Is Soccer Betting as Easy as it Looks?

Out of all the sports, soccer looks to be by far the easiest to win at. It has many leagues, many teams, and good linearity to predict future outcomes. Being the most popular sport in the world with so many different games and so many good prices, it looks like there will be always many good opportunities every week.

I've looked at sites like BetBrain and OddsonNet which post what they see as good value bets. I bought some software for like $50 that forecasts what their odds would be for any given game.

After looking at all this information this is the simple conclusion I have come to:

Bet the underdogs at the best price!

Thats it. You can find dozens and dozens of these bets that are put at over 10% value. For some psychological reason, people like to bet the favorites so books exploit this by giving them a tough price, but therefore giving good prices for the dogs.

So for experienced soccer/football 'punters' is it this easy or am I totally off here?

the thing is the way you want to gamble is on the ML and longterm the draws will hurt you in my opinion....now if you play the spreads the vig is usually always around -115 at the most. i cant say its simple but since there is about 9 games each weekend for the top 5 leagues the edge is not as great as u think considering the ncaa basketball saturdays we will have pretty soon. the most money to be made is in the skandinavian and russian leagues if u have some people there who keep in touch with soccer.

Takes a lot of work

I wonder if Piy has the best prices on soccer too?

Yeah, it seems as though draws are bad bets most of the time. The only time they are good bets is when the underdog has really good value. I know its afternoon now in Europe, maybe some of you guys can help me out.

I love betting on the draw in soccer. I usually parlay 2 soccer games together with the tiw in both and it usually pays around 9-10 to 1 for a 2 team parlay

Kobe,

You seem very enthusiastic about sports betting and also very intelligent so I see a bright future for you...I'm no expert on soccer but I should warn you that it is only the Europeans who are biased towards the favorites. Asian punters like the dogs and on the online sites (especially Betfair and Pinnacle) Asian action is starting to rival European/American action (if it hasn't taken it over by now). Conclusion: lines are fairly efficient so don't expect to make easy money with such a simple strategy.

Arbing definitely makes money but it is also hard work, rather tedious and it's not very fulfilling long-term to just play cat and mouse all day (at least for most people). Also it will get harder and harder as time goes by because markets are getting more and more efficient as the solid books are becoming larger and fewer in number.

If I were you I'd arb for a while until I notice certain patterns...then I'd do unbalanced arbs for a while and if that's successful simply take outright positions on the sides you like. You need experience to find a capping angle which works for you and if you're making money while gaining experience you're already in the top 10% of all sports bettors.

GL!

Kobe:

What Darryl mentions about a lot of action being on the dogs would cause the linesmakers to make the lines for the favorites. A poster on theRX (acw) has done a little bit of research to find that favorites win more than dogs in soccer. I don't know how large of a sample that is though.

Point being, don't automatically bet dogs in soccer.

Thanks for the info guys. I have never followed soccer. Maybe I will try and find some interest in the future.

Well , just bet on Arsenal , Man U , and that Russian team.

Another winning day today.