Undoubtedly, sports analytics is a hot topic among bettors, along with reliable sources of betting tips from professional sports tipsters and betting experts, such as:
+ Football Betting Master,
+ Betting Gods,
+ Bets For Today,
just to name a few of them.

All of these websites give away a portion of the information for free, which is a good way to test their services and the quality of tips you get from them. All you have to do is register for free with your e-mail address.

However, they also have to make money somehow, so they all offer a paid membership (or call it a “premium service” if you like), which always gives you more information, hence more chance to win.

Which betting tips website do you use, and why?
What’s your experience with the accuracy of the tips you’ve received?

The absolutely strong and unbeatable Team Number One in the League (winning all their games in the season so far) is playing against Team Number Eighteen (who have lost all their games in the season so far). Number One scores an early goal in the first few minutes, as it’s supposed to be, just to “live up to the expectations”… then they drag along at 1-0, for 80-85 minutes… seemingly unable to score any more goals, or even if they get a ridiculously obvious chance, they “mess it up”. Then, during the last minutes, they let Number Eighteen score a goal… BOOM! It’s 1-1… DRAW! The most precise way to do this is in the 90th minute, when some bookies are closing their odds already.

Does this story sound familiar to you? We bet it does!

There are of course many other versions of the above scenario, but let’s stick with this one for a bit, analysing the evolution of the odds during the game. This is a perfectly simple example of “how to manipulate the markets” by making everybody believe the wrong thing.

The odds in the above game between No. 1 and No. 18 started at 1.16 – 5.75 – 11.50… then, after that early goal, they immediately changed to 1.10 – 6.30 – 13.00… then to 1.05 – 6.75 – 15.00, then to 1.01 – 7.50 – 24.00… then, out of the blue, in the last minute, the game ended 1-1! Whoever bet any amount on that “unlikely” draw, will cash out 1:7.50!

Oh, and one more important detail you should know… No. 1. had enough points to remain No. 1, in any case… so this draw did not change anything for them. Did it?

No need to mention any names here – you can give No. 1 and No. 18 a name. You have seen this before. You don’t need to be an expert to smell the rotten fish here. It’s disgusting, and puts honest punters off, because they were in fact cheated out of their pockets.

Bottom line: Match fixing is morally wrong, and it is a criminal act. In principle, match fixing is the same as stealing someone’s wallet, or burglarising someone’s house. In the end, it makes the world a worse place. While some bookmakers profit from their punters losing their bets, other bookmakers will be heavily defrauded. No need to feel sorry for the bookies, though. It’s more the punters we need to feel sorry for. It’s tough to lose your stake, even though you did you analysis correctly – except THAT one variable you couldn’t possibly know about. The one variable that multiplies everything by zero, thus rendering the end result zero, too (meaning that you lose your bet). You may have been in such a situation before – when something as unpredictable happens, as in the story above… when something that shouldn’t have happened, still happened… right?

What do we learn here? Bet responsibly, and bet only what you can afford to lose, because you never know for sure what tonight’s game really brings…

PS: The above article tells the story of a match that has been fixed, indeed, not one that you could get the results for in advance, on one of those websites promising you “fixed match results”. Regarding that – as stated in one of our previous articles “Get Fixed Match Results For Free” already – we cannot emphasize often enough that the only free cheese is the one on the mousetrap.

Do you have examples of match fixing?
Let us know in the comments below!

There are many moments in life when it is NOT advisable to bet.

Do NOT bet:
If a betting tip doesn’t feel right.
If YOU don’t feel alright.
If you are intoxicated, have a hangover, a headache, etc.
If you don’t have any money to lose.
If you are under pressure to make money.
If you are upset.
If your focus is elsewhere.

Do bet:
If you have a reasonable explanation for why you think your prediction will occur. (A hint: “I had a hunch” does not count as a “reasonable explanation”. Nor does “I had a dream last night about Messi scoring 2 goals in the first half”.)
If you can afford to lose your stake without getting in trouble, having sleepless nights, or harming your friends and family.
If you want to have fun.

Please Gamble Responsibly.

Watch this insightful interview with Wayne Allyn Root, a professional handicapper, author of The Zen of Gambling and The King of Vegas’ Guide to Gambling, he has a couple of very useful sports betting tips for you, such as:

1) Take teams nobody wants (so-called “underdogs”, or “orphans”, referring to undervalued stocks on Wall Street) – everybody is assuming that they can’t win, and that’s where your chances are!

Wayne Allyn Root’s philosophy is simple: “FIND VALUE. Isolate the few times each year, when every team is undervalued, and buy them, (=play them)… and a few times each year when every team is overvalued, sell them short, (=bet against them), […] value is what gets you sports bet winners.”

Overhyped teams tend to become complacent (teams that win the SuperBowl don’t win again next year), while underhyped teams are angry and willing to perform better. Hence the advice: Go against “glamour teams”: Just because a team wins, it doesn’t mean they will win against the point spread.

2) Don’t lose focus, in two ways: don’t concentrate on minor issues like “which player got injured”, just as you don’t focus on “who is X company’s CFO when you buy stocks”, and bet only on a few selected games where you have a real statistical edge (instead of betting on a large number of games). You can only win with quality, not quantity.

3) Buy Low, Sell High – which is not only the key to sports gambling winners, but to so many other areas of life.

4) You have to know when to stop – just like in a casino: “If you win, walk away”. He emphasises that bettors shouldn’t become greedy after a few successful bets, and they should have money management skills and discipline.

5) History Always Repeats Itself – if you don’t study history, you are doomed to fail because it comes back around. 50 times a year, there are black horses who win against the overhyped teams, out of the blue. Those are the ones you should identify and bet on!

All in all, it’s a very good interview – watch it, it will be worth your time and you will learn something new on “how to place winning bets”.

I stumbled upon a research paper the other day called “Issues related to sports gambling“, written by three well-known academics Robin Insley, Lucia Mok and Tim Swartz from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada.

The authors look at various issues related to sports wagering, such as
i) an expression is obtained for the distribution of the final bankroll using fixed wagers with a specified initial bankroll,
ii) fixed percentage wagers are considered where the Kelly method is extended to the case of simultaneous bets placed at various odds; a computational algorithm is presented to obtain the Kelly fractions, and
iii) they consider the problem of determining whether a gambling system is profitable based on the historical results of bets placed at various odds.

Section 5 (“Is a gambling system profitable?”) of the paper can be particularly interesting for sports betting fans.

The main conclusion of the authors (based on their “extensive personal simulations”) is that it is better to begin with the Kelly system using a bankroll of x1 = $400, and if the bankroll drops below x2 = $200, add the final $100 to the bankroll.

The idea is to ‘kickstart’ the system since a very small bankroll grows slowly with fixed percentage wagering. It would be interesting to see if optimal values for x1 and x2 could be obtained. Again, as long as the prescribed value of Kelly wagering exceeds $3000, you would maintain $3000 betting.

The results that the authors have presented in this paper are readily applicable to sports betting. The real difficulty is coming up with a winning system.