1. Most people, especially football fans, tend to bet by following their gut instinct or backing the team they hope will win. Arsenal fans will bet on an Arsenal win, for example, while Manchester United fans will consistently back a victory for their team.
2. Online Betting Guide became more popularly known as OLBG, The Sports Betting Community. Whilst the most popular UK betting sports have always been well provided for with plenty of football predictions and horse racing tips, OLBG has grown to provide betting tips for more than 20 sports, hundreds of leagues and thousands of events.
3. Everybody can bet behind everybody and place a limitless number of bet behind side bets. This option is especially profitable for players without experience or gaming strategies as they are able to take part in the game and, if lucky, win something. In addition, not only it adds extra interest for players, but the bet behind option also adds significant extra revenue opportunity for live casino operators.

A compilation of lighthearted, big-bet tales from the gamblers who placed them and the bookmakers who accepted them:

If you bet Argentina -2.5 goals, then to win the bet they must win by 3 goals or more. On the other side, betting Iran +2.5 goals means to win the bet, Iran can win, draw, or lose by 1 or 2 goals. Betting Totals: Totals in soccer work differently than other sports and can be shown in multiples of.25 goals.

The race back to the sports book began shortly after Buster Douglas took his shirt off.

It was October 1990. Eight months prior, Douglas had stunned Mike Tyson as a 42-1 underdog, and he was now preparing for his first title defense against Evander Holyfield. A ballroom at the Mirage casino in Las Vegas was packed for the weigh-in. Mirage sports book director Jimmy Vaccaro was in attendance and immediately knew he had a problem.

'Holyfield gets on the scale and is svelte, weighs in at like 210 [pounds],' Vaccaro said. 'Buster gets on the scale and is like 246. They made him do it again, to make sure it was right, because it was the first time anybody had seen him without his sweat top on. When he took that off, he was the Pillsbury Doughboy.'

Vaccaro hung out for a few minutes to listen to the reaction, then hustled back through the back halls of the casino to get back to the book. He knew he was in a race.

'I knew that guys were going to run over to the sports book to bet Holyfield,' Vaccaro said. 'I was thinking that I'd adjust the price 30 cents, because he was so fat. But before I could get there, we had taken a half-a-million bet on Holyfield. They beat me fair and square.'

Holyfield knocked out Douglas in the third round, capping one of the more entertaining bets of Vaccaro's 30-year Vegas career. But it's not close to the biggest he's ever taken.

In 1995, Vaccaro accepted a $2.4 million money line bet from billionaire investor Carl Icahn on Super Bowl XXIX between the heavily favored San Francisco 49ers and San Diego Chargers. Icahn laid 1-8 odds that the 49ers would win straight up and won $300,000 when San Francisco rolled to a 49-26 victory.

Six-figure miscommunication

The biggest bet of Alan 'Boston' Dvorkis' gambling career was a complete accident -- a $150,000 accident.

It was a Saturday night in January 1999, the prime of Boston's college basketball betting career. The Arizona Cardinals had just upset the Dallas Cowboys in an NFC wild-card game and were installed as 14.5-point underdogs to the Minnesota Vikings. Boston picked up the phone, called a fellow who moved his action for him and asked to get $15,000 on the Vikings.

Minutes later, the mover called back and told Boston he had $150,000 on Minnesota minus-14.5. There had been some miscommunication.

'I got what?' Boston replied.

Unable to get out of the only six-figure wager of his life, Boston tried to lay some of it off, but had little luck and ultimately said 'f--- it' and gambled. 'It was the biggest bet I ever made and probably the biggest bet I ever will make,' said Boston, a longtime professional sports bettor and poker player, whose normal bet size at the time was $15,000. 'I don't even watch the NFL.'

Minnesota went on to win and cover the spread on a Leroy Hoard touchdown with five minutes to play in a 41-21 victory. Boston celebrated by 'Doing my college basketball work.'

$50,000 coin flip

The bettor just wanted to get it over with.

It was Super Bowl Sunday 2010 at the Las Vegas Hilton SuperBook. Just two hours before the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints kicked off, an older gentleman from California strolled up the window and asked for a $50,000 bet on the coin flip. Normally, the SuperBook accepts a limit of $2,000 on prop bets like the coin flip. 'I didn't think he had any analytics that were favoring one side or the other,' said SuperBook chief Jay Kornegay with a chuckle. 'I remember him saying that he just wanted to get it over with. So we just said, 'Yeah, go ahead.'

The bettor took heads and won. Kornegay turned to his colleagues and said, 'There we go. We haven't even kicked off yet, and we're down $50,000.'

'I had lost the biggest bet of my life'

It was March 20, 1987. Professional bettor Alan Denkenson was having dinner at the Sporting Club in New York City.

It would be a sweaty meal.

Denkenson had been hot and was riding a win streak into the biggest bet of his life, a $25,000 wager on the Toronto Maple Leafs plus-1/2 goal versus the Quebec Nordiques.

The $25,000 bet was spread around to different sports books, some offshore, some in Vegas. He normally bet around $15,000 per game, but was pushing his hot streak.

At the time, NHL ties were common. There was only a five-minute overtime with no shootout. Betting teams plus-1/2 goal had been a successful strategy.

'It was different back then,' Denkenson said. 'The lines were bad and I was riding this streak. I just really liked that game. I have no idea why. It's going on 30 years ago. It wasn't much better than any of the other bets, except that it was as the end of a pretty good winning streak.'

Between bites, he kept an eye on the ticker that was scrolling scores along the wall of the restaurant. With around a minute left, the Maple Leafs led 4-3.

'I looked up again and saw the three change to a four, which put the game into overtime,' Denkenson recalled. 'I had to sweat out overtime, staring at the ticker. I saw a four change to a five and I had lost the biggest bet of my life.'

He took it well.

'It was settled the way we settled back then,' Denkenson said. 'I got my weekly figure. There were lots of other bets and met up with my agent. There was always an agent or runner for each bookmaker or you'd do a transfer from book to book. It was never a hassle back then. It was wide open. It was a different lifestyle.'

A dirty look from Ali's wife

The rumor was bogus: Larry Holmes wasn't going to throw his 1980 title fight versus Muhammad Ali at Caesars Palace. Per usual, Vegas high-roller Lem Banker was in the know.

The son of a New Jersey candy store bookmaker, Banker arrived in Las Vegas in the mid-1950s. By the time Holmes and Ali were preparing to square off, Banker was one of the biggest sports bettors in town. He had a network of runners and bookmakers. People from all over the country fed him information from East Coast newspapers. His information on the Holmes-Ali fight, however, was from a local source.

Banker's daughter was working for a boutique inside Caesars Palace and would often glance in at the boxers' workouts for her dad. While watching Holmes, Banker's daughter overheard the champ mention that a rumor of him throwing the fight wasn't true and, as the undefeated heavyweight champion, he wasn't going to let that happen. Banker got the news and began spreading out $250,000 in bets on Holmes at Vegas sports books and private bookmakers.

'I remember the comedian Gabe Kaplan was behind me in line at Caesars,' Banker, now 87, said. 'I told him that Holmes may be the best bet in the last 10 years.'

Banker had a ring-side seat for the fight. Miss America Phyllis George and John Y. Brown, governor of Kentucky, were among the celebrities seated near Banker.

'I remember John Y. Brown asked me who I liked. I said 'Holmes,' Banker recalled. 'I looked over and got this dirty look from a beautiful black woman. It was Veronica, Ali's wife. I smiled and said, 'No, I love Ali.' Holmes beat Ali on a referee technical decision in the 10th round. Banker, 87, says he still bets on sports.

A $286,000 sweat

Seventeen years later, Michael Konik still remembers the feeling. It was sickening.

It was Super Bowl Sunday 1998 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Konik, a freelance writer from California, had just bet $286,000 on Super Bowl XXXII between the Green Bay Packers and the underdog Denver Broncos. Konik bet $220,000 on the Broncos plus-12 and $66,000 on under 49.5 points at Caesars Palace. It was the biggest bet of his two-year career working for the most powerful man in sports betting, 'Big Daddy' Rick Matthews.

The game couldn't have gotten off to a worse start for the nervous Konik. Brett Favre led the Packers to an easy touchdown on their opening drive.

'They moved down the field like Denver had a high school defense,' Konik, author of the sports betting great 'The Smart Money,' said during a recent phone conversation. 'It was a sickening feeling.'

But John Elway and the Broncos answered on their first possession and never trailed the rest of the game en route to a 31-24 upset. It was too many points for Konik's under bet, but the big bet on Denver plus-12 was an easy winner.

Konik watched the game from his Caesars Palace room and returned to the sports book to pick up his winnings later that night. The bettors had won, but the bookmakers had kept their sense of humor. 'Nobody likes to hear a bookie whine, Mike,' a Caesars Palace book manager told him. 'Nobody cares, including the bookie's mother. Because sometimes she bet the other side.' He'd need to settle up with Big Daddy Matthews later, but that's a tale you can read more about in 'The Smart Money.'

Shot girl takes her shot

Sometimes an $800 bet means so much more.

It was June 1994. Beth Raymer was a shot girl at a Florida bar. After a week hustling up $800, it was time to gamble.

Raymer headed to the Palm Beach Kennel Club, where a greyhound named Pat C. Rendezvous was going for a record 33rd consecutive win on a damp June day. The lead-out dog handlers were decked out in tuxedos. The theme from 'Rocky' blared from over the loudspeakers.

Raymer bet $800 on the heavily favored Pat C. Rendezvous to win.

'Losing that much money would've been murderous for me at that point in my life,' Raymer, the author of 'Lay the Favorite: A Memoir of Gambling,' recalled. 'But I didn't think for a second I would lose.'

Raymer was right. Pat C. Rendezvous broke from box No. 3, took command early and pulled away from the field. 'She just ran so fast, open on that super slick track,' Raymer, who is working on her second book, added. 'After that day, I had more confidence as a bettor.'

Biggest bet I ever took ...

'The biggest single bet I took was on hockey, believe it or not. We used to have a huge player at the Rio. There was nothing going on that night, except a couple of hockey games. He wagered $250,000 on the [Carolina] Hurricanes. He used to love to wager on big favorites, and the Hurricanes were minus-250 that night. They ended up losing the game in a shootout.' -- David Pemberton, director of specialty games at Caesars Entertainment.

'The company [MGM] took a $7.6 million bet prior to me on the Rams' money line, when the Patriots beat them [in Super Bowl XXXVI]. The biggest bet I ever took was a loser. I took $2 million on the Colts in the Super Bowl against the Bears. It was my first year here. There was a powwow for sure, but we were more than happy to take it. It definitely gets your attention, but in the scope of things, we weren't going to be hung out on the game. Now, if I would have taken that on an average Sunday, we're going to have a heck of a decision. But with the Super Bowl, you can shade that pretty easy.' -- MGM vice president of race and sports Jay Rood.

'I took a million-dollar bet on the Super Bowl once. It was on the Eagles against the Patriots. He bet $1.05 million to win a million. Winner. He was a really nice guy and a great customer, but I sure didn't want to lose that bet.' -- Chris Andrews, veteran Vegas bookmaker, who has worked at multiple Nevada sports books during his 30-plus-year career.

Most people who want to place bets on sports are fans to begin with. It isn’t unheard of for a gambler to place some sports bets, especially during big games like the Super Bowl or the NCAA basketball Final Four, but for the most part, sports bettors are sports fans looking to use their knowledge of a game or of a game’s players to earn a little extra cash. Being a fan of a particular sport, a team, a college or professional squad—these are all precursors to placing sports bet. Sports betting is also a way for a fan to get in on the action of the game, with something more than self-respect at stake.

All gambling is mathematics, even games of chance. If you understand the math behind the game, you understand the game and can give yourself an advantage. For many games, like penny slots or poorly placed roulette bets, are so bad that smart bettors earn their advantage by avoiding them altogether. In sports betting, the math is more complicated. Depending on your favorite sport, you may need to think about things like bye weeks, underdogs, quarterback ratings, and injuries with the same fervor other connoisseurs reserve for fancy winces.

So how difficult is sports betting math? The math behind placing a winning bet is fairly complicated, but the way to stay ahead of the bookmaker is rather straightforward. If you collect on 52.4% of your bets, you’ll break even. We’ll have more details on that number later, including why it takes more than 50% wins to break even, but first some general knowledge about sports gambling and the numbers behind it.

Sports Betting Basics

The easiest way to demonstrate the math behind a sports bet is to make up an example. Let’s say you and your buddy walk into a casino, each with $200 burning a hole in your pocket. There’s a big game on tonight, the Cowboys and the Redskins, so you wander into the sportsbook to check up on the latest news about the game. While you’re sitting there, you see the wagering board, with some funny numbers on it. It looks like this:

• 428 Cowboys +175
• 429 Redskins -4 -200 38

Some of this is easy enough to read. The Redskins -4 means the Redskins are favored to win and must do so by at least 5 points for a bet on the ‘Skins to pay out. The next number (-200) is the moneyline, in this case the Redskins are a 2/1 favorite. The last number (38) is the total, the over/under of the expected number of points scored in the game.

More on Placing Sports Bets

Look at that over/under number, in this case 38. If you or your buddy thinks this is going to be a particularly high or low scoring game, based on your knowledge of the team’s offenses and defenses, or information about a hurt player or bad playing conditions, you can place a wager on the total of points scored.

Today Sure Bet Win

So how is a guy supposed to know how to literally lay down a sports bet? You need to know three things:

#1 – the type of bet you want to make
#2 – the number of the corresponding team you have chosen and
#3 – the amount you wish to wager

Knowing all that beforehand gives the ticket writer the details he needs to write the ticket without having to bend over backwards to process your bet.

Tipping and Sports Betting

We haven’t even gotten to the meat of the sports math yet, and we’re already talking about tipping the staff behind the window? Yep. Here’s why.

If you place two $100 bets, and you win, you’ll collect $440. You should consider leaving a tip around five percent of your winnings. Yes, that’s a $22 tip, but you just made a huge win, and surely you can spring for a twenty-spot for the guy who helped you win it. If you tip around the five percent mark regularly, when you win, you’re way more likely to get free drinks, which is about all you’re going to get comp-wise at the sportsbook.

So, back to the basic math of sports betting. You and your buddy, after much deliberation, decide to each place a $100 bet on your favorite team. What now?

To bet on the Redskins using the point spread, your bet is called “laying the points.” For your bet to pay off, the ‘Skins have to win by five or more to cover the spread. Remember, if the ‘Skins win by exactly four, the game is a push, and both sides recoup their bet. Another alternative is called “taking the points” with the Cowboys. That means the Cowboys have to lose by three or less for your bet to win, or if the Cowboys win outright. So you and your buddy go up to place your $100 bet, and you find out that the standard straight bet at any bookie pays 11/10. That means you have to bet $110 if you want to win $100. You and your buddy pay the bookie $110 and sit down with drinks to watch your bets come in.

These are deceptively simple bets. Deceptively because they make it look like the outcome of the football game is like the outcome of picking marbles out of a bag. Put one black marble and two white marbles in a bag, pull one out at random, and there’s your football game. After all, the odds are the same: 2/1 for white.

But we, as sports fans, know that the mathematics of a sporting event is much more complex. Sports bettors deeply involved in their hobby will subscribe to weather bulletins from major cities that take part in their sport, making huge wagering decisions based on a few mph of wind in one direction or another. Then there’s the unknown—does a player get hurt in the first quarter? Does weather become a factor? Is a particular player “in the zone?”

How Do Bookies Make a Profit?

Just as we finish ruminating on the concept of the difficult math at play in the background of major sporting events, we’re going to turn right back towards the simpler side of sports betting. Bookies make a profit because of vigorish. What’s vigorish?

Look at the above example again. You and your buddy each paid $10 to the bookie to place your bet. That’s what the standard 11/10 odds in sports betting are all about. You bet the Cowboys and your buddy bet the Redskins, a total of $220 bet. The sportsbook has to pay back $210 to the winner, leaving a nice $10 profit no matter what happens on the football field. That $10 built-in profit is called the vigorish, and it’s the final monkey wrench in the gears of sports betting.

Obviously, sportsbooks are going to take more than two bets on any game, but this example is for simplicity’s sake. Looking at the total number of bets on different games over the course of a week and adjusting the moneyline and other numbers is another way the bookie makes a profit. Adjusting the odds a tiny percentage point in either direction will affect the balance of beats and make the book more likely to turn a profit no matter what.

Essentially, a bookie is a person who holds on to money from bettors then pays them if they win and keeps their money if they don’t. That’s what the job is boiled down to its essence.

When a bookie sets odds for games, he will build what bookies call an “over round” into his set of odds. Another slang term used for this formula is “the juice.” For the sake of simplicity, let’s look at a boxing match where both contenders are equally talented, of equal stature, etc. Since they both have an equal chance of winning, a casual bet may be even money. You put $20 on one guy; your friend puts $20 on the other. Whichever fighter wins awards the bettor with the total of $40.

Bookies don’t offer even money like friends in a casual betting situation. In the above example, with two evenly matched boxers, a smart bookie will offer 5/6 odds for each. That way, a $10 winning bet would only return $8.30 plus your stake. What does this do for the bookmaker? He can float an equal amount of money on both fighters, winning no matter which fighter actually wins. If they take $1,000 worth of bets on one boxer and $1,000 on the other, the bookie would take in $1,000 but only have to pay out $830, for a guaranteed $170 profit regardless of the outcome.

Bookies look at the weight of their books all the time and adjust odds and other factors to make sure their books balance. Though it isn’t possible to completely balance a book, bookies that go too far out on one side run the risk of losing money, and losing money in gambling is the fastest way to find yourself in another industry. All of these factors are why bookies generally root for the underdog—too many favorites winning in a sport with a short season (such as the NFL) can cause a bookmaker to lose money, while a bunch of upsets (like you generally see in college football) is a guaranteed profit for the bookmaker.

The short answer here is that bookies making money has nothing at all to do with your betting. It is almost unheard of for a single customer to be allowed to place enough bets to sink a single book all on his own. High rollers in sports betting get special privileges in terms of their maximum bet size, but these privileges often change with the bettor’s luck—maximums get raised after the bettor sees big losses and decreased (sharply) when the bettor starts to get lucky.

Win From Behind Better Call Saul

In short, a sportsbook’s profits aren’t necessarily impacted directly by the way an individual bet is called. Unlike casino games or slot machines, where it’s you against the house, sports bettors fuel the bookmaker’s business and only rarely is an individual bettor betting against the bookie.

Sports Betting Odds

Remember at the beginning when we talked about the magic number necessary to guarantee a break-even week in sports betting? If you read enough about sports betting, you’ll hear this number repeated often: 52.4%. If a bettor can win 52.4% of his bets, he’ll break even. Where does that number come from?

When betting the spread, you get odds of -110. Sometimes, sportsbooks will offer a -105 line as a promotion or to welcome new business. But for the most part, if you’re betting the spread, you’re getting -110.

We draw that 52.4% break even number right out of the odds. -110 is equivalent to 11/10. That means if you bet 21 games, you’d have to win eleven of them and lose ten of them to break completely even. Even at -105, you’d still have to win an astounding 51.2% of the time just to break even.

If you don’t trust the basic math behind this break-even principle, look at another real-world example. Let’s say you get really into sports betting after your Cowboys cream the Redskins and you go home with a nice fat wallet. You then bet on the next 10 Cowboys games, winning six times and losing four times.

That 60% betting record (with the odds of -110 that is traditional for against the spread bets in football) will leave you with a profit of $160. Think about it—your $600 profit from your 6 winning bets minus the $440 you lost on losing bets leaves $160. It took you $1,100 to win $160, meaning you have to bet $6.87 to win $1 on average. So you see the small differences between a 52.4% winning rate and a 60% winning rate—inside those 7.3 percentage points lies hundreds of dollars in profit.

Now imagine instead that you lost one of those six winning bets, leaving you with a 50% betting record. You spent a total of $1,100, won $500, and lost $550. That means overall your 50% record drained your wallet by $50. That’s where the vigorish will get you. Not even winning half the time is good enough to break even in sports betting.

Professional Sports Bettors

Believe it or not, some people really do bet on sports for a living. Maybe they work part time at a sportsbook or in some other marginal job in the casino industry, but there is a group of gamblers who bet on sports for their life’s work. With all the math swirling around in our heads after the last bit of the article, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to do this for a living.

If you know that a 52.4% record will mean you break even, the simplest way to turn sports betting into a career is to bet enough so that a 53% winning record will bring in the kind of money you want to make.

Another example. After your successful Cowboys experiment, you decide to invest $10,000 in sports gambling over the first four months of the following football season. That $10,000 is set aside to win or lose in sportsbooks.

You plan on betting on 160 games during your investment period. You dream of a 55% winning record because your win-loss with a 55% winning record would give you an 88-72 record. That’s an expected profit of +8.8 units. How did we get to that number? To calculate your units, subtract the total of your losses (multiplied by 1.1 to include the vig) from your wins and you’ll get your unit profit.

Placing $460 bets on each of these games, a number pulled from some quick and dirty math about how much you could afford to bet in a single week’s NFL play without blowing your bankroll, would result in a $4,048 profit if you maintain that 55% winning record. Turning $10,000 into $14,048 in just four months is an investment return of 40.48%. I dare you to ask your bank for that kind of return on your savings account.

But that’s all assuming you can pick the winner 55% of the time. Do your research, look into the records of professional sports gamblers. 55%, while not impossible, would place you among the elite sports bettors in the country, if not the world.

Professional sports bettors have to worry about variance more than any other type of gambler. Working against the forces of variance means managing your bankroll over the course of the season to avoid the negative possibilities that could totally empty your wagering account. Professional sports bettors have the time and resources necessary to calculate these variances, and there are even a few pieces of software out there that can help you figure out your ideal bet in the face of negative variance. But the bottom line is that professional sports bettors would dream of having a 55% winning record, simply because it guarantees you’re beating the house.

Pro bettors make their money on bets that sportsbooks offer that give them even the slightest betting advantage. The key to becoming a profitable sports bettor is being able to find advantages, opportunities where the line a book is offering is vulnerable.

Bet Win Calculator

This is why many long-term sports bettors are math freaks. Good sports bettors understand statistics, particularly what are called inferential statistics, though any higher math will help when it comes time to place a bet.

Here is what a professional baseball bettor might do in his head. After looking over statistics from MLB (kept religiously by all sorts of bloggers, data archives, and magazines) between the years 2000-2010, he notices a particular statistic pop out. For example: when the home team starts a left-handed pitcher the day after a loss, that team wins 59% of the time. Good sports bettors can do this sort of math in their head or very quickly on paper. From that bit of information comes a new betting theory—look for game situations that mirror the above example and bet on them. That means he’ll only bet games where the home team starts a left-handed pitcher the day after a loss. Does he just jump in and start betting based on this back of the napkin math? No way. More statistical analysis is required—he may find that this was a fluke for that particular decade and isn’t a trustworthy statistics, or he may find an even more advantageous bet based on his original theory.

Pro sports bettors also keep near-obsessive records of their bets. Obviously, no edge in sports betting lasts longer than a single game. Taking proper records will also help you test theories, like the above one about left-handed pitchers and losses. Without taking good records, no sports bettor’s bankroll will last very long.

What Is a Good Record for Sports Bettors

So, at the end of the day, what could you call a “good” record for a sports bettor? Most casual gamblers looking into sports betting see a pro advertising his 1100-900 record and shake their head a little. How could such an abysmal record be something to be proud of? That’s a 55% winning percentage, and it indicates to those in the know that this bettor is actually turning a profit placing bets on sports.

A good record for a sports bettor is any record equal to or larger than 52.4%, because that number or anything higher means you’re not losing money. A 53% winning record, while not impressive on paper, means you’re actually beating the sportsbook and putting money back in your pocket. Ask your friends that play the slots or play online poker how often they end up putting money back in their pocket.

A -110 wager, standard for spread bets in the NFL, gives the house a built-in advantage of 10%. It means that even if you do win, and you line up to collect your $100, some sucker behind you just spent $10 to hand the casino $100.

A good record for sports bettors is any record that ensures they at least break-even. If you bet 16 games this NFL season and you won 9 and lost 7, you probably made money. And taking money away from a casino is always something to be proud of.

Other Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles:
» Future Betting Strategy
» NFL Bye Week Betting Strategy
» Parlay Betting Strategy

Sports Betting Break Even Video:

Betfair Win From Behind

In the video above I go over the break even % for sports betting, and we take a look at the difference between hitting 52% and 53%. I also quickly show the amounts of profits you can expect if you can hit 55% consistently.