bet on the day of the race itself, or at the very soonest, when you know the starting position of your selection and his rivals.

Cricket Betting – How To Bet On Cricket

It can’t be said enough: If you don’t like or care about a given sport, don’t bother placing bets on that sport. Keeping up with the games, knowing how to make accurate predictions, if it’s not fun, it’s too much work. If you like cricket, go for it, if not, bet on a sport you’re more comfortable with.

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Now, every sport has its own specific rules, so it’s going to have its own specific types of bet. Baseball focuses on money lines rather than point spreads, horse racing focuses on all kinds of crazy rules that make no sense to non-horse race bettors, and cricket has its own set of specific types of wager…

Draw- Because a cricket game can go on three days without a winner being decided, draw bets are much more popular with cricket than they are in most sports betting.

Series Score- International cricket teams will play anywhere from two to five test matches, and up to seven One Day International Matches. A series score is simply betting on how many wins you expect the team to take, and your return will depend on the accuracy of your predictions. You could even bet 0-0 if you expect a dozen draws to occur.

Top Batsman- Simply put, betting on who the top scorer will be on a specific team, or during the match. With test matches, this bet will only apply to the first inning.

Top Bowler- Betting on the top wicket taker on a specific team or during the match. As with a Top Batsman bet, you can also bet on who you think the top bowler will be during an entire series or season.

Next Batsman Out- Betting on which batsman is out next. You can also bet on reasons for dismissal.

Total Innings Run- You can place this bet either before or during a team’s innings. Bet on whether they will score more than or less than a certain number. The odds will, of course, change as the game goes on.

Odds or Even- Betting on whether the number of runs a team scores are odd or even.

In cricket, the odds are simpler than in many other sports. If your team is the underdog, you’ll get “odds against”, which might be 2/1 (pronounced two to one). This means that your return will be £2, plus the £1 you initially invested, making a total of £3. When odds are even, you’ll get £1, plus the £1 you initially invested. When your team is the favorite, you’ll get odds on. If odds on are 1/2 (pronounced two to one on), that means you would get £0.50 plus your initial £1 back.

Basketball Betting – How To Bet On Basketball

This advice goes for betting on any sport: If you don’t like basketball, don’t bother betting on basketball games. It’s not hard to make good money betting on a sport if you know the sport well, and you can only know the sport well if you actually enjoy keeping up with it. Otherwise it can start to feel like a chore. Betting is supposed to be fun, if it wasn’t, gamers would just get second jobs.

Beyond that, one of the most important things to keep in mind when betting on basketball is to never bet against the Harlem Globetrotters.

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But seriously, it might be helpful to know that most basketball gamers tend to focus on point spread betting, rather than straight bets or proposition bets, and so on. This is simply because most bookmakers will focus specifically on point spreads. For a more in-depth explanation of point spread wagering…

For an example, we’ll say that point spread bettor puts up $110 in hopes of winning $100. The extra ten bucks is bookmaker’s “vigorish” if the bettor loses. A bettor backing the favorite team will only collect if their team wins by so many points, settled upon at the time of the wager. This gives underdog bettors a bit of an advantage, as they can win their bet even if their team loses, so long as they lose by less than X number of points.

So, say you bet on the favorite team with a wager of twenty points. If your team wins by more than twenty, you win your $100. If they win by fifteen points, you lose your $110 wager.

If you’re just starting out, there are a few things you should know…

If you live in the US, don’t bet locally

Betting online is really the only way to do this, unless you live in Las Vegas. The exact legality is a little ambiguous, but as a general rule, gambling is illegal. Online, though, you can place bets with bookmakers stationed in parts of the country or the world where operating a gambling business is completely legal.

Check out some tipster sites

Sports betting and stock trading aren’t the same thing. Betting on basketball, it is one hundred percent legal to get some good tips. These websites are usually affiliated with online bookmakers so as to lead you towards placing bets with that bookmaker, but you can (usually) expect good, unbiased advice, and when you’re starting out, you can use all the advice you can get.

Baseball Betting – How To Bet On Baseball

Now, we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: You’ve got to love the sport you’re betting on. If you don’t have a real passion for the game, then keeping up with it becomes more of a chore than something you do for fun, and even though betting CAN get you some cash, you have to approach it with a sense of fun, because you WILL take some losses from time to time, and if you’re not enjoying yourself, that’s enough to make you want to up and quit.

Luckily, baseball is not a hard game to love.

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Trivia time: Did you know that, in Japan, the term they use for baseball translates to “field ball”? In Japan, the sport has been a major source of national pride, and renaming the game is part of an effort to personalize it, to make it more like an authentic piece of Japanese culture, and less like something borrowed from the US.

But anyways, on with how to bet on baseball…

You may be happy to hear that many bookmakers rue baseball season. When taking a lot of baseball bettors, bookmakers complain that they might be lucky just to break even. Baseball is a great sport for bettors since it is so easy to handicap.

Oddly enough, baseball betting isn’t as popular as betting on say, football, simply because not everyone knows how to bet on baseball.

What you need to understand…

Money Lines

There are no point spreads in baseball. In baseball, betting odds are represented as a money line. This means that if you bet on the favorite team, you will have to bet more than one dollar in hopes of winning one dollar. When betting on the underdog, you’ll bet one dollar to win more than a dollar.

Understanding the money line is simple. Sometimes the odds will be represented as 1.50, which would be $1.50 to a dollar, other times, it will be represented as 150, without the decimal, which would still be $1.50 to the dollar. So, if you bet one dollar on the underdog, you stand to win $1.50. To win on the favorite, you’ll have to bet $1.50 to win a dollar.

Generally, bookmakers will offer wagers with a “dime line”, meaning the underdog’s money line is ten cents lower than the favorite’s. So 1.50 for the favorite would be 1.40 for the underdog. This means the favorite bettor will put up 1.50 for 1.00, while underdog bettors will put up 1.00 for 1.40. Of course, you want to look for the bookmaker who will give you the highest payout for the lowest investment.

Beyond that, it comes down to knowing all about baseball. If you’re new to the sport, talk with some veteran fans and gamers and learn all you can. A lot of what you need to know can only really be attained through experience.

Football Betting – How To Bet On Football

As with betting on any sport, you need to actually have a personal interest in football if you hope to make some money on it. You can still win any bet placed on any sport that you don’t care about, but if you hope to keep it up, you’re going to get bored. Gaming is supposed to be fun, thrilling, a way to pit your own wits against those of the bookmaker. If you’re focusing on a sport you could give a care less about, it’s going to become more of a chore than a hobby.

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That said, the first thing you should know is what kind of bets you’ll be able to place. For the most part, football betting goes by the same bet types as any other sport, but with a few unique bet types…

Halftime Bet: A halftime wager is a bet placed only on the first or second half of the game. The line offered will either be a point spread, a money line, or a combination of both.

Money line Wager: The team you place your bet on only has to win, unlike with a point spread, wherein, if you bet on the favorite team, they have to win by a certain margin if you hope to see a return. In a money line, the amount you win depends on a number of factors.

Proposition Bets: These are exotic bets specific to a football game. Rather than betting on a win/lose proposition, you bet on odd details of the game, like which team will be the first to score, which team will have more penalties, who will make the shortest touchdown, etcetera. These are usually only offered on the more high profile football games like the Rose Bowl or matches between long-time rivals.

If you live in the US, know that sports betting on a football game can get you in some serious trouble outside of Nevada. US law dictates that nobody can operate a sports betting operation outside of Nevada, Delaware or Oregon, and both Delaware and Oregon have state laws restricting sports betting operation. However, you can bet online with bookmakers stationed in Nevada or other parts of the world with no fear of breaking the law on your part.

Because the law regarding sports betting in the US tends to be a bit ambiguous, some bookmakers stationed in other countries are reluctant to work with American bettors, but there are a lot of betting sites out there, so it shouldn’t be hard to find somebody willing to place bets for you.

Horse Racing Betting – How To Bet On Horse Racing

There’s one thing that you absolutely need to have before you start betting on horse races: An appreciation for the sport.

Everything else can be learned, but if you don’t have an actual, sincere appreciation for horse racing as a fan, it will feel more like a chore than a hobby to keep up with upcoming events and horse racing culture. If it’s not fun, then the entire purpose of gaming is defeated.

That said, here’s a basic guide to turning your appreciation for horse racing into a hobby (and hopefully, a secondary income).

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Know Your Bets

Every sport has its own rules, so every sport has its own types of bets you can place. Here are the types you’ll need to know for horse racing…

Straight Bet: Also known as a single or a “Win bet”. The simplest, and most common. Place your bet on your favorite horse, and collect if your horse comes in first.

Place: With a place bet, you collect whether your horse comes in first or second.

Show: You collect if your horse comes in first, second, or third. Of course, you stand to win less and less money between a straight bet, a place, and a show.

Combination Bet: Pick anywhere from two to four horses to win in chosen order. Your return depends on the accuracy of your prediction.

Pick 3: Pick the winners of three races in a row. Depending on who you’re betting with, you can either pick three at once, or pick one at the beginning of each race.

Quinella (AKA, Reverse Forecast): Pick two horses to finish in the first two places, in either order.

Perfecta/Exacta/Straight Forecast: Pick the two winning horses, but they must cross in the order you predicted for you to collect.

Trifecta: Same as Perfecta, but with three horses.

Superfecta: Predict the first four horses across the finish line in the right order.

Daily Double: Pick the winners of the first two races of the day. You must place your bet before the first race begins.

Jackpot: Pick the first place winners of six races to share in the jackpot. The jackpot prize may be a sum of money or other prizes, depending on the particular track.

Beyond understanding the bets you can place, all you really need is the betting savvy that comes with experience. Place a few bets, and you’ll start developing an instinct for how to more accurately predict races,

You can bet on horse races online at any number of betting websites, but if you get a chance, nothing really beats seeing the race live, chatting with fellow enthusiasts, and being right there as it happens.

Understanding Online Sports Book Odds

When you’re just getting started, sports book odds can be a little confusing. If you just want to stick to singles, or straight bets, you can usually go on instinct. If you know the home team to generally perform a lot better than the away team, that’s easy enough to predict. It gets complicated, though, when you start getting into point spreads and long shots and so on.

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So with that in mind, we’ll try to quickly sum up the basics of how sports betting bookmakers arrange their odds…

First off, understand that a bookmaker is always going to arrange the odds in his own favor. No matter how an event turns out, the bookmaker is going to make a profit. This holds true for casinos, bookmakers, and even carnival game operators. If the majority of the bettors aren’t paying, the whole industry collapses.

An example of how this is done: Say a football game takes place. The outcome will either be win lose or draw. Say the actual, real life, predicted odds are…

Home team win: Even
Draw: Two to one
Away team win: Five to one

A bookmaker will invariably reduce the odds to something like…

Home team win: Four to five
Draw: Nine to Five
Away: Four to One

So basically, no matter who wins, if the bookmaker gets just one bet on each outcome, he makes a profit. If three bettors come in, the first places four on the home team, the second places nine on a draw, and the third places four on the away team, two bettors will lose, and one will win. So say at the start of the event, the bookmaker is up seventeen bucks, and at the end, he’ll pay out anywhere from five to fourteen dollars. So as a bare minimum, he’ll make at least a three dollar profit.

This is why you have to understand that gambling is supposed to be for fun. If you always take the safest bet, you’ll probably come out on top after X number of bets, but the bookmaker’s job is not to make it easy for you. The joy of gambling is in pitting your own mind against the bookmaker’s, and the thrill of coming out on top and beating the bookmaker’s system. If sports are a competition between two teams, then sports betting is a contest of wits between a bookmaker and his bettors.