Online Betting Guide – All the Basics up to Advanced Strategies

The online betting industry has exploded over the last few years, and online sports punters can bet on pretty much any sport in any way they choose. But this bewildering variety can sometimes be as much of a curse as a blessing. Without a clear plan of attack, you may struggle to make a profit, even if you are an expert in your chosen sport. What you need is a strategy.

The term ‘betting strategy’ covers a wide array of approaches to betting, that can loosely be called strategies. These range from systems such as the Kelly Criterion, which tells you how much money you should wager on a particular bet, to strategies that capitalize on perceived flaws in sports betting markets, such as betting on big-priced outsiders at home in Premier League games.

There is a wide selection of betting strategies, systems, and approaches that you can adopt, some of them more successful than others, but which ones you choose often depend on what you’re trying to achieve and on your level of experience.

Betting for Beginners

When you’re starting out in sports betting, the world of the online sportsbook can be a little intimidating, but once you know what some of the jargon means, and how online sports are betting works, you will realize that the basics of online betting are straightforward.

In fact, making a bet with an online sportsbook is a lot easier than going into a real-world betting shop, where you have to fill out a physical betting slip with the correct information. Betting online is a simple matter of clicking on the bet you want, then adding your stake and pressing confirm.

But to help get you started, here is a quick guide to some essential online betting terms:

• Stake – The amount of money you risk in a bet.
• Odds – The price of a particular contender. Odds, which can be displayed as Decimal, Fractional or American, will tell you what return you will get if your bet wins.
• Each Way – Each-way betting involves two bets on the same contender. One bet is a simple bet to win, while the second is a bet on your selection finishing in the places.
• Accumulator – A type of bet with multiple selections in which the returns from the first selection become the stake on the second and so on.
• In-Play – Sometimes known as Live Betting, this involves betting on an event while it is ongoing, which is a fast-moving, more volatile betting arena.

Of course, there’s much more to sports betting. There are many types of bets, and thousands of markets to bet in, covering pretty much every aspect of every sport, and you can find out much more about the world of online betting with our more detailed guides bellow:

Betting Strategy Basics

A betting strategy or system is anything that you apply to your betting on a regular basis with the intention of making your betting profitable or more profitable.

And, just as there are many aspects to betting, there are many types of strategies to match. There are strategies and systems designed to help you find the best bets. Expected Value, for example, which is both a concept and the basis of a strategy, is one way to help narrow down the field of potential bets to those that are likely to offer you the best return in the long run. There are also systems that aim to improve your betting by making your stake size more regular, such as the Level Stakes strategy, which advises you to only bet with a consistent proportion of your betting bank.

Once you have built up some experience as a sports bettor, you will be able to develop your own strategies, but in the meantime, you can find a more in-depth explanation for all of the most popular systems and strategies on our detailed strategy guide pages.

Tips For Experienced Punters

No matter your level of experience, you can always benefit from stepping back, taking an overview and evaluating your strategies, particularly when you have hit a bad patch.

Some systems, such as the Kelly Criterion, which determines the size of your betting stake based on the extent of your edge on a particular bet, are more complicated than the basic strategies outlined above, and should only be used by experienced punters. Other approaches that can help experienced punters gain an edge include anticipating the price changes on Betting Exchanges, arbitrage betting, analyzing a particular niche market in one sport, such as the Over/Under markets in football or devising a system of betting that is designed to find winning bets automatically. You can also find guides to some of the more complex betting approaches on our site.

But whatever method you use, and whatever your level of experience, the key to success in Online Betting is to go about it systematically and strategically, minimizing the inconsistency that humans are prone to and maximizing your chances of making a long-term profit.