Handicapping is a process in which a person does extensive research on the contestants of a sporting event to determine not just the winner of the contest, but other aspects as well. A handicapper can predict the total score of the game by determining which team or player is expected to score a specific number of points.
A good handicapper is able to give accurate predictions, or picks, about 80% of the time. The actual win rate may fluctuate. For example, the handicapper may be correct only 60% of the time in one month, 85% of the time in the next month and 95% of the time in the following month.
Online sports betting enthusiasts often make use of professional handicappers to increase their win rate when betting on sports. Handicappers are generally not free. You may have to pay for each pick, or each day’s list of picks, or even a monthly subscription for all sports bet picks, but in the long run, you could be winning a lot more often. When you take advantage of a good handicapper, the profits can be well worth the cost.
Choosing a Handicapper
There are hundreds of professional handicappers on the internet. Deciding which sports betting handicapper has a lot to do with what kind of sports bettor you are. Some handicapping services focus on a single sports event, like football (soccer), American football, baseball or basketball. Other handicapping services may employee a large number of individual handicappers in order to supply picks on a full range of sports. The available sporting event picks will have a lot to do with which handicapper you sign up with.
Also consider that the accuracy rate involves every pick on every sporting event the handicapper supplies. If a handicapper covers 10 types of sports, making picks on every team within every league, but you place only one bet, the handicapper may have a 90% accuracy rate on that week’s events, but you could still lose your wager. Just because the handicapper has such a high accuracy rate doesn’t mean you will.
For this reason, having a separate handicapper for different sporting events isn’t always a bad idea. You should at least check out the individual percentage rates of picks by each sport before registering with a handicapper that provides more extensive picks.
Be careful not to choose a real sports bet handicapper by the price alone. As we said above, handicappers will charge a pretty penny for their services, but the percentage rate of accuracy is a lot more important than the cost when it comes to long term profits.
If you’re betting $100 per sporting event, placing on average 10 sports bets per week and winning 80% of them, you should be winning about $800 a week, minus commissions and handicapping fees. Even if the commission and handicapping fees cost you $200 a week, you’re still making a $600 profit. Without a handicapper, or with a less productive handicapping service, you may be winning only 50% of your wagers, resulting in about $300 profit – half what you could have been winning on sports bets with a handicapper.