Betting predictions from Sergei Kanali

If you want to make a profit from sports betting first you need to know how the bookies work. This way you will be able to refine your betting and be more aware if there is a value in your betting or not.

Surely, the first thing that must be taken into account when it comes to sports betting are the odds and the way that they are made by the bookies.

Generally it is very simple. What the bookmaker does is to assess very accurately the expectations of the majority of bettors for a particular match.

Let’s say that according to the bookies, half of its customers expect the match between Team A and Team B to end up with a home win. In other words 50% would bet for a home victory. Another 40% of the bettors think that the match will end with a draw and the last 10% think that the match would end with an away win.

Thus, we have the following distribution of client expectations – 50 to 40 to 10. The Fair odds for this distribution of expectations would be 2 for a home win, 2.5 for a draw and 10 for an away win. However, if the betting house puts these odds on the market they would not make any profit. So each bookmaker adds a margin to the match odds and by doing this they make profits.

For example, let’s add a 10% margin for each of the possible outcomes. When doing that we would have a distribution like this – 55% for a home win, 44% for a draw and 11% for an away win. Now the odds, offered by the betting house seem very different. A home win is no longer with odds of 2, but it is with 1.81. The draw is estimated at 2.27 and an away win is with odds of 9.09.

When the betting house puts these odds for a match whatever outcome happens they would have a profit. All this because of the so-called margin.

That is why it is important to search for sports betting houses that offer lower margins, as they offer greater profit opportunities.

In the next few lines I am going to write about an interesting betting strategy I have been using successfully in the past few seasons. It is about live betting on yellow and red cards in the matches from the knockout stages of the European club competitions.

As you well know, the eliminations in the Champions League and Europa League are held in two matches. The winner of the two matches goes further in the tournament. Only the final is played in just one match.

What is clear at first glance is that who goes further and who is eliminated from the tournament is decided in the second match. Often the difference between winning and losing, and between qualifying ahead and retiring from the tournament is only one goal. Then we see situations where the goalkeepers are together with the strikers in the attack and everybody is looking for this decisive goal. In moments like these, the tension is really high and it often affects the players. When there is tension, there are also hard and even dangerous tackles, which means only one – yellow and red cards.

So, how to use this fact for our betting success?

If you take the time to do a research you will see that the second matches from the European tournaments have a surge of received cards. This is especially true when everything is decided in the last few minutes of the match.

So, I try to use for my betting this principle. I do live betting on matches where the winner is not clear yet and only one scored goal could turn the thing upside down. When I see such a match I bet on live for more cards than what the bookmaker offers at the 60th minute.

If the winner and therefore the team that will go forward are already determined, I simply don’t bet on this match. It is clear that when both teams know that the outcome is already predetermined, it is unlikely to go playing too rough.

The same is true when the outcome of the match will lead to extra time. In such cases, the teams are very careful not to get cards, which means that this betting system cannot be implied.

If this betting system has interested you, then do a paper trial and work it out for you. At least for me it is very profitable and I hope it will be for you too.

Hardly anyone believes that it is possible for the title in Germany to go somewhere else but in the hands of Bayern Munich’s players. They currently lead in the Bundesliga standings with 11 points after only 16 rounds. We have not reached the half of the season, but Bayern have 13 wins, two draws and only one loss and the difference between Bayern and their rivals today Borussia Monchengladbach is exactly 17 points. In other words, each round Bayern have increased their lead from their today’s opponent by one point.

The class of Bayern players has affected the bookmakers and they offer only 1.12 as odds for their victory. Something really negligible, given the fact that Monchengladbach is on the 8th place in the standing at the moment and last year finished in the Champions League spot.

That is why a bet for Borussia should not be underestimated at all as a betting prediction for this match. Currently the odds for their victory with an Asian Handicap margin of 2; 2.5 goals is 1.95, which is a pretty good bet. This means that even if Bayern win with two goals, the bet would bring some profit, which is really likely to happen.

If you look at the last matches between these two teams you will see that from 1998 till now Bayern have hosted Borussia exactly 11 times. Today’s bet would have been profitable in 8 cases or 73%. The statistics are quite impressive and should be taken into account when we make our betting predictions.

Moreover, last year Monchengladbach were the only team to beat Bayern twice, which also indicates that the chances for the guests in this match should not be underestimated at all.

So, a pretty good bet for me today. I will go for the guests in this match with an advantage of 2, 2.5 goals on Asian Handicap with odds of 1.95 with Bet365.