Pirate Party – We love betting

There are many different sports betting rules you can use to make a profit gambling on your favorite teams and events. Though many sports betting novices only think of betting on a team to win, there are a wide variety of bets available at most sportsbooks that deal with both team and individual performance. Each of these sports bets have their own set of parameters and rules, so it’s important to learn about them before you wager your hard-earned money on a sporting event. Here are five of the most popular sports bets and the betting rules that accompany them.

Moneyline

Moneyline bets are simple wagers that pick which team will win a game. Moneylines are set in the format of either minus or plus a number. When a moneyline is minus, it means that the team is favored to win by those odds. For instance, if the St. Louis Cardinals are -135 to win against the Pittsburgh Pirates that means that you would have to wager $135 on the Cardinals to win $100. However, if the Pittsburgh Pirates are at +135, that means they’re underdogs, and you’ll win significantly more money if you bet on them and they win. These rules often restrict the amount of money you can wager on individual bets, though moneylines typically offer higher overall maximum bets than parlay bets or prop bets.

Point Spread

Point spreads represent a figure set by Las Vegas oddsmakers that are intended to compel people to bet on the game. You can find point spread bets for any sport in which two teams score against each other, though they’re most applicable for basketball and football betting. For instance, if the Miami Heat is favored to win by seven points over the Indiana Pacers that means the Heat would have to win by at least eight points to “cover the spread.” The Pacers, meanwhile, could either win or lose by less than seven points to cover the underdog bet. Like with moneyline bets, most rules at sportsbooks will allow you place high maximum wagers on point spread bets.

Parlay

Parlay bets are a popular form of betting, though many experts steer clear of them because of their higher risk factor. Parlay bets work by combining multiple wagers into one overall bet, meaning every individual aspect of the parlay needs to happen in order for a gambler to win the bet. The more bets you add to a parlay, the more money you could potentially win, but the risk is also extremely high. Most experts recommend steering clear of parlay bets that incorporate over three factors, and many gamblers don’t do them at all. The rules also often prevent bettors from wagering too much money on these bets.

Teaser

Teaser bets function much like parlay bets, except they allow bettors to reduce the total point spreads for each of the individual components of the bet. For instance, in football, if you combine three teams into a teaser, you can “buy” certain odds, reducing the spreads by two, four, and even eight points. Of course, by doing so, you’re reducing the total amount of money you can win on the bet. Because teasers can significantly reduce point spreads, sports betting rules also prevent you from betting too heavily on these bets, frequently topping out at a maximum bet of only $500.

Futures

Futures bets function just like they sound: they look ahead to the future of teams or individual players and ask bettors to make a prediction. This can mean total team win totals, individual player awards like the MVP, or whether or not a team will make the playoffs. These are considered “proposition bets,” or “prop” bets. Many gamblers place these bets before the regular season begins so that they have a strong rooting interest throughout the course of the season and not just week to week.

Though oddsmakers offer a virtually limitless amount of bets you can place on your favorite teams, there are certain sports betting rules governing how much money you can place on them and how many bets you can combine. Parlay bets, teaser bets and prop bets all limit the maximum amount of money you can bet, and they also set the amount of either teams you can add to the parlay or the point spreads you can tease down. Still, savvy gamblers can take advantage of this wide array of available bets and play within the rules to make money betting on their favored match ups.

The greatest game for Atletico Madrid in 40 years comes today at the Vicente Claderon, a CL semifinal against Mourinho’s Chelsea. Full squad for los Cholchoneros as long as key keeper Courtois, who has a contract clause not to play against the team he belongs, Chelsea, got the clearance most probably because Atletico paid the huge fee for his clause, while Arda Turan has been fully recovered and made it to the list. Turan will start to the bench though and another problem may arrives in case that Juanfran, Gabi, Koke (plus Insua) get booked today something that means they are losing the return leg suspended.

Chelsea traveled in Madrid coming from the shocking home defeat against Sunderland, a defeat that as everything shows, will cost them the league title in the Premier League. Of course this is a CL semifinal, Mourinho has the know-how and the experience to cope with that. Peter Cech who didn’t play against the black cats will most probably feature today, right back Ivanović is suspended but Mourinho’s greater concern comes for Belgium forward Eden Hazard who has been struggling recently but made it in the list. He is doubt until last minute, Eto’o is out injured.

When comes to a CL semi final the home ground gives a strong advantage and this time this advantege becomes gigantic as long as Atletico Madrid is the host team. The rojiblancos have managed to built a fortress in Vicenta Calderon where they allow only 2 shots average in their goal in La Liga. Real escaped with a 2-2 draw shoting just 6 times on target, Barcelona failed to beat them in 4 games this season, they had only 4 shots between Atleti’s posts in the 1st round there!

It will be really difficult for Chelsea – and for every other team around – to go there and beat Atletico. Simeone with a full squad will not get all over Chelsea to win the game from the 1st minute. He has his philosophy and his strategy and if Atletico fails to score with the conventional methods they will start the siege and it will be really interesting to see how much Chelsea will last defending.

If one day your bookmaker offers you a betting credit with which to gamble, you should think very well should you take it or not. At first glance, this proposal looks great, but it can put you in some serious trouble if you lost the control over the situation.

The practice a betting company to offer loans to selected players which to enable them to bet is used by many companies. Of course, with very clear terms and conditions and with small amounts, but there are exceptions.

Just a note here, the betting credit should not be confused with the betting bonuses the bookmakers offer to their clients. They are two different things. When you take the bonus you are not obliged to return the money, but simply to play them out, while if you take a betting loan you have to return every penny you’ve got.

Here comes the main problem with betting loans which is in the ease with which they are received which brings the false sense of money you have available and you can risk by betting.

Indeed, almost all proposals for betting loans are for relatively small amounts, but there are cases where a player get offers for 30 000 pounds. This is precisely the case of a player from England, who once offered such credit within a few years lost all money. Currently he is on court which should decide must he return the whole amount or not.

In general, you should avoid taking betting or other loans for gambling. One of my favorite rules when betting on football matches is to play with money I have earned from the bookmaker. This does not imply quick profits from betting, but if a system is profitable, it will be profitable today and after an year. This gives you the security that you will not lose money when betting and find yourself in similar situation like this player from England.

The battling for keeping its place in the Premier League team of Norwich will travel to play with Southampton, which have solved this problem long ago and on the next year it again will play among the best football teams in England. Norwich definitely don’t play well away from home as they recorded four consecutive away defeats, something that doesn’t help them to improve their chances for staying in the Premier League.

This is seen by the bookies around the world and they offer very high odds for a Canaries’ win in this match. All three world biggest bookmakers – William Hill, bet365 and Bet at home offer odds of six for Norwich to win this match. The odds for a home win are between 1.55 with Bet at home, 1.57 suggested by bet365 and 1.6 which is the offer of William Hill. All those who think that this match will end with a draw will get odds of 3.75 from William Hill and bet365 and 3.8 from Bet at home.

My personal feeling about this match is that the victory will not come so easy for Mauricio Pochettino’s players. Norwich will play this match as hard as possible, just like a team which is in danger from relegation. We all know that in such matches this makes everything possible. That’s why I don’t like so much the idea to bet on so low coefficients offered by the bookies for a home win. A possible bet for a draw or for an away win also seems to me too risky as it is obvious that Norwich can’t play good enough away from home.

However, if you really need to bet on this match the most reasonable bet which I could see is to bet for Norwich on Asian Handicap with +1, although the rate of 1.83 proposed by bet365 doesn’t make this bet particularly attractive.

The goalscoring betting markets also don’t offer many good options so the best advice I can give you is just to stay away from this match and keep your money in your wallets.

Quite often on Internet you can find information about many ELO betting systems and how they can be used in sports betting. In this article we are not going to discuss in details the various statistical formulas used in calculation of the ELO coefficient, but rather how we can use this system most efficiently for the making our betting predictions.

One of the biggest problems which anyone face when using ELO system for betting on football matches is how to convert the advantage or disadvantage for either team in real odds. Here, we probably should explain that all ELO systems give a more real rankings of each team from a given championship, because the real strength of any opponent which a team must play with are calculated before the match.

One option to calculate this is to calculate the probability of a team to score a goal. For this purpose we need to do an ELO table which is not about who will win, lose or draw, but about whether a team will be able to score one, two, three or more goals.

In practice, this means we should have four or five ELO tables which we should convert into probabilities for each team to score a goal or not to. When we are ready, all that we should do is to convert the chances for each of both teams to score a certain number of goals in a comparative table.

Through this table and comparing the odds of both teams, we can easily calculate the percentages for each result and hence grouping together the different rates for different results. When we are ready with that we can easily calculate the chances of each team to be the winner in a match, to make a draw and so on. Similarly, we can easily calculate the odds for Under or Over 2.5 goals scored by both teams as well as any other similar betting option.

I am pretty sure that this betting system is interesting enough and you could try it in your betting repertoire.

This list of 10 fundamental concepts for sports betting success is primarily intended for those new to the discipline, but could be helpful to more experienced bettors. This list isn’t exhaustive or definitive. Your ‘mileage may vary’ but these are concepts that provide a good theoretical foundation for profitable handicapping and betting:

1) Educate yourself to how the line is made and why it moves: A common mistake of the inexperienced sports bettor is an erroneous understanding of what the pointspread represents. The conventional wisdom is that the pointspread is a prediction of who will win and by how much. There is predictive component to it, of course, but its primary purpose is to split the betting action equally on each side. This seldom works out perfectly with the opening number which is why the line is moved after it is made–to attract more money to one side or other. Understanding as much as possible about the art and science of pointspread formulation and movement is essential to successful handicapping.

2) Compile and Use Power Ratings: Successful sports handicapping is an aggregation of small edges that will add up over time to produce longterm profits. The key to consistent profitability is to exploit lines that offer wagering value on one side or the other. The first step in finding value is to compile and use power ratings, which are simply numeric ratings of each team. This provides an objective basis for comparison against the pointspread. You can either make your own power ratings, use the ratings from publications like The Gold Sheet with or without modification, or a hybrid of the two. Power ratings are typically a ‘starting point’ for more in depth handicapping but they’re essential when trying to work through a long card of college basketball or football.

3) Shop for the Best Price: Once you know how you want to bet it’s time to go shopping—shop around and find the most advantageous line at which to place your wager. On the surface a half point here and there may not seem significant but these small edges add up over time.

4) Look for opportunities to bet against ‘popular teams’: There are worse things to be in sports gambling than a ‘contrarian’ and more often than not its advisable to go against ‘popular’ teams. The public has a tendency to overrate the teams they like and underrate the ones they don’t care as much about. Furthermore, bookmakers often ‘shade’ the line according to this public popularity—in essence charging bettors a ‘premium’ for playing the popular side.

5) When handicapping football, understand the importance of “key” numbers, particularly 7 and 3: We’ll discuss key numbers in greater detail closer to football season but long story short—the most common margins of victory in football are 3 and 7 points along with multiples thereof. For that reason the corresponding pointspreads are referred to as ‘key numbers’. Moves on to or off of key numbers are much more significant than garden variety line movement.

6) If you can be objective, a “local” team can be a great advantage: The trick here, of course, is the ‘objectivity’ component. Assuming you don’t have an emotional investment in the fortunes of a local team it’s much easier to get in depth information that could be relevant to your handicapping. The Internet has leveled the playing field somewhat in terms of getting information once available only to ‘locals’ but you’d be amazed how much actionable information never makes it into the media. Here’s a tip—if you live near a college campus befriend a member of the campus police force. The information they have privy to—particularly at bigtime football schools—is incredible.

7) Require a greater ‘burden of proof’ for playing the favorite: Pretty much self-explanatory. In simplest terms, there are three things that can happen in any sports wagering proposition involving a pointspread: The favorite can win and cover, the favorite can win and not cover, and the dog can win outright. If you’re betting a favorite, two of the three possible occurrences will cost you your bet For that reason, it’s not a bad idea to require a higher standard for playing favorites. There are opportunities where a favorite can present a good value but more often than not you’re better looking at underdogs first. This isn’t to say that you can’t find value betting on favorites but don’t get hoodwinked into laying points just because mainstream sports media types label them as ‘superior’ to their opposition.

8) When It Comes to Sports Services, ‘Don’t Believe the Hype’: Here’s the bottom line: if a sports service says a game is a ‘lock’ or a ‘fix’, or if they say that a point shaving situation exists, or if they say that they’ve hit 70% or higher for a season, 99.9% of the time–if not more–they are lying. Plain and simple. I’m not going to naively suggest that situations of point shaving and fixing don’t exist, but when they do your friendly sports service won’t know about it until they hear it on the news like the rest of us.

Good sports handicappers and sports services are like good stockbrokers. They should be information resources–using their specialized knowledge and experience to do work that you don’t have the time to do Sports handicapping isn’t rocket science–it does, however, require a significant investment in time and good sources of information. Experience and contacts within the sports gambling industry are also helpful. This is what good sports services offer, but separating the wheat from the chaff is no small feat. Just remember the old saying ‘if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.’

9) Don’t ever think you “know it all” and don’t trust anyone who says they do: Sports handicapping is like any other discipline–exceedingly complex. The more you learn about it, the more you realize how much more that there is to know. The biggest mistake a handicapper can make–or anyone in any endeavor for that matter– is to think that a complex discipline is ‘easy’. Minds are like parachutes–they don’t function unless they are open. It is essential to remember that in sports handicapping, as in life, there is always more to learn.

10) Work to develop a disciplined, systematic approach to sports wagering: Simply stated, always do your work. Knowing when NOT to bet is as important as knowing what to bet on. If you haven’t had time to accurately handicap a game or games, just pass. Don’t make significant bets on ‘hunches’ or just to have action. Hard work and intelligent work are the keys to sports handicapping success.