It is advised from an early age to follow your passion. Being passionate about something is a great way to move forward in that thing. However, passion, if applied in the wrong arenas, could be fatal. Betting is one of the areas where passion should be very carefully dealt with. Betting could be fun to a betting professional while it could be disastrous to the majority of gamblers. Yes, gambling could be a tremendous problem and before we get deeper into the art of betting professionals it is crucial we understand the ills that gambling could bestow.
Who are those who never make it?
The urge to play carefully distinguishes a problem gambler from a betting professional. Gambling gets people a terrific thrill. The idea of gaining a larger sum than was tossed around is very appealing and it is very easy to lose oneself in its grips. This is exactly what happens with a problem gambler. They are hooked to the game, bound to it in an inhuman way, and are only driven by the thought of going for one more round! The gambling of choice is also very different for a problem gambler. They are generally hooked on something simplistic and stupid as a slot machine which depends completely on chance. Being hooked to a slot machine sounds like a very ridiculous problem but it is a very real one and it is getting bigger every day.
The thing about problem gamblers is that they are played along by emotions, and emotion alone. When they play, a chemical called dopamine is secreted in their body. Dopamine is what is called the happy hormone. It attaches to those neurotransmitters in the brain that directs happiness. One can say that the problem gamblers are the ones who get a rush from the game, a kind of a high, and thus are addicted to the game!
How is a Betting professional different?
The mind of a betting professional works somewhat differently from that of a problem gambler. Where the mind of a gambler stops when they see their beloved slot machine, the mind of a betting professional goes on overdrive. As already mentioned, the choice of game for a betting professional is also different from that of a problem gambler. They do not go for games like roulette or the slots which are purely based on chance but for games where there is a chance. Sports betting and blackjack are some of the games where a betting professional may be able to tweak the circumstances to get better odds and thus a better chance at winning. It's the effort that they put in that drives a betting professional instead of the sole urge of "just one more round".
Sports Betting
The margin for bookies in the market is nearly equal to about 7%. This implies that if a total bet of 10 000 has been made by all the punters then the bookies get to keep 700 out of it. The goal in sports betting would be to find that a bookie has made a mistake in calculation with the calculation of probability. And it is fairly easy to do so- these calculations are loaded and dependent on so many factors! Overlooking a factor that could be a turning point is highly probable under such situations.
But before that, do you understand what the odds are? If not, then you are in for a big surprise! Say, in a match to be held between Ajax and Bayern Munich and today's football predictions tell you the following odds.
Home Win | Draw | Away Win |
4.04 | 4.09 | 1.97 |
Do you know how to interpret these numbers? If not, then you are surely going to lose in your endeavours of betting. You will indeed be lucky once in a while, but you will be playing the same way as a problem gambler plays the slot machine. The above chart can however be simplified if represented as a percentage.
Home Win | Draw | Away Win |
4.04 | 4.09 | 1.97 |
24.77% | 24.47% | 57.76% |
If you try to sum up the percentages in this new chart you will find that the final result you get is not equal to 100%. That is because the bookie is keeping their share as profit in this calculation. This is quite a tricky calculation and to know more about the betting background it is recommended you do some of the courses on betting academy.
Now, interpreting the table has become much easier. Expressed as percentages, these numbers are much simpler to understand. A 57,76% chance implies that Ajax is likely to win the match by that percentage, but how did the bookie come to such a conclusion?
A rule of nature could be very significant under such a situation: if one is close to attaining the knowledge about the true reality or nature of something, then the likelihood of survival of that individual increases.
Simply speaking, one who knows more has, according to rowdie.co.uk a better chance at winning. This is true for any field that you choose to pursue in your life. A bookmaker lives by it and the real task of a betting professional to make a truer prediction. Once they find a more correct prediction for e.g. EPL of their own, they have to simply compare it against the odds offered by a bookmaker.
However, these require great insights regarding everything that could happen in a game and one has to find the gap amongst hundreds of events that are going to take place in the match. This is tedious and time-consuming work and you simply cannot do it for all the teams in the league. This is where football predictions today could be a great help to you.
How Accurate Can Football Predictions Today Be?
That is a really good question to deal with! If you are looking for football predictions, you will find so many picks to choose from that it may eventually become quite difficult for you to make the choice. In fact, a lot of them do not work, and if you want, you can learn that the hard way by going for any of the numerous forebet services. The easiest way around this problem is to show the particular markets where you do great.
There are 4 categories for the leagues and markets:
- High Predictability
- Good Predictability
- Medium Predictability
- Low Predictability
The high predictability is the ones proven to be the real money-makers. Betting on such a market will ensure that you will end up with a decent revenue.
What you have to carefully figure out while making a choice is whether you see value in it or not. You also need to figure out how real the predictions could be. The problem with a real-life match is that any number of things could go wrong, it may happen that the star player probably will get an awful injury or someone may get off the team at the last moment. These key details make all the difference in a bet and if you are sure that you have done enough research, then you can go for the bet.
Blackjack
Can you guess what the house edge for blackjack is? Let's put in a hint! The house edge for a slot machine is 2 to 7%. A roulette machine has a house edge of 2.78-5.6% and a sportsbook range of around 3-10%. The house edge for blackjack is, however, incredibly low at only 0.5% this means that if a casino sees an exchange of $1 million, then they can gain a profit of just $5000.
What a betting professional does is employ this uncanny skill of card counting. It is a difficult trick to learn but once learned allows the betting professional to shift the scales from 0.5% of the house edge to an advantage of 1.1% in their favour. By this method, these professionals could make as much as $150 in about an hour.
There are several ways to count cards. The basic idea of card counting is assigning values to the cards available in the deck. This is done by means of a Hi-Lo System wherein a card or a group of cards is assigned numbers such as:
- 2 through 6 are assigned with 1
- 7 through 9 are assigned with 0
- 10 through Ace are assigned with -1
What a professional does is keep track of the number of high cards that are moving out of the deck. The more the high cards move out of the deck, the less there is a chance of getting one. The betting professional can easily manipulate the game to his favour from this idea and can decide whether to fold or keep betting for a good win.
This is a very basic and general idea of card counting which is a humongous subject and needs quite the dedication, discipline, and focus to learn. You can find many guidelines and tutorials for beginner's card counting over the internet.