Since time immortal, among the favorite pastimes of sport freaks has been gambling. Gambling is exciting, thinking about the risk involved, the luck factor as well as the chance to make lots of money in a couple of hours. Online gambling has become popular with millions of people around the world, with more visiting betting sites and online casinos popping up on the net than in the past. One great advantage of having this facility playing online soccer gambling site (learn the facts here now) is bear in mind, that it is accessible from any place which has an active internet access. This has made gambling a sport in itself, available to millions of new people.

There is a boom within the online betting industry and also the kind of profits many sites are enjoying now is unimaginable. Online casinos are not to be left behind, as there's been a rapid explosion of these as well. In reality, online poker gives gambling, a glamour quotient by roping in celebrities for high profile tournaments. It indicates reaching out to a whole new market in itself.

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

You'll 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 that you can use (or forget) as you see fit.

The first thing to mention is the fact that the vast majority of individuals who engage in gambling will be net losers over-time. This is the very reason there are numerous bookmakers making so much money throughout the world.

While bookmakers can sometimes take big hits, as an example 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 term. That's, as long as 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 based on data collated over years, sometime decades, about the sport and team/competitor in question. As always, if sport was 100% predictable, it would soon lose its appeal, and while the bookies are often spot on with their assessments of the probability of an event, they are sometimes way off the mark, mainly because a match or contest goes against conventional wisdom and statistical likelihood.

Just look-at any sport and also you will find an occasion in the event the underdog triumphs against all of the odds, literally. Wimbledon beating the then mighty Liverpool within the FA Cup Final of 1988, for instance, or the United States beating the then mighty USSR at ice hockey in the 1980 Olympics are two illustrations of when you could have got handsome odds on the underdog. And could have won a decent wedge.

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

Conversely, 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 way they have built in the margin that guarantees, over-time, they're going to benefit from people betting on this selection. It's the exact same concept as a casino roulette.

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

One of the ways is to get good at mathematical modelling and set up a model that takes under consideration as many of the variables that affect the outcome of an event as possible. The problem with this tactic is that however complex the model, and however all encompassing it appears, 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. Also, the maths can start getting pretty darn complicated.

Alternatively you may 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 one of the players or managers, it is very likely the bookmaker setting the odds will have additional information than you.