The statement I’m about to make will most certainly shock any sports bettor who reads it. While most of us are under the impression that everyone betting sports wins long term, so long as they bet often enough, this isn’t actually true.

Wait you’re not surprised? Of course you’re not! Everyone knows the bookmaker has an advantage so more times than not sports bettors lose. However, what if there was a way that the rolls could be reversed; what if the sports bettor always had the advantage?

This is in fact possible.

The house always win! That's how those big buildings on the strip were built. You are wise to stay away from slot machines. In addition to Hold em, learn how to play blackjack and understand the basic strategy. That's the only way you can increase your odds of wining in Vegas. Follow this and the only ways you lose is horrible bad luck! Once again don’t forget to take advantage of the bonus at www.Bovada.lv! We wish you the best of luck and know soon enough you’ll be shacking your head confused the same at us, whenever you hear the statement “most sports bettors lose” and clearly you won’t be on of them.

Have you ever heard the term advantage player? This is a label gambling companies assign to players who only bet when the odds are in their favor.

Even though “on average” bookmakers have a 4.55% advantage on straight bets (2.38% @ -105), the key word is “average”; advantage players find bets where the bookmaker’s advantage is negative. Whether your goal is to be a sports betting pro, or just earn a little money on the side, the first step to winning is to stop making –EV bets.

If you understand what expected value, -EV, and +EV mean, go ahead and skip down to our advice on finding +EV bets. If you’re not familiar with this concept continue reading.

Expected Value (EV) Explained

Expected value is a term professional gamblers use on a regular basis. To explain what it means in simple terms I’ll use an example. Let’s say me and you decided to have a coin flipping contest. We flip coins and you give me $1 for each outcome of heads; I give you $1 for each outcome of tails. We could flip coins for all eternity and neither of us will ever have an advantage because on average half the time we lose $1 half the time we win $1. While there will be swings back and forth, as long as we flip the coin enough times eventually we’ll both break even. This particular bet has neutral expected value.

Now let’s say I’m tired of flipping coins, and want to quit, but while begging me to stay you offer me a better deal. This new deal pays me $1.10 for every heads, and I still pay you $1.00 for every tails. What happens now is half the time I win $1.10 and half the time I lose $1.00. If we flip 100 times I should average 50 wins of $1.10 ($55) and 50 losses of $1 ($50). Every flip of the coin I have a positive expectation (+EV) of 5 cents. As the one offering me this proposition you have the opposite, every flip of the coin is 5 cents –EV for you.

Every wager made in sports betting has either a positive expected value (+EV), negative expectation value (-EV) or in rare cases neutral expected value. Winning sports betting requires avoiding –EV and finding +EV bets.

Finding +EV Sports Bets

The reasons most sports bettors don’t spend time learning the tricks of advantage players is it’s slightly time consuming, most have no leads how to do it, are overwhelmed or when they do learn it’s not actually fun. If you’re looking for something fun we suggest paint balling, a trip to the amusement park, circus or what have you. If you’re looking to actually make money then you’ll need to know how to find +EV bets.

At TheSportsGeek.com we have several articles on this topic you’ll want to read:

Teaser Betting Strategy – This is perhaps the easiest method a sports bettor can use to find bets with a positive advantage. When you also read our article on the current betting market, you’ll realize just before game time the lines are efficient. Teasers are based off the current betting lines, so no longer do you need to go do any deep analysis to find out whether as straight bet is +EV. Here find spots where teasers increase the win rate by enough and you’ll have a +EV bet. This is all described in our article on teaser betting strategy.

Prop Betting Strategy – Prop bets are generally considered the easiest wagering opportunity for sports bettors to beat. In our article on prop betting strategy I give a full break down of the prop bet “which team will score first”. After reading that article you’ll have enough information to start finding +EV bets on this specific prop. In time, as you get experience you’ll be able to solve other prop bet on your own and then beat them using as similar method to the one I show in the example.

Must Read Sports Betting Books

If you’re new to advantage betting some books that will help you greatly with the basics are:

1) Sharp Sports Betting by Stanford Wong

2) Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting by King Yao

Once you’re much more experienced and ready to take things to the next level then I strongly Conquering Risk: Attacking Vegas and Wall Street by Elihu D. Feustel. This is a book for advanced sports bettors and not a good read for anyone not already winning. It is heavily math, statistic and handicapping intensive. If you eventually decided on a career as an advantage player at some point down the road you’ll want to work to understand what Elihu D. Feustel shares in this book.

No matter what methods you use to find +EV bets, the information contained in our article on finding maximum value is a must read. Next, if you’re thinking about purchasing picks, read our article on winning without a tout. In that article you’ll also find some information on getting free picks. Use that with the earlier mention getting max value article, and shopping the market and you’ll likely be turning an easy, yet slightly time consuming profit.

With this out of the way let me now cover the easiest way to get your bankroll started: “Bonus Whoring”.

A Free Lunch in Sports Betting

If you’ve heard the saying there is no such thing as a free lunch, well think again. Here are some bonuses that sports betting sites offer to players making their first deposit:

At the time of writing this Bookmaker is offering a massive holiday bonus of 25% up to $2,500 sports + 175% up to $1,000 poker + 100% up to $250 casino. If you don’t have an account, visit Bookmaker and register using Bonus Code THEGEEK on the sign up field. After logging in, head to the cashier where the available “deposit bonus codes” will be listed. Use this code and you’ll now have the added advantage of massive free play bonus.

Bovada offers 10% cash bonus on bettor’s first deposit. The best thing about this bonus is it is instant and it’s cash (as opposed to free play). Also no crazy strings such as rollover, hold period etc, simply roll your initial deposit and 10% bonus over a single time and it is free and clear your own money to keep.

Here you can get up to $1,000 in free bonus money. Getting the max bonus is a multi step process. First sign up, and be sure to leave the Promotion Code field empty. Next follow the steps on our BetOnline Bonus page to negotiate a massive bonus with their live support.

When you combine +EV bets with free bonus cash, winning at sports betting is a cinch. The only piece of the puzzle you have left is protecting and growing your bankroll. Our best advice here, never wager more than a few percent of what you have on hand on a single game.

Once you have this all down, while it takes other sports bettors a lot of luck to win, the opposite is true for you. A bookie beating an advantage player who uses responsible bet sizing, keeps his composure during downswings while making only +EV bets, is quite difficult. Follow this and the only ways you lose is horrible bad luck!

Once again don’t forget to take advantage of the bonus at www.Bovada.lv!

We wish you the best of luck and know soon enough you’ll be shacking your head confused the same at us, whenever you hear the statement “most sports bettors lose” and clearly you won’t be on of them.

Other Advanced Sports Betting Strategy Articles:

Everyone who goes to Las Vegas wants to make a million, right? You play the slots, spin the wheel, or raise them high in high stakes poker – whatever your game, you want to win and win big.

But other than sheer luck, just how can you do it? How can you go to Las Vegas and come away with millions in your pocket?

Well, here are 7 ways you might like to try:

1). Doorman’s Delight

Last time I was in Las Vegas, I saw some guy showing off his brand new Maserati to an excited group of doormen. Turns out the guy with the Maserati was also a doorman. He’d earned so much in tips that he was able to buy himself a shiny new $100,000 car.

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When high rollers leave the casino after winning big, they’re eager to get back to their hotel and party hard. Unfortunately, their pockets are stuffed with nothing smaller than $100 bills, which they throw the doorman’s way as if it’s confetti. If you’ve just won big, it doesn’t seem like real money, so you’re happy to throw it around until the endorphins wear off! Who benefits? The doormen!

Tip: try to be a doorman at the more exclusive casinos. Mandalay Bay’s good – Circus Circus less so.

2). Taxi’s Tip

Taxi drivers take the Doorman’s Delight to the next level by stating clearly on their cab that they can’t give change for anything more than $5. Seriously, when was the last time you even had $5 in your pocket?! So if you show them a $100 bill, they’ll smile, point to the sign saying “nothing more than $5” and pocket the whole $100.

Again, the high roller is unconcerned by this dramatic scene of uber-inflation, so keen is he to get back to his hotel and let the party begin. The taxi driver thus whisks him off to his destination, with a nice little bonus of 10 times the normal taxi fair in his pocket.

3). House!

Been to Vegas and tipped the cocktail waitress? She could be worth more than you! Legendary Australian billionaire and high roller Kerry Packer was in free-spending mode one night after winning big at the MGM Mirage. He asked the cocktail waitress if she had a mortgage. “Bring it in tomorrow and I’ll pay it off for you” he said. True to his word, her $150,000 mortgage was paid off in full the next day.

4). Do what the Dealer’s do: Deal!

When you win big, the endorphins and adrenaline kick in, and largesse takes over. Who’s the first person you see? The dealer! Good dealers at the top hotels such as the Wynn earn $100,000 a year, mostly in tips. Baccarat dealers earn the most, followed by blackjack and then craps dealers.

Sometimes, though, the dealers really hit the jackpot, just for doing their job. After losing $6 million in six hours at the Bellagaio, Kerry Packer (yes, him again!) tipped one dealer a cool $1 million.

So even when losing, some high rollers just can’t help splashing their cash!

5). The Poker God

Of course, the more traditional way to make your millions in Vegas is to wiin big at poker – but to do this, you have to be a poker god. One of the more enduring legends around the Vegas casino is Archie Karas, who in 1992 – 1993 nearly destroyed Binion’s Horseshoe cashino by firstly defeating 15 of the world’s greatest poker players, and running amok at craps.

At one point, he had possession of the Horseshoe’s entire stock of $5,000 chips. He left having won a total of $17 million after starting off with just $10,000 – which he’d borrowed from a friend!

6). Gambling Grannies

The Megabucks slots are where the real money is to be made in Vegas. Strangely, though, most of the winners are pensioners.

Elmer Sherwin, for example, won $4.6 million and followed that up with a win of $21 million 21 years later. He was 92 when he won his second jackpot.

Then there was Amy Nisimura who won $8.9 million on a Megabuck slot machine at the Freemont hotel. She was 71.

Indeed, the only deviation from this trend is the 25 year old anonymous guy who spent $100 at the Excalibur’s megabucks slot machine in March 2003, and came away with $39.7 million. Lady luck was clearly shining on him that night.

So it seems that if you want to win big in Vegas, take your Gran with you, get her to play the Megabucks slots, and she how high she can roll!

7). Casino Cash

Of course, everyone knows the only guaranteed way to make your millions in Las Vegas is to own your own casino, which is exactly what Venetian owner Sheldon Adelson did. Unfortunately, no-one told him when to stop.

Adelson’s story is one of astounding business acumen. He began by creating the computer industry’s premier trade show, Comdex, where he rented space for 15 cents a square foot and sold it on to the exhibitors for an incredible $40 a square foot! He sold this cash cow to Japan’s softbank for $862 million in 1995.

Not content with nearly $1 billion in the bank, though, Adelson decided to pour his money into Las Vegas, and came up with the idea of a mega-hotel and casino based on the canals of Venice. Thus, the Venetian was born, with incredible attention to detail that included a canal running all the way through the hotel.

In order to build the Venetian, Adelson first bought the legendary Sands hotel for $128 million, and promptly demolished it. He then lavished another $1.5 billion on the site in the construction of the Venetian, which was the first hotel in Vegas to be all suites. At the time, this decision was laughed at by the rest of the casino owners, but Adelson is the one laughing now, as the Venetian is hugely successful, and many other new hotels that are being built are also all-suites.

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Still not knowing when to stop, though, Adelson has continued, and is in the process of building the Palazzo next to the Venetian. Costing nearly $2 billion, the combined Palazzo-Venetian complex will contain over 7,000 suites, and will become the largest hotel in the world.

And then there’s the other casinos that he’s built in Macau, which is fast becoming the Vegas of the East. In 2004, he built the Sands Macau casino for $265 million – and recouped the entire investment in just one year! So he kept on building, investing another $6 billion in Macau and a $3.5 billion casino in Singapore.

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All this savvy casino-building has earned Adelson an astonishing $20.5 billion fortune, making him the 15th richest man on earth.

Want to know how to make a million in Vegas? Buy yourself a casino – it’s the only dead-cert in town!

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[Source: Forbes, AssociatedContent, ReviewJournal, CasinoCityTimes]