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Smart sports betting, and football betting mainly, is in accordance with the skills of the teams involved rather than random chance. This difference profoundly affects the appropriate betting strategies or systems. Understanding this difference is exactly what makes an effective sports bettor.
Many of the betting systems and strategies available today are based upon general probabilities of a win or loss and are modified versions of systems developed for games of chance. Alternatively, sports betting – and even poker – is just not according to random chance and probabilities, but on the skill of the contestants. Consequently the underlying premise of sport betting is significantly different than betting on games of chance.
Although most online gambling strategies designed for games of chance are mathematically unsound, in practice if one has roughly a 50% chance of winning, these systems can at least appear to offer a highly effective means of betting. Within the long run, the failure of such systems is more or less inevitable because it is based upon the Gambler’s Fallacy. Gambler’s Fallacy is the mistaken impression that particular results are “due” determined by previous outcomes in a series of independent trials of a random process. By way of example, the if one is tossing coins, and heads come up repeatedly, the gambler may conclude that what this means is tails is “due” to come up next; whereas, in reality, the chances that the next coin toss will cause tails is precisely the same no matter the range of times heads has come up already.
In skill-based wagering, the bettor with the most knowledge of the contestants involved has a definite advantage over the bettor that’s hoping that the desired outcome “is due” determined by probabilities. There’s absolutely no sound mathematical probability that any specific football team “is due” anything. Just think of Arsenal that won 14 consecutive games in 2002, or Derby County F.C. that lost 37 consecutive games in 2007-08. The determining factor of such runs was the skill of the teams, not random chance.
That is not to say that random chance isn’t involved, of-course it is. Any team may make mistakes or have accidents, leading to upsets and surprise outcomes. Nonetheless the smart sports bettor knows that the skill level of the team in question is significantly more very likely to influence the outcome than chance and luck. This really is what makes a successful sports bettor in the long run. Anyone can get lucky on occasion, but if one learns to make intelligent bets in accordance with the skills of the teams involved, one is much more likely to win significant amounts of money over the long run.
