Betting market beginner article

You relate to the betting market in oh so many ways without really thinking about it. For instance you use bet analysis to handicap the sports betting objects found on the betting coupon of your preferred online bookmaker. You browse countless betting odds comparison sites and study the Howtobet.net online betting guide, looking at betting previews. You may place well thought out betting tips from the Howtobet.net betting tips section, or perhaps you sportsbet on matches you concluded to be good betting opportunities on your own. Either way, you dip into the betting market. The scope of this article is to give you a simple overview of the betting market and help you understand how to bet using this overview to your advantage.

What is the betting market?

The soccer betting market in general can easily be defined as the sum of all real money wagering on any available betting event. The participants in the market place are buyers and sellers. Sellers lay odds for buyers to take.  This is usually bookmaker operations. Nowadays when betting exchanges have become very popular, normal people like you and I can also be sellers. Buyers can be defined as any person or entity wagering on the offered odds for real money.

How does the betting market work?

The market price is set by sellers, and from there on out the market pretty much decides the fate of the price. Like in most other markets the price is affected by supply and demand. Demand for a certain soccer betting object at a given price will lead to less supply as bookmakers prefer to minimize risk on any one outcome. The price will continue to go down until the punters feel the price is too low. At that point bets may start to come in on the other side of the bet.

What affects the betting market prices?

Any type of information concerning the event may influence price. An example from Champions League betting would be if Real Madrid is facing Chelsea at home and then news come out of the Madrid camp stating that they will miss four-five of their regular starters. Such a piece of information would most likely have a very visible impact on the prices of outcomes attached to this match up.

If demand for a certain outcome is popular with the punters the bookmaker will reduce the odds available on this outcome hoping to balance his book by taking bets on the other possible outcomes for that particular betting object or on other objects available in his bet selections.

A typical example is if there are very few betting objects in general on a given day, and perhaps one football game is of much more interest to the large group of buyers in the market place than the other offers. Such a game will receive a large amount of turnover and can in extreme cases decide the trading profit or loss that day for even big sportsbooks. Expect them to trade it frenetically. If that one match-up contains a typical mass-favorite, you will see that the bookie more often than not offer this favorite at a price far below true odds. The bookmaker sees this “premium” as something good even if the book as such is not perfectly traded. Who wouldn’t want to sell fifty cent for €1 right?

How do I use the market to my advantage?

You can take advantage of detailed market overview in many ways. Here is a short list:

• As prices fluctuate arbitrage betting situations arise. These sure wins can be exploited for risk free profit. See our arbitrage betting article for more information.
• If your plan is to bet on an object that has a contrarian stance given recent market developments you can choose to bet now, or wait for a better price and more bet value. The Monday night big game example above is applicable here.
• If you plan to bet and the market is moving downwards you can decide if the current price on offer is good, or if the value now has gone missing and no bet is the conclusion.
• If you took early odds available you can use the market to hedge your bet. Say, you took some betting tips on Howtobet.net and the odds have gone down considerably. Here it might be wise to trade off a little profit in order to reduce fluctuations in your bankroll. You can hedge your bet either by taking the other side of the bet, or by laying odds on a betting exchange.
• Even if you don’t plan on placing your bet with a betting exchange, having the browser window open and keeping an eye on price movements and stake sizes on interesting objects will allow you to have detailed information on where the big money is going on a given event. Money talks in betting too.

Betting markets final notes

Betting without looking at the moves in the market makes little sense if your goal is profit. You can use the market to maximize your wins and minimize losses. We hope you enjoyed this write-up. Feel free to share it with your friends.