Are Sports Handicapping Services Worth It
- Is Sports Handicapping Legal
- Sports Handicapping Websites
- Legitimate Sports Handicapping Services
- Sports Handicapping Service
- Are Sports Handicapping Services Worth Item
- Who Is The Best Sports Handicapping Service
- Are Sports Handicapping Services Worth It Week
When purchasing picks you need to find services that are either low cost, proven and tracked with high win rate, or of course best of all – both. The more money you spend on a picks service the higher.
- A new concept in sports handicapping monitors. The documented handicappers exchange platform allows online sports handicappers the ability to buy or sell their sports research. All records are monitored and all sports handicapping picks are released after the start of each game. Documented Handicappers offers information & records about each registered Documented Handicapper, 100% monitored sports handicapping services and the ability to buy or sell your sports.
- By relying on numerous handicapping methods, Steve continues to beat the pointspread on a consistent basis in both college and pro football, college and pro basketball, baseball and racing. Steve has numerous documented #1 finishes in all major sports and was the first person to ever win the prestigious $100,000 Insider’s Handicapping.
If you’re a sports bettor, you may have considered hiring a sports betting handicapping service. Some sports bettors think that hiring someone to make their picks is equivalent to either cheating or wasting their cash. But neither is true.
Of course, if you enjoy handicapping and are good at it, then chances are you don’t need a handicapping service. But the fact is a good sports betting service can be well worth the money especially if you’re someone who bets on sports three to seven days of the week. A handicapping service can make all the difference between a sports bettor making a profit or losing their bankroll.
For those who want to make a profit and even a living from sports betting, it is important that they bet on a regular basis. Professional sports betting is not about making the big score on a game or two and then retiring for life. It is about betting on a consistent basis and making smart bets based on facts, stats and solid information. If you’re that type of bettor, then a sports betting service could be of benefit.
Choosing a handicapping service can be tricky. How do you know which services are good? How can you determine if a service is a real handicapping provider that knows what they are doing? The Internet is filled with charlatans who set up shop and simply take people’s cash without providing them with any real benefit or service.
First, look for a sports handicapping service that has a good and long track record. They should be able to provide you with solid information that covers entire seasons of various sports. Information should include their success rate and how much per unit sports bettors won using their service.
Don’t fall for hard sell or pressure tactics. A solid handicapping service knows that this is a big decision for a bettor and that you need some time to decide. Be wary of sites that make unbelievable claims such as a winning rate of 89%. That may be true for a day, a week or two but can it be for an entire season or year?
Top-notch professional services have an average success rate of between 53% and 55% over the long run. The fact is in order to show a profit a sports bettor must win 52.4% of their wagers. It’s that simple. That’s why 53% is the magic percentage when it comes to making cash by betting on sports.
Find out what features and services they offer. Will they talk, chat or email with you? A real handicapping service will certainly be willing to correspond with you and answer your questions. If they’re not, that should be a red flag.
Do they offer value-base packages with some sort of guarantee? If you want to pay by the day or week, you’re going to have to go with a premium rate. But services by the month, season or year usually offer bettors great value, and they make the most sense since consistently wagering on sports is what makes bettors real money.
Also, the handicapping service should offer some sort of guarantee. This can’t be a full money back guarantee. A sensible guarantee would be free picks for the equivalent amount of time your picks did not prove to be profitable.
By the way, a sports betting service will define profitability by not only what it tells you to bet on but by how many units they say you should put on each specific game. If you don’t follow their instructions and you lose, the guarantee is null and void. That’s all there is to it.
What should you get from a handicapping service? You should receive a certain number of picks plus information regarding how many units you should wager on each game. Unit distribution is essential in successful sports betting. If you wager too many units or simply put too much cash on the wrong game and lose, you’ll have a tough time making up for those losses.
As a serious sports bettor, you want each and every edge that you can possibly get. When deciding on whether or not you’re going to hire a sports handicapping service, you need to determine if it will be cost efficient. Weigh how often you bet, how much you’ve been winning and how much time you spend making your picks.
Is Sports Handicapping Legal
Shop around to find a good pick service. If they offer free picks subscribe to them to get a sense of how good they are. Remember that sports betting takes time and patience and that you are looking for a handicapper who will be able to furnish you with winning picks over the long run. If you can do that, you’ll spend a lot of time in the black while others are seeing red.
Handicapping, in sport and games, is the practice of assigning advantage through scoring compensation or other advantage given to different contestants to equalize the chances of winning. The word also applies to the various methods by which the advantage is calculated. In principle, a more experienced participant is disadvantaged, or a less experienced or capable participant is advantaged, in order to make it possible for the less experienced participant to win whilst maintaining fairness. Handicapping is used in scoring many games and competitive sports, including go, shogi, chess, croquet, golf, bowling, polo, basketball, and track and field events. Handicap races are common in clubs which encourage all levels of participants, such as swimming or in cycling clubs and sailing clubs, or which allow participants with a variety of standards of equipment. Often races, contests or tournaments where this practice is competitively employed are known as Handicaps.
Handicapping also refers to the various methods by which spectators can predict and quantify the results of a sporting match. The term is applied to the practice of predicting the result of a competition, such as for purposes of betting against the point spread. A favored team that wins by less than the point spread still wins the game, but bets on that team lose.
In either case the handicapper is the person who sets the handicaps for the activity.
Etymology[edit]
The term handicap derives from hand-in-cap, referring to a system wherein players placed bets or money into the cap of a neutral arbiter to reach an agreement as to the relative values of items sought to be traded.[1]
Competition handicapping[edit]
In a 'result adjustment' style handicap event, the outcome may be adjusted by some factor determined by the handicap. Some forms of car or yacht racing.[2] In this case, the winner, on elapsed time, may differ from the fastest competitor when the times have been adjusted for the different competitors' handicaps.
In a 'pursuit' style handicap race, all participants are clocked in a time trial before the race. When this takes place at the same event as the main race, it is known as the handicap. In the race itself, the participants do not all start at the same 'Go'; the starts are staggered, based on the handicaps. The slowest swimmer, or cyclist, for example, starts first and the fastest starts last, making the end of the race (hopefully) close. An ideal handicap race is one in which all participants finish at the same time.[3] The winner is the person who beats his or her own time.
Similarly, physically staggered starting positions can be used, for example, in greyhound racing a handicap race is where greyhounds (based on their ability) start from different starting traps set at different measurements from the finish line, and in human foot racing, for example, the Stawell Gift.
Some motorsport events, especially in sports car racing, demand teams to stop the vehicle in the pitbox a fixed period of time depending on the drivers' classification, thus giving advantage to less skilled drivers. An example of a championship using this system is the International GT Open. The advantage of this system over ballast weight systems is that vehicles have the normal performance on track, so better drivers will be able to recover time and overtake slower drivers.
Contrarily, horse race handicapping is implemented using extra weight.
Horse racing[edit]
A handicap race in horse racing is a race in which horses carry different weights, allocated by the handicapper. A better horse will carry a heavier weight, to give him or her a disadvantage when racing against slower horses. The handicapper's goal in assigning handicap weights is to enable all the horses to finish together (in a dead heat).
The skill in betting on a handicap horse race is in determining which horse can overcome its handicap.[4]
Sports Handicapping Websites
In addition to the Daily Racing Form, other data sources include Brisnet, Equibase, The Ragozin Sheets, and Thoro-Graph.[5]
Golf[edit]
Handicapping in the sport of golf enables players and teams of varying abilities to compete against one another. A golf handicap is a numerical measure of a golfer's potential or 'average best'. Better players are those with the lowest handicaps.
Chess[edit]
Types of chess handicaps include:
- the stronger player surrenders a certain piece or pieces
- the weaker player has extra moves at the beginning of the game
- the weaker player has extra time on the chess clock
- the odds-giver to deliver checkmate with a specified piece
Go[edit]
Handicapping in go includes the weaker player being given an advantage by placing a number of stones before the stronger player commences, and by final points adjustment.
Shogi[edit]
Handicapping in shogi is achieved by removing one or more pieces from the stronger player's side. Shogi (Japanese chess) and many of its variants have handicaps.
Gliding[edit]
Polo[edit]
The polo handicap is an estimation of the player's worth to his or her team. It is an overall rating of a player's horsemanship, team play, knowledge of the game, strategy and horses. The difference between the total of the polo handicaps for the players on each team is then used to determine the minimum score difference for the better team to score to enable them to win.
Legitimate Sports Handicapping Services
In polo, every player is awarded an individual handicap depending on performance. Handicap commissions of the national associations meet several times a year to decide players’ handicaps.[6]
Argentina: 0 to 10
USA: C (-2), B (-1), B+ (-0.5), A (0), A+ (0.5), 1.0, 1.5, 2 to 10
England: -2 to 10
Sailing[edit]
Handicaps for sailing vessels in sailing races have varied throughout history, and they also vary by country, and by sailing organisation. Sailing handicap standards exist internationally, nationally, and within individual sailing clubs.
Sailing race handicaps may be based on vessel capability and-or crew experience, and today typically adjust the time a vessel takes to reach the finish point of the race.
Tennis[edit]
Motorcycle speedway[edit]
The Calculated Match Average is a handicap calculated for every motorcycle speedway rider.
Outcome prediction[edit]
Middle and arbitrage bets[edit]
There are strategies that involve differences in the lines on the same event at different books. One bet is called a 'middle', which when a player finds two books that offer different point spreads for the same event. They will bet the more favorable spread at both books, and if the final score falls between the two, the bettor will win both bets. On the other hand, if the total falls outside the range of the 'middle' the bettor only loses a small percentage of a bet (the 'juice' or 'vig' taken by the house).
For example, Book 1 has Team A as a 3-point favorite, and Book 2 has team B as a 3-point favorite. If a player bets Team B at Book 1, and Team A at Book 2, he will win both bets if either side wins by 2 or less points, and will win one bet and lose the other (known as a 'side') if either team wins by 3 points.
Another strategy, known as arbitrage, or an 'arb' or 'scalp', involves finding different moneylines for the same event. In this case, the bettor will bet the more favorable line at both books, and have a guaranteed profit. For example, if Book 1 considers Team A to be worth +200 (2 to 1 underdog), and Book 2 considers Team B to be worth +200, a bettor can bet Team A at Book 1, and Team B at Book 2, and guarantee a 100% profit. This is a no-risk bet, as the player is guaranteed a profit no matter the result of the game.[citation needed]
Famous handicappers[edit]
The first very well known sports handicapper in American culture was Jimmy 'The Greek' Snyder.[7] During his career he worked for CBS on their Sunday morning show, The NFL Today. Because sports betting had a social taboo at the time, Snyder was not allowed to mention betting on games specifically. Instead, he would predict the score. Over the years the attitude towards sports betting, and handicapping in general, has changed. Billy Walters was profiled by 60 Minutes because of his handicapping abilities.[8] Billy Walters, and other unknown members of the Computer Group, developed a system for handicapping games and beating Las Vegas sportsbooks. The Huffington Post covered Jon Price a reclusive sports bettor that hires Ph.D's and works off of algorithmic information for his predictions.[9]ESPN wrote an article on Haralabos Voulgaris naming him as the one of the premier NBA handicappers in the world.[10] He claims to have developed a system that uses advanced statistical analysis to predict the outcomes of games. In the past, very few people did any mathematical calculations when handicapping sporting events. Predictions were usually made from hunches or information not readily available to the public. However, with the advancement of technology computers powerful enough to run advanced simulation models now frequent homes and offices. Advanced statistics such as DVOA, Win Shares and Points per Possession are talked about in mainstream media. Brian Burke, author of The Fifth Down blog featured in the New York Times, wrote a formula using advanced statistical techniques that has shown consistency correctly predicting NFL winners.[11] Handicapping, as a profession, is very similar to being a stock analyst. Like Wall Street did in the 1970s, the sports handicapping industry is undergoing a quantitative revolution. Many successful handicappers also use money management systems similar to financial investment professionals. The most popular, and mathematically superior, system is the Kelly criterion. It is a formula for maximizing profits and minimizing losses based on payout odds and win probability of the underlying asset.
Sports Handicapping Service
See also[edit]
References[edit]
Are Sports Handicapping Services Worth Item
- ^'handicap, n.' The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press. 8 Oct. 2008 'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on May 24, 2011. Retrieved 2008-10-08.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link).
- ^'History of the PY'(PDF). Royal Yachting Association. Retrieved 23 June 2013.
- ^[1]Archived 2011-01-31 at the Wayback Machine UK Horse Racing. Accessed 5 February 2011.
- ^'Archived copy'. Archived from the original on 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2011-02-05.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) British Horseracing Authority. Accessed 5 February 2011.
- ^'Horse Racing Wagering'. Equine Info Exchange. 1 January 2020.
- ^'The Polo Handicap'. Polo Plus Ten. 17 July 2015.
- ^Pace, Eric. 'Jimmy 'The Greek' Snyder; A Sports Oddsmaker'. New York Times. Retrieved 22 April 1996.Check date values in:
access-date=
(help) - ^Logan, Lara. 'Sports Betting: Billy Walters'. CBSNewsOnline. Retrieved 16 January 2011.
- ^Jensen, David. 'Seeking PHD's Who Minor in Sports'. The Huffington Post. Retrieved 21 September 2015.
- ^Eden, Scott. 'Meet The World's Top NBA Gambler'. ESPN The Magazine. ESPN. Retrieved 21 Feb 2013.
- ^Burke, Brian. 'Game Probabilities Are Back'. New York Times. Retrieved 27 September 2012.
Who Is The Best Sports Handicapping Service
- Beyer, Andrew (May 6, 1994). Picking Winners : A Horseplayer's Guide (Reissue ed.). Houghton Mifflin. ISBN0-395-70132-5.