Soccer betting for beginners – Important factors part 1 – the league table

Soccer betting can make watching the big game on TV so much more enjoyable. Trust us, to bet and win while you watch the game is even more enjoyable. As a beginner it is way too easy to let your emotions get the best of you while you pick your bet. Plenty of human nature cognitive biases are ready to lead you astray from the optimal soccer betting path at any given time. We want to show you how to bet, and how to control these mentioned biases so that you can make more money on your soccer betting.

For the professional the outcome of what was mentioned above is the obvious higher yield on each invested unit. For the leisure punter the outcome is that the money set aside for betting on sport will survive longer without having to be added to. Basically, you are maximizing the fun per unit placed.

How to bet on soccer

In this article series on how to bet on soccer, we hope to show you a trick or two on exactly how to achieve more return per unit. Many of the articles will be aimed at the beginner, but we will have plenty of material, especially when it comes to statistics and probability that even the seasoned veterans of sports betting too would benefit from reading. We want to underline that in this particular series we focus on pre-game betting 1X2 betting only unless otherwise stated. In-play betting or live betting will be discussed in separate articles. Now, let’s quickly get the show on the road and get down to business:

How to bet on soccer - The league table

This should be such a simple factor to analyze, yet the leisure punter tends to fail dramatically. It really is a beginner error, and a major leak for a lot of wallets. If you went “oh shit” right about now, don’t despair; it’s a flaw that with a minimum of effort can be erased permanently.

They say the table never lies. We don’t have any fundamental objections to that statement, but it is a bit like saying statistics never lie. And we all know that we have lies, damn lies and statistics.

When you are soccer betting you got to keep in mind that the league table and the games it consists of for pretty much any period in the ongoing season is a really really small sample size. Holding on to that thought; how can you base meaningful soccer betting decisions on a small sample of data alone? Just think about it. Leisure punters do this all the time. The thinking is very simple, and we have to confess understandable: Team A is higher on the table than team B, hence they should win. Don’t fall in that trap. There is much more to soccer betting than this.

Soccer betting league table example

One practical example just to illustrate what we mean can be taken from the 2011-2012 English Premier League Season. Manchester United was sitting 2nd in the Premier League, chasing Manchester City. On the 31st of December 2011 they played Blackburn at Old Trafford and lost 2-3. It was a major upset. Clearly the sportsbooks made a fortune and the leisure punters who had stared themselves blind at the league table, again lost a big piece of their entertainment budget.

Working with the given data sample size

To get a little bit more complex: You can work around the small sample size issue by looking historically at the problem. Many professional punters increase the sample size by looking at league table data for one more or even several seasons more. You may want to divide the historical league tables up in various logical intervals in order to minimize too high variance in the data. This is not as difficult and scary as it sounds. It is in fact a crucial part of the bet tips we provide to our visitors ourselves. So if you don’t feel like learning too much statistics and probability that is okay, we do the dirty work for you. For the more inquiring minds; we will touch on statistics and probability in plenty of other articles.

How to bet on soccer - The bottom line

It is okay for you to glance at the league table to get a general idea, just don’t become biased. There is much more to soccerbetting than current league placing. You must realize that the league table simply reflects an array of different relevant factors for your soccer betting. We will look at those factors one by one, article by article. The next one up covers form.