Betting for beginners

When you are a handicapping a team or a game, you need to take into account whether they are the home team or not.  In What is Home Advantage?  Part 1 of my series on home advantage, I delved into the different definitions of home advantage and what it means to be the “home” team.  While there are special cases where the “home” team may actually be playing away (such as a game where two baseball teams meet on neutral ground), usually the “home” team is playing on their own turf and has the advantage over the visiting tea

When you are following and betting on football, sometimes referees are going to make calls which you are not going to understand or necessarily agree with.  Oftentimes, there is a great deal of contention over these decisions.  And quite often, the questionable calls involve something known as the “offside rule.” 

The head coach is obviously one of the most important personnel to the success of any sports team.  The coach is responsible for organising the team, instilling discipline and focus, and making other staffing decisions which can alter the course of where the team is headed.  Because bad coaching can sabotage a team with otherwise great prospects, it may seem logical to expect a positive change if a team decides to fire a coach and bring someone new onboard.  How should you take this int

No matter what sport you are betting on—European football, American football, basketball, hockey, or baseball—whether a team is playing a home or away game is something you always need to take into account when you are doing your handicapping.  Teams that are playing on their own home turf enjoy what is called the home advantage.

If you have decided to become a serious sports bettor, you have embarked on a journey which can be rewarding in more way than one, but it can be a taxing one too.  Conducting the kind of ongoing, detailed research and analysis that sports betting demands can really eat up a lot of your time each day.  Trying to get through all of those tasks each day so you can place smart bets can be a challenge even if you are betting fulltime.  But if you are also trying to work a day job somewhere, you have double the challenge.

When we are analysing a sports team, we need to pay special attention to the head coach, who is one of the most important personnel in determining the success or failure of the team.  The head coach is responsible for organising the team.  The gestalt principle that the whole is more than the sum of its parts comes into play with any professional sports team, whether we are talking about European football, NFL, basketball, baseball, or any other team sport. 

Whether we’re talking about European football, NFL, basketball, or any other professional sport, there is no denying that the role of the coach is one of the most important on the team.  When a team has a good coach who knows what he’s doing, the team is likely to excel, even with some weaknesses.  When a team is poorly coached, even with greater players, it is significantly likely the team will struggle.  It’s one thing to say that a coach needs to display “great leadership,” but this

On-season, you can have a lot of busy days as a serious punter.  You may be balancing a day job with your betting, and may have a lot of work to do each morning catching up on the latest developments and news for your sport.  Even if you did a lot of work in the off-season, the research and analysis involved with making smart, profitable wagers is ongoing, and can be intense. 

Lately I have been focusing a number of articles on the topic of tracking your bets. As a sports punter, you cannot make improvements on wagering if you are not keeping track of your betting successes and failures. You can do this on your own using a spreadsheet in Excel, but it is much easier if you are using sports betting tracking software.

Problem sports gambling is something we hear a lot about.  Whether you are a long-time gambling enthusiast and you have to regularly defend yourself to others, or you are just thinking about getting into sports betting and people are discouraging you, it is a topic we all have to think about.