In New Zealand and abroad, sports betting has become an increasingly popular pastime to pursue. Not only does it add an edge of excitement when watching sport, for those who spend time crafting and adjusting a finely-tuned sports betting strategy it can be a potentially lucrative endeavour.

Regardless of who you ask, you’ll find that each bettor has formulated their own unique strategy over time – mostly through trial and error until they have found an approach that works for them. Seasoned punters will tell you that it’s unlikely you’ll win every wager and that at some point or another you’ll have a brush with failure. They’ll also most often tell you that consistency is the key to long term success and that you should first and foremost stay true to whichever sports betting strategy works best for you.

There are however a few basic strategies that remain popular and are a great point of departure when starting off.

1. Fading the Public

This sports betting strategy is based on the basic principle of making a bet based on the opinions or actions of the public, more specifically- going against public opinion. It’s based on the logic that not everybody wins i.e. most bettors loose, so betting against the majority will in some way increase the likelihood of you winning.

In the past, bookmakers knew full well which teams were going to be most heavily bet on and adjusted the odds and lines accordingly to attract more punters. This opened up a gap for those bettors who wanted to go the opposite way and place a bet that was diametrically opposed to the popular opinion. The current betting climate has changed somewhat and betting markets are much more efficient, taking into account a large number of variables over and above public opinion when setting the odds, making it more difficult for bettors to rely on this as a “sure-fire” approach.

2. Hedging Your Bets

Hedging your bets is a relatively straightforward betting strategy, its core principal is based on protecting your existing bets by reducing the risk of loss by placing additional wagers on a different outcome to the original wager.

For example, you can make a wager on your favourite team to win the match, as well as having already made a bet on the underdog to win at the top internet based betting sites such as Betting Online NZ. With this sports betting strategy, you protect your existing wager from potential losses and on some occasions can even guarantee profits.

3. Specialising in One Sport

Many successful bettors dedicate themselves to one sport and avoid spreading their resources, time and effort over multiple sporting disciplines. By adopting a sports betting strategy that specialises on one particular sport, bettors can hone their craft, study players, closely follow team performances and stay abreast with statistics and current sporting news that have an impact on their decision making process.

By consistently following the progress and statistics of their team, bettors can tweak their approach with the specialist knowledge that they’ve gathered and use it to their advantage to make well-informed betting decisions.