The Best Sports to Bet

One of the most common questions novice bettors ask me is “what are the best to bet on?” I usually answer with “the sport you know the best” but let me expand on that answer a little bit here.

As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, the best sports bettors will only win about 56% of their wagers and to make a profit a bettor must win over 52% of their wagers to overcome the house advantage of the vig. The vig or juice is the commission on each losing bet; this is why you generally risk $110 to win $100. One way to give you an advantage sports betting is to use a low juice sportsbook such as Pinnacle. Pinnacles offers lines of 107 so to win $100 you risk $3 less than most sportsbooks out there, if you are making 100 x $100 bets in a month and you lose 50 of them, by using a low juice book, you saved yourself $150 over the course of the month.

In terms of the best sports to bet on, baseball offers the lowest juice of any sport. Most reputable sportsbooks offer a dime line in baseball, meaning the total difference between the underdog and the favorite is 10 cents or if the teams are evenly match the line will be -105. So on the same 100 bets where you win 50 and lose 50, you’ve saved yourself $200.  Those savings work out to a couple of more bets each month that would be sportsbooks profits on any other sport.

Handicapping games is sometimes considered a ‘war of information’ meaning the more information you have on a game the better your advantage, if you can find out about an injury or a snowstorm before the bookmaker does it puts you at a huge advantage when placing your bets.

This leads into my original response that I give to novice sports bettors, bet on sports you know best. Most professional Canadian bettors I know like to bet on hockey with a book that allows Canadians but doesn’t market to Canadians, such as a European or big American sportsbook. The bookmakers at these books spend most of their energy focusing on soccer or football and their hockey lines are not as sharp. This gives bettors a big advantage, if you know the LA Kings are a lot better than the Phoenix Coyotes and the line should be -140 with the Kings favored but the bookmakers have set the line as -120 for the Kings, you are risking 20 cents less for each dollar you want to win.

Here are a few other things to consider

Bet on a sport that is less popular – like I mentioned with the Hockey example, if you can become an expert in the often-ignored sports you can make a large profit by knowing more than the bookies. Sports such as the WNBA, NASCAR and Women’s tennis offer huge profits for those that take the time to learn the sports.

Bet Local – if you live on the West Coast, chances are you know the Pac-10 better than a bettor living in Florida, who would likely know the SEC inside and out. Sticking to the teams you watch every week will let you know when they are playing well and when they are due for a letdown game. Watching these teams in action every week will give you more than what you can get from reading the box score or reading the game previews.

Love what you bet – If you don’t enjoy watching a sport, don’t bet on it.