Stepping Out Into The Betting Exchange Jungle

It doesn’t really matter what form of gambling you are looking to take on, one thing is certain. You will at some stage be going up against very knowledgeable money. By that I mean experienced people. It is for this reason that I prefer to play poker rather than punt although I am profitable at both.

Playing poker affords me the luxury of being able to choose who I go up against to a certain extent, you don’t have that luxury with betting exchanges. They may be touted as person to person betting and technically it is. The reality of course is that the vast amount of liquidity on that site is produced by professionals in one capacity or another and the novices (of which there are thousands) tend to follow the herd.

There are a lot of misconceptions regarding the betting exchanges and the main one is what I have just mentioned, that you are having bets with other individuals. The fact that money is pooled means that you are in reality placing and taking bets with a large wealth of opinion that is both professional and amateur alike.

This basically means that in order to make money then you need to be correct when the majority of the market is wrong…..not an easy task unless you happen to be conceited and something of an ego maniac. To become proficient in any form of gambling takes time and this apprenticeship is a process that all gamblers to be need to go through.

But millions of punters don’t seem to have the time to get their education and end up flying by the seat of their pants. Then there are those who realise that they don’t have the knowledge and thus seek to acquire it from those that do. They go down the avenue of either buying books, reading websites or in some cases signing up to expensive seminars.

While I would not go as far as to say that these are a waste of money, they don’t really tell you anything of significance that a large dose of common sense and planning cannot do. The first thing to realise is that the betting exchanges are an absolute minefield for novices and accept that you know basically nothing before you can move on. There are ways for novice punters to make money quickly but I would advise anyone setting out down this path to specialise and not to try and make money down too many avenues at once.

Take horse racing for instance, there are thousands of races on both the flat and over the jumps every year. All these horses fall into different classes, categories and age groups. Trying to analyse them all to come to meaningful conclusions is an exercise in futility and will ultimately lead to failure. Professionals do not do this and look to specialise in a small area (far easier to become an expert in one subject than many).

As always there is no substitute for experience and online sports betting exchanges are similar to poker in so much as there are a very large number of ways in which someone could make it pay and make money consistently. Because of this, large volumes of public opinion, systems and strategies abound (some good, most….not so good).

So it is no surprise that the novices who seek to educate themselves are confused by all this seemingly conflicting opinion. Even then you are still going to have to spend some considerable time just basically feeling the exchange out. You would never expect to learn how to drive a car without ever getting into a drivers seat would you? But be advised that it is a jungle out there so proceed with care and you should be fine.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson