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Lots of people literally bust their asses searching for angles on sports picks. They waste time looking at tons of meaningless stats (shots on goal for, shots on goal against). They crawl through useless trends (the Miami Heat are 6-0 on Sunday afternoons). They invent weird systems (fade any team coming off a loss if their opponent is coming off a win in which they had 4 or less hits or in which their opponent’s opponent hit 3 or less home runs sometime last week).
But few if any ever focus their attention on the specific sportsbooks at which they wager. Some betting angles may be picked up simply by browsing your sportsbook’s website with a sharp eye and a clear head. One example is we found an article upon the website of among the most prominent online books on earth that gave a sort of overview of soccer betting. It was a simple enough article, a sort of “Soccer Betting For Dummies” kind of thing. Harmless.
But one sentence did catch our eye: “Generally it’s wiser to pass on the draw bet in soccer unless you’ve got a very strong angle.” At first glance it seems like an innocuous enough statement. In the end, Precision Plays believes it’s generally wiser to pass ANY bet unless you’ve got a very strong angle (and that angle is definitely and only value).
What stood out about this sentence was which it was advice. All of the other sentences within the article were devoted to simply explaining the a variety of ways one could bet a soccer game. But with this sentence, the book was actually giving advice on betting.
As true gambler advocates, we may only pray that no poor sap actually takes betting advice from the guy who stands to make money if he loses. Translating this sentence from Crap-ese, it reads in English: “We don’t really want you to bet the draw in soccer.”
Remember, Precision Plays will not recommend you go nuts tomorrow and bet all of the draws in soccer, though the simple proven fact that a sportsbook took enough time in a soccer betting how-to article to discourage a particular kind of bet should give one food for thought.
Another clue to explore is a sportsbook’s wager limits. Few ever think of the reasoning behind them. As an example, at a book we love and use daily, the limit upon an NBA spread bet is $10,000, but on a university basketball spread it’s $25,000. Why do you suppose that is? At the exact same book, the limit on an NFL spread is simply $5,000. Perhaps these differences may be explained through the owners of the book being huge college basketball fans, but we doubt it.
If you check around at a great online football deal of different sportsbooks, you will find that wager limits vary. Within the above example, we used the wager limits of a sportsbook we use personally. This book may be considered a “sharp” book, one that caters to more sophisticated players with larger bankrolls. A “square” book is one geared more toward the recreational bettor. You may spot a square book quickly enough by the large sign-up bonuses and numerous ads with skimpily dressed women in them.
