Since time immortal, among the favorite pastimes of sport freaks has been gambling. Gambling is exciting, thinking about the risk involved, the luck factor and the chance to make lots of money in a couple of hours. Online gambling is becoming popular with millions of individuals around the world, with more visiting betting sites and online casinos popping up over the internet than before. One great advantage of having this facility online is of course, which it is accessible from any place which has an active internet connection. This has made gambling a sport in itself, available to millions of new people.

There is a boom in the online betting industry as well as the sort of profits many sites are enjoying now is unimaginable. Online casinos are not to be left behind, as there is a rapid explosion of these as well. In fact, online poker gives gambling, a glamour quotient by roping in celebrities for high profile tournaments. This means reaching out to a whole new market in itself.

But simply, the most successful story will be the rise of sports betting. Fans who have enjoyed betting on games like soccer, football, polo, baseball, hockey and horse racing, can now do so online with the assistance of these sites. A whole new variety of sports events are cropping up to encourage the already soaring popularity of online betting. It may be correct to say that audiences are now enjoying the betting experience without being at the field themselves. Welcome to the world of virtual reality.

You will find innumerable so-called gambling experts prepared to dish out information of their systems to 'beat the bookie' or to make a second income from gambling, for a cost of course. I will not do that. I will simply give you information about bookmakers, odds and gambling for you to use (or forget) when you see fit.

The very first thing to mention is the fact that the majority of men and women who engage in gambling will be net losers over-time. This is the very reason you can find numerous bookmakers making so much money through the world.

While bookmakers can sometimes take big hits, for instance if a favourite wins the Grand National, they spread their risk so widely and they setup markets that incorporate a margin, so they are going to always make money over the medium to long-term, if not the short-run. That's, as long since they got their sums right.

When setting their odds for a particular event, bookmakers must first study the probability of that event occurring. To do this they us various statistical models determined by data collated over years, sometime decades, about the sport and team/competitor in question. Keep in mind, if sport was 100% predictable, it might soon lose its appeal, and while the bookies tend to be spot on with their assessments of the probability of an event, they're sometimes way off the mark, mainly because a match or contest goes against conventional wisdom and statistical likelihood.

Just look at any sport and you will find an occasion in the event the underdog triumphs against all of the odds, literally. Wimbledon beating the then mighty Liverpool in the FA Cup Final of 1988, for example, or even the United States beating the then mighty USSR at ice hockey in the 1980 Olympics are two examples of whenever you might have got handsome odds on the underdog. And could have won a safe quality soccer wedge.

The big bookmakers spend a whole lot of time and money ensuring they possess the right odds that ensure they take under consideration the perceived probability of the event, and then add that extra tiny bit that gives them the profit margin. So if an event has a probability of, say, 1/3, the odds that reflect that probability would be 2/1. That is, two to one against that event occurring.

Alternatively, a bookie who set these odds would, over-time, break even (assuming their stats are correct). So instead they can set the odds at, say, 6/4. In this particular way they have built-in the margin that ensures, over-time, they are going to benefit from people betting on this selection. It is the exact same concept as a casino roulette.

Just how can you spot the occasions when bookmakers have got it wrong? Well, it's easier said than done, but far from impossible.

A proven way is to get good at mathematical modelling and setup a model which takes under consideration as many of the variables that affect the outcome of an event as it can be. The problem with this tactic is the fact that however complex the model, and however all-encompassing it seems, it can never account for the minutiae of variables relating to individual human states of mind. Whether a golfer manages to hole a major-winning five foot putt on the 18th at St Andrews it's as much down to their concentration as to the weather or day of the week. On top of that, the maths can start getting pretty darn complicated.

Alternatively you can find yourself a sporting niche. Bookmakers will concentrate their resources on the events that produce them the most money, generally found to be football (soccer), American football and horse racing. So trying to beat the bookies while betting on a Manchester United v Chelsea match will be tough. Unless you work with among the clubs, or are married to among the players or managers, it's very likely the bookmaker setting the odds shall have further information than you.