Sports betting systems

Sports betting systems have been around pretty much since the dawn of gambling. As soon as someone started offering odds on an event, wise-guys began devising systems to beat the bookie and to secure an advantage on the bets they placed. What exactly is a sports betting system and are there ones out there that guarantee winnings? A sports betting system is a set of rules a handicapper comes up with in regards to the odds offered by the bookie and the bets placed by the player, which are meant to offer the player positive long-term EV on the bet. Such systems can be extremely diverse, as a matter of fact, everyone can come up with their own system.

The internet is loaded with sites advertising various fail-proof systems that guarantee players out of this world winning rates. Most such systems are scams and all of them fail to deliver miserably. If someone comes up with a lucrative system, he’s got at least a zillion better things to do with it than to sell it online for $20. The reason why many of these bogus betting systems can back their incredible rates up with actual numbers is the so called Martingale system, which you may know all too well from casino gambling. The Martingale system is a “chase” system, which means it has players betting ever more, so that when they do hit a win, they recover all their previous losses, plus they show a profit as well. Sports betting systems posting those great numbers only report the wins and ignore all the losses that occur while chasing.

If you’re a casino gambler, you probably know though that the Martingale system is by no means a viable approach to gambling of any sort, and in the end it only results in epic meltdowns for the user’s bankroll. Besides, if you ever heard a thing or two about sports betting, you probably know that chasing your losses is just about the worst thing you can do. The bottom line: any system that is a viable one will only show a marginal profit-line for the user, meaning a little over 50%. You may have heard this one too: winning in sports betting feels a lot like losing. The margins you’ll be able to work with will be so small that even if you exploit them to your best and you reap excellent results, you’ll still lose a pretty big percentage of your bets. If you’re looking for a system that will make you money on almost every single bet you can forget that. It’s not going to happen.

The bookmaker’s vigorish (and the poker rake in online poker – thank God for the poker rakeback) will simply not allow that to happen. What about sports betting systems that do work? There surely are such systems out there too. As said above, everyone can create a system of his own, but that takes a lot of time, knowledge, stats-churning and effort. It’s always easier to take advantage of the work someone else has done. Adopting someone else’s system is a bit tricky though, and you’ll find that even if it does seem to work for you, you will always feel rather uneasy about not understanding the underlying intricacies that work for you. The best thing is to study the system properly and to understand it, even if the principles on which it’s based are not your own. The way you apply the system is also crucial. If you use an otherwise reasonable system the wrong way, you will not see any results.