Betting News and Links

Before we begin our in-depth look into what makes or breaks a successful sports betting system, we need to get one fundamental question out of the way: are there sports betting systems out there that work? Obviously, denying the existence of such systems would be the equivalent of denying the existence of successful sports bettors. Every sharp bettor out there who makes a living wagering on sports, uses such a sports betting system. The fact that these systems don’t really have anything in common with the ones you’ll find all over the Internet advertised for a handful of dollars is a different matter.

What is the difference between a truly legitimate sports betting system and one sold as part of an Internet scam? Well, for starters, there’s the win-rate percentage. Scam systems advertise win rates of over 90%. Seeing such fabulous numbers posted should be the first thing to raise a red flag about the nature of the system in question. You see, systems that actually work, cannot produce such incredible winning rates. Scam systems look too good to be true and they indeed are. Why don’t scammers advertise numbers closer to reality then? There are several reasons why they resort to such radical marketing measures. First of all, the customer segment they target is not the one that has any ideas about how a decent betting system’s win and loss rate should shape up. Then there’s the shock value. It’s easier on the would-be customers eyes to see that the system guarantees almost 100% success rate. Lastly, these guys can actually back their claims up with numbers, granted these numbers are based on a faulty chase system which doesn’t exactly work the way they claim it does. The system were talking about is the fallacious Martingale system, casino gamblers know all too well and despise. This system tells the player to double his wager every time he hits a losing snag. This way, provided he has an infinitely large bankroll, sooner or later he will happen upon a win which will then recover all his previous losses and will end up generating a little bit of profit on the side as well. This would all work handily, if the player did indeed have an infinitely large bankroll. But since that’s not quite the case, the whole thing usually blows up within a less than reasonable number of bets. The scam systems disregard the losses that precede the single win mentioned above, and that pretty much explains the out of this world winning rates they post.

A legitimate sports betting system is much less attractive for squares, because it doesn’t really promise anything and it doesn’t quite make any guarantees either. Winning sports betting feels a lot like losing. Even a winner’s success rate is nothing to be envious of for a square. Basically, if you manage to win more than 50% of your bets, you can consider yourself a winner. That’s a far cry from the 90% rates advertised by scammers.

In addition to that, decent systems require tones of work, even more discipline, and some pretty awesome straight and reverse handicapping skills. Such systems usually consists of two distinct parts. One about bankroll management, the other about securing positive long-term expected value. Bankroll management is a fairly straight deal. All one needs to do is to set a maximum amount which he or she should never exceed on any single game wager-wise. The rest is all about sticking to the rules, and resisting temptation to overbet “locks”. Securing value is an entirely different story though, details on which I’ll provide in a different article. Being able to secure positive expected value is what success in online poker hinges on as well. Rakeback is one huge step towards finding positive EV. Check out a rakeback site like best-poker-rakeback.net for the best rake rebate deals, or become one of the poker props who earn positively fabulous rakeback percentages, and who often end up being paid to play.