Sports Betting Systems

Sports betting systems refers to a set of events that when combined for a particular game for a particular sport represents a profitable betting scenario. Since sports betting involves humans, there is no deterministic edge to the house or the gambler. Systems supposedly allow the gambler to have an edge.
Sports books use systems in their analysis to set more accurate odds. Therefore the novice gambler may believe that using a system will always work, it is the general consensus that at some point, the odds makers will have adjusted for the system to make it no longer profitable. Very short-lived systems are called trends. Any single event that estimates a selection to have a higher likelihood of winning is called an angle as they are meant to be used in conjunction with other angles and trends to produce systems.

Betting on systems

Systems can be deceiving. Any sample space can be constrained enough with meaningless criteria to create the illusion of a profitable betting system. For example, a coin can be flipped with heads being home teams and tails being road teams. Heads and tails each have a 50% probability of landing but if the amount of flips is limited to a small number, it is conceivable to create the illusion of predicting heads will come up 75% of the time.
That, in conjunction with the fact that sports books adjust their odds according to the systems makes it difficult to follow systems indefinitely. The sports books are slower to adjust the odds in some sports versus other sports depending on the number of games played and the amount of money they take in from bettors.

Determining systems

Determining systems is a matter of using computer analysis tools and extracting all the possible games that meet a bettor's criteria. Then the bettor analyzes the results of those games to make a determination if one team is favored over the other.
Factors that are used into determining betting systems are a mix of psychological, motivational, biological, situational factors that, based on past performances, support one team over another. It is generally believed that more than one factor pointing towards a team is needed to have a successful betting system.

 ‘Sports handicapper’ refers to a person who ‘handicaps’ or analyzes sports matchups/events. Handicappers can be professional, amateur, or simply novice.


As stated above, handicappers can be anyone. Therein lies the trouble upon relying on handicappers. Someone on the Internet can always claim to be winning at a 90% clip, without even having to show proof. Such is the case with many handicappers on the web. These ‘scamdicappers’ claim to be winning in exorbitant amounts of money and sell their picks to unsuspecting gamblers. The first red flag that bettors should be aware is that no one can maintain a winning percentage of 90%—it is simply mathematically impossible. If someone is claiming to have a very high winning percentage (>75% or so), then one should take a closer look at how reliable this handicapper really is. Although there are many honest and reputable handicappers on the web, the dishonest and deceitful ones far outnumber the prior.