Soccer matches are priced up by all the big bookmakers and some nice guaranteed profitable bets are available if you know when and where to look. Sports bookmakers never miss a trick when thinking up new ways to extract your money from you and there are plenty of inventive bets on offer.

Soccer can in many ways be about timing. The earlier the cost appears the greater likely there will be a sure-bet or arbitrage opportunity (arb).

Bookmakers clearly do a whole lot of research as soccer has now be a big earner for them. They have to do this as they are only too aware that the serious punters are becoming much shrewder within this market and will exploit any snippets of news that may provide them with an advantage. They advertise heavily within the tabloids.

Whereas in some minor sports there can be just one odds compiler doing work for the bookmaker soccer is too lucrative due to this any many odds compilers shall work feverishly setting prices for the big bookmakers. Any European bookmaker worth its salt shall offer odds on soccer, its a high revenue turnover sport.

Such is their turnover on the increasing soccer betting market that Ladbrokes as well as other such big bookmakers are ready to take a 'big' bet on the outcome of a match. This really is clearly great news for the arb maker. This means the maximum bets they will accept on a bet are a lot higher.

There are numerous kinds of excellent soccer bets. Firstly there is the match winner. This is split into 3 results, win, lose or draw. Then there are the very first goal scorer and the precise match score. The less obvious bets are half-time, full time results, total corners, total throw-ins, total numbers of yellow and red cards and so forth. In fact anything where odds may be set to will offer a betting opportunity.

So which are the very best soccer bets to look for? Firstly forget about predicting the match score, there are too many outcomes. The first goal scorer is a waste of time too. Both these kinds of bets are heavily advertised but are for mug punters only, the odds consistently being offered are poor, the bookmakers regularly taking over 15% profit on the book. These bets have far too many possible outcomes. We have been trying to find bets with ideally 2 or 3 possible outcomes.

Other sorts of bet can throw up the odd arb but the main source of arbs is on the match result over 90 minutes. This is where we should concentrate most of our efforts. Clearly this falls into 3 results, win, lose or draw.