Real or Myth : Sports Betting Lock of the Day ?
If you’ve been around sports betting for more than a week, than you’ve seen the claims that So-and-so Betting Picks have a guaranteed hitting pick that you just can’t afford to miss.
Of course, this line is posted again and again by those looking to give betting advice, but are these claims legit?
Unfortunately, the answer is no.
There is no such thing as a “Lock of the Day” pick that will definitely hit, simply because anything can (and has) happened in sports.
When a bettor relies on a certain outcome of a sporting event, there is always room for error, making it impossible to be 100% reliable every time.
When trying to find methods that can be considered a “lock”, there are only two techniques that guarantee the bettor never loses money.
These two unique methods are called matched betting and arbitrage betting.
Both of these methods work off of a mathematical equation instead of the outcome of games.
Matched Betting
One way to make sure that you never lose any money as a bettor is the practice of matched betting.
This is the use of “bonus money” granted by online sportsbooks in your favor.
While this bonus money is not given to users right away to withdraw, matched betting is a strategy that quickly unlocks these bonus funds.
Matched betting is the process of betting on both possible outcomes of a sporting event.
This will result in one of your bets hitting, which will win back most of the money that was used to bet on the contrasting bet result.
The profits will be made in the bonus money that is granted to the bettor by the online sportsbook.
Since the rewards demand that the bettor plays with a certain amount of money before earning reward…
matched betting is a way to unlock these rewards without losing bets in the process.
Online sportsbooks have since caught on to nifty schemes like matched betting, and have made it difficult to be able to play with these bonuses.
New reward payouts that force bettors to wager higher amounts of money before releasing funds are present on popular US sites such as Bovada and MyBookie,
but there are still online bookies out there that can be taken advantage of via matched betting, especially in the UK.
Matched betting meets the true definition of a “lock” bet because it guarantees that no money will be lost.
Arbitrage Betting
Another way to guarantee profit when betting on sports is the execution of arbitrage betting.
This is the practice of finding differences in betting odds on seperate betting outlets for the same sporting event.
If these odds are far enough apart, then there is an arbitrage bet opportunity, which means it is impossible to lose money.
A successful arbitrage bet needs a few things.
First, two sportsbooks must disagree on the potential outcome of a sporting event.
This will result in betting lines that are able to be taken advantage of due to the possible payouts that could be extracted by each bookie.
For example, if Online Bookie A released the Lakers (-160) v. Rockets (+140) moneyline, but Online Sportsbook B released a line that looked like the Lakers (-200) v. Rockets (+175).
This would mean that arbitrage bettors would want to place $100 on the Lakers (-160) with Online Bookie A to win $62.5, and then put $60 on the Rockets (+175) with Online Sportsbook B to win $105.
The difference in the betting lines allows the bettor to take the best offering of each team on each sportsbook.
By doing this, profit is locked in regardless of who wins the game.
Arbitrage betting takes time and practice, but the skill is one that is worth developing.
There is a handful of quality software out there that assists arbitrage bettors by presenting all of the sportsbook odds in one place.