There are two ways to bet on sports - smart and stupid. Talk to that rare creature, the man who consistently beats the bookies, and he will tell you that the way to do it is to bet only when the price is right.
In Ireland, there's a guy they call the Sundance Kid, a legendary gambler. A horse he owns won a big race in England one day and half of Ireland made money on it. Hundreds of his countrymen swarmed around him after the race, offering congratulations.
'Sundance, you must have taken the bookies out by the roots,' one of them said.
'Didn't have a bet,' he replied, to their astonishment. 'Not at that price.'
The moral of the story is that when it comes to wagering, bookies have always been in control. They set the odds and their sole aim is to manipulate the market in their favour, so that they win no matter what. That was then. Now, stand by for person to person wagering. Log on to TradeSports and take the bookie out of the equation.
TradeSports is a true exchange. Mike in Milwaukee thinks one thing, Dave in Detroit thinks the opposite. Up to now, they could go to two different bookies, both of whom would take a vig and thus offer a price reflecting the fact that the bookie needs suckers to put gas in his Ferrari and pay his staff.
With p2p wagering, it's different. With no bookies' overheads and profits to factor in, the prices available are more competitive. And as the Sundance Kid and every serious bettor knows, the rights odds are everything.
Say you have five horses in a race. The bookie prices them as follows: 6-4, 2-1, 5-1, 6-1, 7-1. The serious bettor will be able to compute that those five prices add to up what they call in England an 'overround' of 115. Put simply, that means for every $115 the bookie takes, he is hoping to pay out $100.
That is the kind of margin he likes to operate on, the kind of built-in profit level bookies regard as their right. If he makes the horse priced at 6-4 a 5-4 shot, the overround shoots up to 119, but he has to be mindful of what other bookies are offering. He need to bring in money, after all.
The same theory applies to football, baseball, basketball - whatever. The odds stack up in the bookie's favour.
Only the internet could have smashed this cosy little arrangement because before, you could never have brought enough people together into a fair and transparent marketplace. If enough exchange members are active in a market, the overround will be a shade over 100. It can never be less than that because if it was, you could bet on both teams in a game and make money no matter who won.
A liquid exchange will beat the bookies every time and that's why TradeSportsis going places fast. Why contribute to your bookie's retirement fund when you can get fair value at TradeSports? It's time to change.
Article by Alan English. TradeSports is a person-to-person (P2P) sports betting and trading exchange.
