Like the other gambling sites online sports books work with the bonus system in order to entice new bettors to register and use their facilities for online sports betting. There are welcome bonuses, also referred to as first deposit bonuses and there are regular deposit bonuses, for the regular members.

Many online sports books run special offers on top of the bonus system that is in place, but overall they provide a convenient place to do your sports betting from within the comforts of your own home.

Online Sports books have rapidly increased in popularity since the introduction of the anti gambling laws in the US in 2006. While currently changes for sports betting are being made in the US by the individual states, most of them still outlaw the practice, so in turn the bulk of the American sports bettors has turned to online sports betting sites which are located overseas, mostly in Europe.

Besides the fact that the online sports book in many cases provides the outlet to those who cannot bet on sports in their own country, the matter of convenience to be able to place your bets from your pc, mobile phone or other handheld device capable of accessing the Internet also plays a large part in the increasing popularity of online sports books.

In fact the Internet made it possible to bet at several different sports books simultaneously, adding another dimension to the betting game.

Within the current economical climate, many voices are heard in the USA to legalize the practice and in fact there are states that already have done so, like Nevada, with other states not far behind working on their own versions of the changed gambling legislation. With the promise of gambling tax revenues many states believe this to be the answer to fill their budgetary gaps.

Whether or not this will have a large impact on sports betting online remains to be seen, as the fact of convenience remains, even when sports’ betting becomes legal in your area. Only time will tell if convenience alone is enough to keep the bettors betting online instead of using their favorite bookmakers for their betting habits.

Fact remains that betting on just about anything is as old as man itself, and will remain, no matter what laws or regulations are imposed on it, which means that sports betting as a whole will always continue to be as popular as ever, as it is a part of human nature to bet and gamble as a means of entertainment, and since the Internet has become a part of our day to day lives on an increasing scale, it is logical to assume that the usage of online sports books will continue to grow.
M.A.H.

As the online sports books matured, so did the options offered to gamblers, as more and more options and features became available to them, like betting with their mobile phones, and special applications they can download for the IPhone, and Ipad platform. One of the most recent and most popular new features however is live betting, which is on its way to becoming the most popular betting method available.

As the name suggests, “Live betting” allows the player to bet during the game, as it plays out. To the bettor this can be an advantage as well as a disadvantage. The advantage is that the bettor can respond to game information immediately, the disadvantage can be having multiple bets on one game. This kind of betting can easily make or break a bettor in the long run, as it can turn out as having too many stakes in one game, but it can also be the exact opposite, depending on the skill of the player.

When betting live, odds are king. The player must find a sports book, or even several sports books that can provide the odds they need, while the game unfolds. For this reason the best strategy to engage in live betting is to use several online sports books, which offer this feature.

Finding them and those that offer the right odds can be a task of its own. Live betting is on the rise in terms of popularity, but not all sports books have the feature built in, so they have to be searched for and found before a game begins. Once this is accomplished and a bettor has a collection of sports books that do offer live betting, they can in turn shop around during the game in search of the best odds to wager on.

Generally a player can wager on almost anything, like the end score, but also a wide variety of specific aspects of the game, like who will score the most goals during the game, or other specific game facts.

Live betting is by far the most exciting feature to come out for online sports bettors in a long time, and one all players should familiarize themselves with, as they will most likely encounter it as it rises in popularity and it may very well replace the way we currently do our sports betting. To the gambler, that does their research and knows how to handle live betting, it can be a tremendous asset and valuable tool in their betting endeavors. In time they will be glad to have taken the time to master the art of live betting.
M.A.H.

Creating a game plan before actually signing up is vital in order to bet intelligently and without problems. Before signing up, set yourself a goal which is doable. After determining this goal, have a look at the sports book you plan on placing the wager(s) at. How easy is it to make a deposit, and more important, how easy is it to get money out again? This is a factor most players tend to forget, only to find themselves wasting time trying to get their wins out of the account and in to their bank account.

Research matters, like what is the maximum limit of an account at that particular sports book, is it suitable for the goal you have set for yourself? If the answer to this is yes, it is time to move on to the next part of our game plan.

While betting we do not want to keep depositing, only to be forced to place last minute bets, because it took so long for the money to be transferred into the account. For that reason, it is best to place one initial deposit covering the money we plan on wagering in total. Once winnings come in, do not take it all out again, but limit yourself to a percentage, like 25% on a weekly basis. This way there will always be sufficient money in your account, without the need for making deposits, while you still have money going to your bank account each week.
What works for me is to set a fixed day to withdraw my winnings every week. That way I don’t forget to withdraw my money, but it also forces me to look at my account and go over the bets once more.

Placing the bets is another matter, do your research first, pick the game apart, follow the money line, and when the time is right, place the bet. Thanks to our game plan we have this luxury as we do not have to wait for deposits to arrive, and thanks to the research we are not giving away our advantage to the sports book, which increases our chances of winning.

Finally, keep track of your past wagers and the results. Personally I keep a log of all my previous bets and from that I can observe patterns that assist me in planning my future bets, and more importantly, it keeps me from repeating mistakes.

All of the above combined make up a well crafted game plan, which is solid, realistic and will increase your chances at winning and ensures you will not encounter any problems while betting on your favorite sports.
M.A.H.

Over the years offshore sports’ betting has turned into a professional business that is safe and secure, providing everything a gambler could want ranging from entire casinos to online sports books. The numbers of gamblers that are turning towards sports betting online are still increasing.

The advantages of offshore sports betting online are the main reason many gamblers are turning towards the online variant, instead of the traditional brick and mortar casinos and bookmakers. Unlike the traditional locations, the Internet is always open, allowing gamblers to bet whenever they want and wherever they want, which makes online betting more convenient, also the online gambling sites often offer a lot more features than their land based counterparts.

However, not all casinos online are the same, doing some research into the site you plan to use for your betting habits is invaluable, as there are still many con artists out there doing their best to take your money.

Finding the required information is easy these days thanks to the many review sites, which will allow you to check up on the gambling site in question. While doing so, make a note of the amount of complaints the site has received regarding withdrawals.

On the other hand, the number of reputable and well established online casinos and sports betting sites are increasing rapidly. These are the gambling sites, running a legitimate business, fully licensed, and in compliance with the laws of the country their operation is based.

With the arrival of the Internet, the gambler was suddenly presented with lots of choice. In the past, a trip to the bookmaker or casino would limit the player to whatever options the establishment offered. It was a type of “take it or leave it” situation, but online, that same gambler has hundreds of online gambling sites at their fingertips to choose from, which leads to some healthy competition amongst the online betting sites. It also enables the gambler to place his bets at the site providing the odds and features that are best suitable for that player’s needs.

This being said, it is really no surprise that online betting is on the rise, while the traditional sources suffer from a rapidly declining clientele. It is for that reason that many of the land based casinos now are establishing an online presence, that equals, and often surpasses the features they offer at their establishments, and due to this increase in healthy competition, the player wins in the shape of higher, more lucrative bonuses, that are given in order to attract the player to gamble at their online gambling site.

Any way you look at it, offshore sports betting is on the rise and will remain so for a long time to come, as more and more gamblers discover the advantages of placing their bets when they want, where they want, under conditions the way they want them to be.
M.A.H.

Losing in sports bets is a given, it will occur and can stretch out for days, even months, there simply is no way around this. Losses are a simple fact of a gambling life and the way to become a successful bettor is to accept that fact and work with it and not against it.

Losses occur in life and in betting. Skeptical? Are you convinced there are ways to win every time? You better reconsider.

Let’s take a look at the regular stock market. If you would have bought shares in an index fund in august of 97 and held on to it for roughly a decade you would have had an ROI of 88 percent, but had you bought the share only 4 weeks later your loss would have been approximately 20 percent!

Let’s consider the above. From an entire period that consisted out of more than 3500 days, only 20 were any good, while the rest were a big loss. Like with sports betting the ROI on shares come in waves. They come up fast, get high and then just as fast they die out.

As we could see from the stock market, periods of wins do occur, and much to our dislike, if that is true, it means the opposite is also true: periods of loss occur as well. Even in the best of seasons where you could do as well as 60 percent winners (It does not get any better than that), you still will have days filled with losses, or worse, it could be a month.

Sports betting means betting consistently while taking the bad with the good. If losses upset you too much, emotion gets in the way and when confronted with your mind or emotions, the latter is not a good guide to follow. What you need to do is keep your cool and continue to bet, still going for the 55 to 60 percent winners.

Betting on sports needs to be treated like you would treat a regular business. In business, it is not about good or bad days, it is about the yearly end result and the same holds true for sports betting. Make sure you can sustain short term loss in other to turn a positive ROI at year’s end.
M.A.H.

Fixed parlays

For example, let’s assume you placed a bet in a fixed 5 team parlay at 25 -1 odds. This means if you win you receive $25 for every dollar you have wagered, if all the games win. This is also the main reason this particular type of Parlay betting is highly popular among sports bettors.

Variable Parlays

Variable Parlays take the betted amount and put it on one team. Should this team win, the bet is recalculated and placed on the next, and so on, always putting the total amount on the next team until all have played and then your winnings are paid out if all the teams have won. If one team loses you lose all the money wagered.

To illustrate the above, let’s say you like one team that is rated + 100 and another at -120, and decide to place a $10 bet on them in a variable parlay bet. On the first game you would make $26 if you win, that $26 would then go on to team 2 and should you win again it would make a total of $46, compared to $36 you would have made in the case of a fixed parlay bet. This considerable difference is due to the bad odds team two was given which worked in your favor while doing a variable parlay bet.

Parlay bets are not the best sports bets one can make as the odds that are betted on differ from the real odds one would get in other types of sports bets, and as a rule the difference increases the more teams are betted on in parlay betting. In comparison to other types of sports bets, doing parlay bets puts you at a disadvantage. On the up side, parlay betting require much less minimum wagers to enter them which in turn still makes them one of the most popular types of sports bets around.

M.A.H.

Initially created to offer betting mainly on the North American major professional sports leagues, Sport Select has expanded and is now offering betting on competitions such as the English Premier Soccer League and college sports.

Tickets for Sport Select – or the equivalent wherever you live – can be purchased at all lottery centers across Canada, creating one of the densest sports betting networks in the world. In addition, some provinces are now even accepting wagers over the Internet.

Sport Select games
Each province offers versions of these three games under rules similar to those described below:

Pro-Line
Known as Oddset in British Columbia and Mise-O-Jeu in Quebec, Pro-Line offers fixed-odds sports betting. This is the most popular of the Sport Select games. Betting is not offered on individual matches, because betting on a single sporting event is technically illegal under the Criminal Code of Canada. To overcome this, Pro-Line offers a parlay game where bettors wager on the outcome of anywhere from three to six of the matches offered by the lottery corporation. Decimal odds are quoted for individual matches and the odds for each selection are multiplied to calculate the potential payout of the ticket. All selections must be correct for the ticket to pay out.

Some provinces offer a ‘Combo Play’ which does not require all selections to be correct for a payout, but the Combo Play ticket is effectively nothing more than a number of similar, individual Pro-Line tickets rolled into one. Overtime is taken into account when determining results, but shootouts, both in ice hockey and in soccer are ignored.

Point spread
Point Spread is similar to those games offered by other bookmakers where bettors are wagering against a quoted point spread. Bettors can predict the outcomes of anything from two to twelve games, depending on the province. The payouts offered vary from one province to another.

Over/Under
Also known as Total in Quebec, Over/Under is similar to those games offered by other bookmakers where bettors wager that the total number of points scored in each match is over or under the quoted total. Bettors can predict the outcomes of between three and twelve games, depending on the province and again the payouts vary by province.

The Controversy

Odds
From the gambler’s point of view, Sport Select offers poor odds and in recent years it has come under increasingly heavy criticism from Canadian gamblers. Private bookmakers licensed in the United Kingdom or Nevada generally maintain an overround, or “vig” of about 110%, which means that the bookmaker can expect to pay out $100 for every $110 that is wagered.

In Canada, however, this overround for an individual match in Sport Select odds often exceeds 130%. Making matters even worse for the bettor, the parlay requirement compounds the overround and the actual vigorish is a minimum of 160% but can climb to well over 300% if six selections are made.

Most experts agree that the odds offered on Sport Select are such that even the sharpest punter has no chance of making a profit in the long term.

Ties
Even though draws or ties are common in soccer and used to be common in ice hockey, this is unlikely to be the case with most bookmakers. The rules of Sport Select provide for betting on “ties” in nearly every sport including football, basketball and in some provinces baseball, although a tied result is not possible in basketball or baseball and is rare in football.

Nevertheless, Sport Select directs that all games decided by five points or less in basketball, three points or less in football or one run in baseball is declared a “tie”. Moreover, when the NHL introduced shootouts in for the 2005-06 season the lottery corporations, in contrast to most bookmakers, quickly ruled that shootout results would not count, specifically so they could keep offering “ties” in hockey.

This tie rule is loathed by most Canadian gamblers because the size of the winning margin often means little to the teams on the field or court. Many bettors believe the rule’s sole purpose is to confuse gamblers and allow for larger vigs.

Canadian NHL teams
Because they do not receive a portion of the profits from NHL betting, Canada’s NHL teams, especially those in the smaller markets are becoming increasingly agitated. These clubs argue that the provinces are making millions of dollars on events for which they assume all responsibility, expense and risk and that those revenues would disappear if the clubs were to move or fold.

The 2004-05 NHL lockout, which cost the provinces more than $100 million in lost revenues reinforced these arguments. But most provinces have rejected the request outright – although the British Columbia Lottery Corporation agreed to license the Vancouver Canucks’ name and logo for a fee while the government of Alberta agreed to allow the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers to conduct a separate, joint lottery.

The different NHL teams in Canada are the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Ottawa Senators, the Montreal Canadiens, the Vancouver Canucks, the Calgary Flames and the Edmonton Oilers.
Ontario and the NBA
Meantime, in Ontario, wagering on NBA games nearly cost Toronto an NBA franchise due to the strict league rules prohibiting gambling. Only after the provincial lottery corporation agreed to stop offering these wagers did the Toronto Raptors begin to play in the league. Up to 2004, the Raptors were still being forced to pay millions of dollars each year into a charitable fund and to the provincial lottery corporation to compensate it for the ‘perceived’ loss of revenue. If the NBA decides to put a team in Las Vegas the same could easily happen. 

College and youth sports
Provinces have started offering odds on college basketball and college football, much to the annoyance of the NCAA and others who would like to keep gambling out of amateur sport. At the start of the 2004-05 NHL lockout, Loto-Qu?bec caused a major uproar when they attempted to offer odds on QMJHL games in order to compensate for lost revenue. Players in this major junior league are aged 16 to 20 and make about $30 per week in pocket money. Faced with this intense opposition, wagering on QMJHL games was quietly abandoned.

Responses
Many Canadian gamblers have taken advantage of the Internet and are starting to do business with reputable offshore bookmakers or betting exchanges in response to what is perceived as extreme arrogance and a lack of respect from ‘the state bookmaker’.

The exchanges can offer odds that are up to 50% better than what would be offered for an individual match on Sport Select. Moreover, both traditional bookmakers and exchanges offer single sports betting, thus greatly increasing a bettor’s chances of winning.

Some analysts claim that the provincial lottery corporations are already losing more revenue to the offshore firms than they make by tilting the rules and odds in their favor. There are only very rough estimates of the amounts of money the provinces are losing to offshore competition, but the sums are believed to run to millions.

As with all larger businesses, smaller ones have developed as a result of the surge of popularity. One of the most unique businesses to develop in the online casino world is affiliate marketing. Comprising of a simple advertising plan, affiliate marketing consists of the distribution of wealth from large online sports betting firms down to standard internet users. It also helps companies grow and maintains healthy competition in the online gambling world.
Affiliate marketing offers a reward scheme for websites that run advertisement on behalf of online sports betting sites. When a player joins an online gambling site via an affiliate site, the affiliate is awarded a percentage of the player’s wagers generated for the site. Therefore it is in the best interest of the affiliate to generate as many new customers as possible for the sports betting site. As a result, affiliate marketing has become a highly profitable and successful strategy for marketing in many industries, but none more so than in the world of online sports betting.