Sportsbooks That Give You The Best Chance To Win:

Overview:
All Sportsbook are not the same. Where you place your bets is as important as who you bet on. By simply placing your bets with the correct sportsbook you WILL increase your winning percentage by 3-4%. Our goal at Sports Insights has always been to educated and inform sports bettors. The following article examines how players can increase their winning percentage by 3-4% just by placing their bets at the correct sportsbook, chosen based on loose lines, reduced juice, and sign up bonuses.

Many people believe professional sports bettors win at least 60% of their bets. This is understandable with all the books and movies featuring Vegas high rollers, but it’s just not true. The fact is the difference between the percentage of bets won by successful sports bettors and the percentage of bets won by chronic losers is relatively small.

Let's take a minute to examine the numbers. For clarity sake, we'll focus on bets where the player risks $11 to make $10. (point spread and over/under bets) Against this type of bet, anyone can expect to win 50% of their bets. All you'll need to do is flip a coin and pick a side. The bookmakers profit comes from the difference between what a bettor must risk and what a bettor expects to win. Every time a player wins, the bookmaker withholds slightly more than 9% of the winnings ($1 for every $11 risked), consequently, a bettor winning only half his bets will ultimately go broke.

Based on 11 to 10 odds, you would need to win 52.38% of your bets just to break even and cover the "juice" you pay to the sportsbook. Let's take a look to see how the 52.38% is derived:

Required Win % = Amount Risked / (Amount Risked + Amount of Win)
Example: A line of -110 implies a risk of $110 to win $100, so…
Required win % = 110 / (110 + 100) = 110 / 210 = 52.38

Professional sports bettors, by comparison, rarely sustain a long term winning percentage higher than 57-58%, and often as low as 55-56%. Most people find that hard to believe, and they get even more skeptical when told that for successful professional sports bettors, a winning percentage of 60% or more is actually too high. This is because a professional sports bettor will bet on any game that they feel they have and edge. The logic being at the end of the day it’s all about how much money you make. An example will help clarify this important point.

If a bettor has 5 bets on a given day, risking $110 to win $100 on each bet, and wins 3 or them, that's a great winning percentage of 60%, and net profit of $80. (The bettor wins $300 and loses $220) If another bettor has 14 bets on that same day, risking $110 to win $100 on each one, and wins eight of them, resulting in lower winning percentage of 57%, but almost twice as much profit, $140. The second bettor wasn't necessarily less skilled at picking winners, they may have just choose to apply all their advantages, (including bets that had an expected winning percent less than 60%). If the goal is make money, there is no doubt which sports bettor is achieving their objective.

Loose Lines:
So with the prospects of winning and losing measured by just a couple of %, we can't stress how important it is to place your bets with the correct sportsbooks. Any serious sports bettor should have accounts with more than one sportsbook (typically 5 sportsbooks). If you have an account at only one sportsbook, you will have no choice but to either accept the line offered, or just not bet. By having more than one sportsbook to choose from, you can compare lines and wager with the one that offers you the best opportunity to win your bet. Why would somebody bet an underdog at +6.5 if they could wager on the same team at +7.0? Surprising this happens every weekend. Estimates vary but getting a 1/2 to full point per game results in a 3-4% increase in your winning percentage! This roughly overcomes the "juice" factor we spoke of earlier. We can't stress enough how important it is to always shop the number before placing a bet.

Reduced Juice:
Considering that you should be able to hit 50% of your games by simply flipping a coin, that extra 3-4% would mean the difference between losing and making a small profit on the same bets placed with the correct sportsbook. Let's take it a step further…Nearly every online sportsbook offers a “reduced juice” special. Unfortunately they usually only offer this promo on special days (Friday)...which does little to help player who follow Sports Insights and bet against the public. Also betting on Fridays limits a player’s ability to shop a number. But we have found two excellent full service sportsbook that offer great reduced juice betting ALL THE TIME. So let's assume that you get smart and finally take advantage of reduced juice betting...Now, rather than having to hit 52.38% to break even, one could drastically reduce that number. Reduced juice brings this number down, -107 = 51.67%, and -105 = 51.22%! Don't believe me? Run the numbers through the formula above, but use -105 in place of -110. We use reduced juice sportsbooks for our everyday bets in which we can't locate a line discrepancy at any of our sportsbooks. By placing the same bet +3 -105 instead of +3 -110 we shave 1.16% in our favor.

Bonuses:
Lastly, we'll examine the phoneme of depositing bonuses. Originally contrived as a marketing ploy aimed at attracting new players has now become the industry norm. Depositing bonuses help the player and cut into the house's edge. (Note that all bonus will come with strings attached, usually requiring a rollover minimum of anywhere between 3x to 10x. The lower the rollover number the better the bonus.) A 10% bonus is now the standard, but if you do a little leg work you can find sportsbooks that offer 20% with only 3x rollover. The rollover number is a key factor when evaluating a bonus offer. A lower rollover number means less times you are required to place your money in action and a higher chance of eking out a profit. A real world example will help drive home this point.