Soccer Betting Tutorial

Being the most popular sport on the planet, soccer carries a multi billion
dollar betting industry on its back. Any sports bettor who doesn't want a
piece of that cake shouldn't call himself a sharp. That's right, if you're a
savvy sports bettor, it doesn't matter that you're based in the US where
soccer is a fringe sport at best. If there's action, you need to take
advantage of it. You have to find your edges and you need to make your money
work for you. How do you go about betting on soccer though?

Overseas, the most popular soccer betting market is the 1x2 aka Win-Draw-Win
market. Bookies offer players 3 choices they can bet on for each game: they
can wager on team A winning, team B winning or on the draw. You need to know
that in soccer, draws are much more frequent than in US sports and that
they're accepted outcomes for most games (only under special circumstances
is the game taken to overtime/penalties to force the decision). Now that's
pretty simple, but there's one fundamental flaw involved in this setup for
bettors: of the three possible options, the bookie wins with 2 and the
bettor only wins with 1. If you're  a sharp bettor, you're not going to like
those odds. Those odds there are quite probably the very reason why so few
US sports bettors ever show any interest in soccer action. Whenever there's
a will, there's a way though, or so they say and in this case, a healthy
alternative for the above described betting market is the Asian Handicap.
European sports betting sites post intricate explanations about what the
Asian handicap is and how it works. US bettors will be glad to learn though
that Asian Handicaps are basically spread-based bets on soccer games. Asian
handicaps reduce the number of choices available to the bettor to two: they
either bet on team A or on team B, there are no draws.

The term Asian handicap can be explained thusly: the system supposedly
originated from Asia, hence the "Asian" part of the name. The handicap
basically refers to the spread: one of the teams is given a handicap of a
quarter to several goals before the start of each game. Things basically
work the same way they do in football and basketball betting: if the
favorite covers the spread, bettors who wagered on the fav win. If it wins
but fails to cover the spread, they lose. If a bettor has action on the
underdog, he wins if the dog prevents the fav from covering the spread, or
if the dog wins SU.

Now that you've found that backdoor into soccer betting you've been looking
for, a word or two about soccer handicapping: like NFL and NBA handicapping,
soccer handicapping is tricky business. One needs to get the "vibe" of each
game, simply working out the power-balance will not be enough most of the
time. You see, there are games in which a large spread of several goals may
seem right, but in which the stakes just do not justify that the favorite
give 100% effort, and it may well settle for a marginal win. To get that
"vibe" you either need to be extremely well connected to the game, or you
should take your betting online where there's a wealth of information
available that will help you find that hidden value. The hidden value works
in quite the same fashion it does in US sports, with crowd pressure being
its main catalyst.

Playing poker online can be a great way to make money in addition to your
sports betting profits. Just like you aim to beat the bookie's vig in sports
betting, in poker, you're up against the poker rake. Fortunately, there are
sites out there like pokerprops.com which offer rakeback deals, that will take the edge
out of the poker rake. Online sportsbooks offer their players rakeback-like
loyalty rewards and sign-up bonuses too.