Poker and sports betting are of course different forms of gambling, where we are placing bets on the outcome of certain things. With poker we’re betting on the outcome of hands, where in sports betting we are of course betting on the outcomes of sporting events.
There is another common element here that is even more important, and that’s the fact that both forms of betting involve a strong element of skill. Aside from things like card counting in blackjack, casino games involve a very minimal amount of skill, and if are found to be using skill to any material degree, such as is the case with card counters, you will be thrown out of the casino, as skill is seen the same way as cheating.
In the case of casino gambling, it can be described as pure gambling in a sense, like the lottery, where you bet on random events, and the house always has the edge. Over time you will lose when you gamble this way, although a great many people find this to be exciting nonetheless.
When you introduce skill into the mix, then you combine the element of excitement that people get form gambling itself with the satisfaction of seeing your skills translate into money. Luck does play a role here of course but over time if you are a good poker player, better than the average poker player you play against plus beating the rake, you will make money over time.
Being profitable at gambling changes things dramatically, as it can take the gambling from just a hobby that you spend money on to one that you can actually make money on. A lot of poker players make their living from playing poker, and many more others supplement their income by playing it part time.
Since sports betting is primarily a game of skill as well, there are people who make their living betting on sports as well, in addition to many others supplementing their income with it.
Luck actually plays a lot less of a role in sports betting than it does in poker, and although there is some luck involved in sporting events as well, it’s a minimal amount, for instance a player getting injured during a game which affects the outcome. Other than that, it’s a game of skill among the participants and it’s also a game of skill as far as trying to predict the outcomes successfully enough to be profitable. You have to be good enough to do this, like you have to be in poker, and you also have to be good enough to beat the rake, called the vig or the juice in sports betting, as the “house” keeps a small amount of the betting for themselves, otherwise the betting would not be offered.
So like poker, one does not tend to be profitable right away as one needs to develop one’s skills to the point that they are good enough to make a profit, and the same thing tends to apply to sports betting.
Depending on your level of sophistication though, sports betting can be at least fairly complex, like poker, but it is one that does not require a lot of knowledge to get started and not do too badly, unlike when you start out with poker where you can get beaten like a dog for quite a while until you figure out enough about what you are doing to reduce this.
With sports betting, in theory anyway. you could basically flip a coin on even money bets and come out pretty even over time other than just paying the vig. So the point here is that you won’t get kicked around here like you can at the poker table because even if you have no knowledge or skill you aren’t going to get crushed where you are losing the rake and a whole lot more on top of that.
Betting lines are generally put together to even out the chances as much as possible for one side to win as the other, and the success of a sports betting operation depends a lot on this actually, as ideally the bets would be spread out evenly and that’s what they are after.
This does not mean that each side has an equal chance of winning, and this is where the skills come in to assessing sports lines, where we are out to determine situations where one is actually more likely than the other and bet on that and derive a profit as we are able to decide these things consistently.
So the betting public does determine these lines, not the actual chances of one or another winning, so what we’re after is to be better than the average bettor plus the vig. This does require a good amount of skill but is no different really than being better than the average player at a poker table.
As poker players, we really enjoy using our skills of predicting outcomes and placing bets on these skills, and sports betting definitely allows for that, in the same way that poker does. It is also very enjoyable, and this is true even if you don’t like sports, although if you do then having bets on a game greatly enhances the interest and enjoyment that you have watching these games.
It is no surprise really that so many poker players love sports betting and regularly place bets on it, which is why almost all poker sites offer sports betting as well. Unlike poker, this doesn’t involve spending hours on end sitting at the table, which is another thing that a lot of people like.
If you like poker and haven’t gotten into sports betting yet it is definitely worth a try. Learn about professional sports betting at SportsBettingAcademy.com
