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Overrated Sports Betting Factors

To win consistently at sports betting is extremely difficult. Go over to the internet and you’ll find thousands of sites telling you which are the important sports betting factors you’ll need to be aware of in order to up your winning percentages. Yes, we do agree that there is a number of factors that are important. But we also think that too many of these are a waste of time and effort. So we wanted to dig down and see exactly what measures are overrated. And why some of these factors have greater importance than necessary.

Sports Betting Factors: Home Field Advantage

If you’re a fan attending a home game, we’re sure that you like to imagine that all that jumping up and down and shouting support can somehow swing the game and win the football jackpot. The problem is that this theory has been debunked some time ago. Yet, of all the sports betting factors, this one persists as a kind of a romanticized truism. Of course, there have been examples of home teams feeling they rose and did better up thanks to the home crowd. In spite of fanatical thinking, there’s no proof that having your home crowd rooting for you will make any difference in the actual results. What is interesting is that most sportsbooks will give a team that’s playing at home a couple of points advantage.

The general idea would be to try and find a team that performs equally or worse at home. And match them with a team that performs equally or better when playing away. They may well be some value in this.

sports betting factors
Home?

Just a quick Google search will bring up any team’s home and away record. Then you’ll be able to see more clearly whether those extra three points the team gets for playing at home, actually make any difference at the end of the day. We should point out that they may well be a single example of home advantage. And that’s if the other team has had to travel any considerable distance. For example, any team that has to cross several time zones. So if an East Coast team had to make their way to play on the West Coast. The team that’s doing long haul travel is going to feel it on match day, thus giving the home team a small but significant advantage. It’s an important factor that could form another of your jackpot winning strategies.

Overall Win/Loss Record

Just in the same way that we feel that home advantage is a real thing, likewise, looking through previous results should give us a more accurate picture of a forthcoming result. But it’s not accurate and can be very misleading. You’re much better off to examine the team’s schedule as opposed to looking at its track record. Looking at a team’s past results isn’t going to tell you so much about the future. OK…if a team has played five matches and lost all of them, well, that’s one thing. But most teams will be kinda middling in their scorecard. It’s more important to see who they beat, as that will give you a better idea of the team’s quality.

sports betting factors
Statistics won’t predict the future – They will rhyme with it anyhow

The problem with sports betting is that the sportsbooks use the previous results and scores as a metric for measuring sports betting factors. As far as this information pertains to betting odds, you should take it all with a large pinch of salt. Sportsbooks are only too happy to manipulate this data for their own purposes. They play with such sports betting factors as sample size and team records to ensure you never get a complete picture. This surface-level information is fed to gamblers around the country. But it’s not the least bit helpful and is, in some ways, designed to deliberately misinform. Sportsbooks need to show a profit and they’ll do anything to push an advantage they’re direction.

Pick one of the most traditional online sports betting site – Pick Intertops

Sports Betting Factors: Preseason Sports Rankings

This one follows the same pattern as what we’ve just discussed. It applies almost exclusively to both college football and basketball. It’s like the “power ranking” we can see in the NFL and NBA. Every year, the NCAA comes out with a preseason ranking. It just looks like the final results from the previous season. These figures are totally misleading. At the start of the season, we often have big named teams up against relative minnows. Bettors tend to move towards those teams listed at the top. They automatically assume that these more highly ranked teams will have new blood via new recruits or changes in coaching. But there’s a basic error in this way of thinking.

It’s that any team with a transition going on, whether through new players or new coaching staff, will always be at a disadvantage. Transitions are by their very nature unproven. It may take any number of games to settle in a new player. The same if the whole team has been learning some new gameplay moves. Because the sportsbook will gravitate towards pushing teams at the top of the list, then there’s probably some value in betting against them. Yes, it does take some discipline to do so, but you have a much greater chance to increase your jackpot winning chances by doing so.

sports betting factors
No one cares about preseasons

Past Team Meetings

Just like the other sports betting factors we’ve covered, previous match results from the same teams can be very misleading for future meetings. On the face of it, this seems like the perfect factor for any betting activity. But it not so much about how the two teams met. But more about when. The reason is that all teams will be evolving over the course of a season. A team is often a very different vehicle at the start of the season and at the end of it. You’ll find both the public and the sportsbooks put a lot of emphasis on this factor. One reason is that it’s a lazy way of trying to predict a future result. But the final scores are not good indicators of how the match was actually played.

Yes, there is some basic information to be gleaned from previous matchups. But whatever it is, as stand-a-lone knowledge, it’s of little use. As with all things in life, context is everything.

Conclusion: Overrated Sports Betting Factors

Looking at upcoming jackpot games and trying to predict the outcome means that you need to take into consideration a thousand and one sports betting factors. Now, most of the obvious ones, and the ones promoted by bookmakers will be pretty rubbish. That’s because the sportsbooks don’t want you looking in the right place. This will then affect the bottom line of their business. And that’s why you should make the effort to avoid all the usual noise coming out of any pundit. They always have an agenda you can’t know about. All sportsbooks are relying on you just doing the most basic of research and not looking at the real factors that can make or break a game.