Live Sports Wagering: Tips for In-Play Strategies
Discover effective in-play betting strategies for live sports wagering. Learn how live betting works, key strategies for success, and valuable tips to enhance your live betting experience. Maximize your profits and enjoyment with our comprehensive guide.
The days of putting your money down pre-match or pre-race and just hoping for the best have long been over; two decades over.
These days the best sports betting sites offer live betting on hundreds of events every day, across dozens of sports, and hundreds of different live betting markets across those events.
At many Sportsbooks, there’s a lot more action in live betting than pre-match. The thrill of betting in real time as events unfold in front of everyone’s eyes is part of the appeal but not the only one. Getting a feel for the match or tournament by watching it allows you to draw some conclusions about what might happen next so it can prove to be profitable, as well as enjoyable.
What is Live Betting?
But what is live betting?
Also known as in-play betting, live betting refers to wagering on any sporting event after it’s started and up to the point where it comes to its natural conclusion.
In football that would be between the first and final whistle. In tennis that would be from the time the first serve is struck to when match point is converted, and the match is won. In horseracing it’s from the point the horses go off to when the first one crosses the line.
Interestingly, cricket is a little different: live betting doesn’t start when the first delivery is bowled but rather when the toss is made, which is half an hour before the start of the match. Live betting on that cricket match then ends when the winning runs are struck, the last wicket is taken, or the maximum number of allocated overs are reached.
How Does Live Betting Work?
So that’s what it is, but how does live betting work?
Just as bookmakers price up markets before the event begins, with the use of complex software they’re also able to price up hundreds of live betting markets in real time using algorithms that take into account numerous factors that affect the match, race or tournament. As long as the live betting market is open and available for business, you can place bets on it just like you would have pre-match.
One thing to be aware of is that markets are occasionally suspended while bookmakers take some time to adjust their prices to a major event that just happened.
In football that could be a goal, penalty awarded or a sending-off. In cricket that could be a wicket being taken or a boundary being struck and in golf a birdie or a bogey for a particular golfer.
Once the bookmaker has had a chance to update their odds, they’ll then re-open the markets and punters are free to bet on the live betting market of their choice.
Live Betting Strategy
There’s no hard and fast strategy that will always win you money when betting on a particular sport, much less one that will always work across all sports. But here are some general ones that are worth experimenting with.
• Identify the slow starter- Whether it’s a football team, a tennis player or a basketball team, some of these tend to go on to win but have a habit of starting slowly before they get there. Once you’ve realised who comes under this category, you’re better off waiting for them to go behind before backing them at bigger odds in live betting, than backing them pre-match at shorter odds.
• Make use of Cash Out- Just about any bookie these days offers Cash Out. Cash Out allows you to bank a profit that’s a percentage (never 100%) of what you would go on to be paid out if you let the bet ride and it went on to win. So, if you back Sweden to beat Germany at 5.0 in a football match for 10 units (potential winnings of 50 units including stake) and they are 1-0 up after 60 minutes, it might be worth banking a profit of say 25 Units than risking not securing any profit at all…and losing your stake, as well!
• Beat the machine with human observations- As clever as the software that determines live odds is, it’s just that: software. It’s not so sophisticated that it takes into account such things as a key player in a football match pulling up tired or injured, a tennis player reacting badly to crowd noise or the wind picking up as a golfer is playing a shot. If you can identify these things as crucial factors before the software does, you’ll at least be placing value bets, whether they win, or not.
Live Betting Tips
And time to round things off with some live betting tips that you can apply to any sport.
• Research well- Arm yourself before the event with stats and trends that you can use to your advantage as the event unfolds to make good live betting decisions.
• Watch closely, bide your time- The closer you watch the event, the better prepared you are to assess what’s a good bet. Take notes of important things you’ve picked up on. And remember, you don’t need to place a bet five minutes into the match. Sometimes it’s better to wait a bit until the ideal time to place your wager at optimal odds.
• Fast connection, fast pictures- Time is of the essence in live betting and every second counts. Slow internet connections may limit your ability to place good bets at the right moment, while delayed TV or streaming pictures will show out of date action that may mean you draw wrong conclusions. Speed is essential in both cases.
• Gamble responsibly- There’s a temptation to place more and more live bets on the same outcome as the odds get bigger. This may occasionally work out for you if it goes on to win against the odds but often it just means you’re going to end up losing more. Set yourself a betting limit per event and stick to it.
• Use more than one account- This applies to pre-match betting but particularly, to live betting, where different bookies lay different odds. Let’s say Manchester United go 1-0 down to West Ham and your stats tell you they’ve got a great chance of recovering to go onto win. If you only have one account, you have no option but to bet them at 3.2 But if you have multiple accounts with the latest odds open, you might find other bookies offering 3.5 or even 3.7, which makes a huge difference.
James has been writing about cricket, football and tennis betting for the best part of 20 years for some of the biggest operators, websites and publications in the industry. Heroes and heroines include Paul Scholes, Chris DiMarco, Anastasia Myskina, Richard Gasquet, Nat-Sciver Brunt and Kumar Sangakarra.