Baseball is one of the most popular sports in America with a huge fan base not only in America but around the world. With prolific games and a wealth of information available its understandable why baseball is a great game for any new bettor to try their hand betting on. Below are a few tips to help you make better bets and increase your profitability while betting on baseball.
Using The Odds
Baseball is an interesting sport to bet on as the odds supplied in baseball tend to be more favourable than in other sports. Taking advantage of these odds can be extremely beneficial to any bettors, but to know the odds, one must know how moneyline odds work. As moneyline odds are not common outside of the USA, let’s look at a quick refresher on how they work.
Moneyline or American odds will be supplied in a positive and negative number denoted by a plus sign and a minus sign respectively. The negative number will always correspond to the favourite team while the positive number will correspond to the underdogs. The negative number will represent how much would need to be wagered in order to win $100, on the other hand, the positive number will represent how much you stand to win if you were to wager $100.
For an example: New York Yankees -161, Chicago Cubs +138. In this case the Yankees would be the favourite to win. This style of odds can seem confusing at first, but will become much easier with frequent use.
History
As in all sports betting odds, history should play a big roll in the predictions of any game. It’s normally advised to know the outcome of any games for the last 3 years to be able to make a good prediction of the games outcome. History is far from the only factor you should consider but remains a large factor which you should research.
Teams
In professional level baseball the team’s performance is generally consistent, it is always a good idea to look into the team’s performance in different scenarios. Some teams perform better than others in certain conditions, to win you need to know these conditions. When betting on baseball it is especially important to play close attention to the starter, unlike in other sporting events, the starters in baseball have the ability to set the trend of the game. This is not a consistent rule but should be taken into account when making your winning predictions.
Know When To Bet
With a season spanning 6 months in the professional leagues and games almost every single day, it can be overwhelming to try and research and predict the outcome of every game. While this does present a great opportunity for seasoned bettors, as a starting point it is best to focus on a handful of teams. Be specific about when you bet and which teams you bet on, betting without doing proper research is a sure way to lose your bets and demotivate yourself in the process.