How to Bet On Sports | Shopping Your Betting Lines

There is a reason why there are so many offshore sportsbooks operating online these days. Internet sports betting has grown into a multi-billion industry over the past decade or so and there is no real end in sight to this tremendous growth given just how popular and easy it has become to place a actual wager on any sporting event you might find on a typical betting board.

While it is not really feasible to have an online betting account at a large number of sportsbooks, you should still remain open to the idea of shopping for the best betting line when it comes to placing your actual online bets. Most recreational sports bettors tend to limit their betting activity to one or two of their favorite books, but the amount of money that has been won or lost over the years due to a half-point swing on a betting line one way or the other would also number in the billions.

At the very least, you should take some time each day to track the betting lines for anything that has caught your interest across a number of sportsbooks posting odds for that particular sporting event. Most sports betting experts recommend that the average player have at least three books with active betting accounts. By tracking the numbers across a wide selection of books, you should be able to hopefully mirror the best line in your favor with one of the three books you are currently doing business with.

Another important benefit of shopping betting lines across a wide spectrum of online betting outlets is to provide a good feel for where all the money is going on a game of interest at each particular book.  Lines do not move in unison with one another, but over time they will tend to keep moving in the same direction.  If the pointspread for Sunday’s big NFL showdown opened at three points favoring the home team. Normally, it will not move to 3.5 points at one book while falling back to 2.5 points at another.

One of the biggest areas where shopping the lines can offer the best value is when it comes to moneyline bets. This is where you can find the biggest differences from one betting site to the next. For example, if you are looking to bet the moneyline for tonight’s Boston Celtics’ game as slight two-point road underdogs on the pointspread since you believe that they are going to win the game straight-up, it makes sense to shop the moneyline odds for the best number on a SU Boston victory.

One book might have the Celtics listed as +110 underdogs while another book might bump that number to +115. Chances are, that if you do shop this number across a wide spectrum of books, you will uncover subtle differences that can add quite a bit of value to your bets over the course of entire basketball season. The same thing could be said for betting favorites on the moneyline. Lowering your risk in terms of the commission owed on a losing can save you quite a bit of money over an extended period of time.

Not only should you shop betting lines across a number of online books, you should also shop everything that a particular book brings to the table. Your goal in this exercise is to find a few books that are not overly similar to one another. This will allow you to take full advantage of each of your online betting accounts. One book might offer reduced juice on MLB games in the form of nickel or dime lines, while another might offer a large selection of prop bet opportunities in connection with the games. Variety is the spice of life, especially when it comes to betting on sports.