Sports fans, we really do like to bet don\’t we? Apparently we\’re happy to stake our money on anything from a boxing match to a box trifecta. The advisory company H2 Gambling Capital recently released statistics revealing that the average adult in the UK or the US will lose approximately US$400 gambling annually. And they\’re not even close to the Australians (who bet more than anyone else) who lose more than $1,400 for every adult every year.

It all adds up to a whole lot of money. Recognisable sportsbetting markets like the English Premier League, NFL Football, NBA Basketball, NHL Hockey, and MLB Baseball turn over billions of dollars each year. They\’re operated like multi-billion dollar industries too. Gone are the days of the tweed-covered bookie begrudgingly handing out fivers. The major online bookmakers today are slick and sophisticated animals. They employ expert staff to set starting prices and use advanced statistical models to manage their risk in real time.

But all the efforts of the world\’s bookmakers are nothing in comparison to the time expended by punters themselves. Consider the time you spend thinking about a bet before you place it and then multiply that by the number of bets each day. The hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent trying to predict the outcome of chance events must be simply staggering.

But is all this effort being put into the right activities?

Two things determine the expected payout of a bet; (1) the likelihood of the selected result, and (2) the odds accepted for that result. Improving on either one of these factors improves the expected return of the bet. Yet, for all the effort expended attempting to predict the right result, it seems that proportionately very little effort is expended securing the best possible odds.

This is hardly logical. It is not possible to anticipate the result of a sporting event with any meaningful confidence and even guessing at the likelihood of a particular result is extremely hard. At least some of the time spent trying to predict the outcome of a sporting event would be better spent comparing the odds offered by the various bookmakers and selecting the bookmaker which offers the best return on this particular bet. It\’s quick and easy to shop around the many online sportsbooks, compare odds, and find a better offer. There are even plenty of services out there that will do it for you for free.

Professional gamblers often have accounts with multiple bookmakers, pay close attention to the odds offered by each, and seek out the best odds before they place a bet. But the average punter tends to mindlessly accept the odds offered by his usual bookmaker. This is a large and costly missed opportunity.

Bookmakers often post noticeably different odds for the same event and it\’s common to find mismatches of up to 10% from one bookmaker to another. This percentage is there for the taking and it mystifies me that more people aren\’t shopping around for better odds.

Tim Crisp is the founder of Mashbet, a free service that allows bettors to compare odds from multiple online bookmakers. An extended version of this article is available at http://www.mashbet.com/articles/odds-as-important-as-pick/

Tim Crisp is the founder of Mashbet, a free service that allows bettors to compare odds from multiple online bookmakers. Visit it at http://www.mashbet.com/ or read an extended version of this article at http://www.mashbet.com/articles/odds-as-important-as-pick/

Author Bio: Tim Crisp is the founder of Mashbet, a free service that allows bettors to compare odds from multiple online bookmakers. An extended version of this article is available at http://www.mashbet.com/articles/odds-as-important-as-pick/

Category: Sports
Keywords: odds,bet,compare,bookmaker,sportsbook,line,best,return,maximise,better