The TGR’s goal is to give their customers excellent advice on who to bet on. They have experts that have fantastic knowledge of the game. Are able to give great picks to bet on. They want to help their customers win.

The TGR is dedicated to providing specialist in the different sports activities. They have knowledge, are honest, trustworthy and look out for the customers best interest. They provide that most precise information for their members on a daily basis.

You can meet the experts. Look at their track record. See how well they have done and feel good about the information they are giving you to use.

Register for today’s free picks. You will get a short explanation about the game, what they feel the teams can do, help you pick the winning team. Talk about the condition of the team, if it’s at it’s top game level or if injuries could be taking a toll on them. For baseball who is pitching, and what their averages are.

You can even get the service on your mobile phone so you never miss a winner. You can check out the top picks on your phone and buy them if you choose. You can use your cell phone, your PDA or a SmartPhone plus more. Service goes where you go.

Get great information anyone who bets on games could use. If you want the best service out there, go with the TGR Gold Consensus Club.Take a 7 day trial, test it out, see if it works for you.

Not all folks are better than decent handicappers though. Still, even among those who are not, there are people who do not need the help of a professional handicapping service. These people represent the recreational segment, and they bet only small amounts of money on their games and do it mostly for fun. For such people, the cost that a truly effective handicapping service incurs doesn’t quite make any sense. A point of reference in this case is the $20 mark. If you bet less than that on your individual games, then hiring a professional handicapper will end up costing you more than you stand to win. The reason is simple: the picks cost you exactly the same, regardless of the amount of money that you bet. If you are only betting for fun anyway, then you obviously do not need a professional ruining your game with his expertise.

Perhaps the most important factor in hiring a professional handicapper is doing the actual selection. There are countless online and off-line handicapping interests more or less keen on selling you their services. Assess them carefully and consider the following: The reputation of the handicapper: how long has the service been around, how well is it known among professional sports bettors, and what is the general vibe about it?

How aggressively does your professional handicapper approach his marketing? If he is constantly on the phone, harassing you and selling your number to other similar interests, you should be extremely wary of doing business with him. Some handicapping services hire aggressive sales personnel in order to push their products. These guys will promise you a lot, but at the end of the day it is their reputation and the performance that they deliver that should sell them, and not some crafty salesperson. Most of these services will insist that you give them your phone number. That alone should be enough to make you cautious. Make sure that the handicapping philosophy used by your professional handicapper matches your own. If your handicapper constantly focuses on betting the underdog while your philosophy is about backing the favorite, you’ll find it extremely difficult to swallow the pill he sells you.

How willing is your handicapper when it comes to revealing his performance records? If he is all shady about it, not exactly keen to let you know how he’s done in the past, you should just move on. There are online services out there which do post all their past data, making it available for all comers, so there’s really no reason for you to venture into uncharted territory. How detailed are your handicapper’s picks? Does he offer detailed explanation attached to the picks he delivers? You do need to have a certain amount of insight into the way he creates his picks in order to develop some trust. If your handicapper offers free picks, by all means do try them before you commit money. Such free picks may not be worth much but they will give you a general idea on your handicapper’s abilities and approach.

To get the vibe on your handicapper, register for a forum. Sports betting forums work like poker forums and online casino forums: they provide a platform for the community to voice their concerns about certain operators and to properly rate the various online poker rooms and professional handicapping services.

This is why understanding the line is much more important than being able to pick a winner. The business of betting is about a whole bunch of intricacies, of which straight, proper handicapping is only a small part. If I were to point out the single most important factor in sports betting, it would be understanding of the line. Lines can be expressed in two ways in US sports. There’s the money line and there’s the spread. By betting on the money line, the player is essentially aiming to pick a winner. A money line bet is extremely simple: pick team A or team B to win. Since every single match up has a favorite and an underdog, and it’s relatively simple to tell them apart, the choice is easy, right? Not quite. The bookmaker balances such money line bets. The money line is usually expressed through a decimal number, which can be a positive or negative one, depending on whether it’s a favorite or an underdog we are talking about. Suppose team A is -1.3 favorite over team B. What this essentially means is that the bettor has to risk $1.3 for every dollar he stands to win. The larger the margin, the more likely the favorite is to win. If team B is a +1.2 underdog, it means the player only risks a dollar for every $1.2 he stands to win. As you can see, the bookie can pretty much wring the value out of such money line bets too. Money line bets are mostly used in NHL and MLB betting.

The NBA and NFL represent the most popular betting markets. The line used in NBA or NFL bets is mostly the spread. The spread is relatively a simple concept to understand too. What the bookmaker does is that he gives the favorite of the matchup a handicap to start the game with. Let’s consider team A facing off with team B. A -4 spread for team A means the team A is basically a four-point favorite, and as such, it begins the game 4 points down as far as the bet is concerned. Those who bet on team A, will only win if team A triumphs by a margin bigger than 4 points. In this case team B is a +4 underdog. Those who bet on team B will win if their team loses by fewer than 4 points. Such a turnout would mean that their team has become an ATS winner. The money line and the spread are far from being the only ways one can bet on sports. One can also bet on totals. These bets are known as over/under bets and what they do is that they basically have the player guessing the total amount of points scored by both teams in a game. One can only bet on over or under and depending on where the total ends up, he will walk away a winner or a loser. Taking your betting online always makes sense for the simple reason that most online betting sites offer their players sign-up bonuses and various loyalty deals to keep them motivated. These loyalty deals work like rakeback in poker. Poker rakeback deals offer players a rebate on the poker rake they generate. Sportsbook loyalty deals reward players based on the amount of money they wager.

Such “ultra” systems are always based on chase systems. Even if you’re not a sharp sports bettor yet, you know as much that chasing one’s losses is just about the worst thing one can do. These systems work based on chasing your losses. Basically, it’s the infamous Martingale system that we’re talking about here. The Martingale system tells the bettors to double their wagers every time they lose. This is actually a mathematically sounds approach, if you add an infinite bankroll into the equation. Since in real life there is no such thing though, the whole thing will blow up in the face of whoever decides to use it. Ask any seasoned casino gambler about the Martingale system if you do not believe me. The way the scam systems come up with the fabulous numbers they post is a simple one: they simulate the betting process using the above-described chase system. When they hit the winning bet, they disregard all the losses that occurred leading up to it. After all, the bettor is supposed to recover all that money, so they can’t be counted as losses, right? Wrong. Losses are losses and wins are wins, and if you were to stick to that when keeping track of the performance of these systems, you’d see a much bleaker picture take shape.

Enough about the scams though. Let’s take a look at the systems that actually work. Every single successful sports bettor has one such system working for him, and mostly, he himself is the one who’s created it. Successful sports betting systems are not exactly impressive when it comes to performance, or they are but not when compared to the above discussed scam systems. Every such system is made up of two parts which need to work in unison in order to assure success. One part is about bankroll management. Bankroll management is not an intricate issue. All one needs to do is to set a few goals (like never betting more than 3-5% of his bankroll on any single match-up) and to stick to it. Bankroll management is mostly about discipline: get that part right and you’ll get the whole thing right.

The other part is about beating the bookie’s juice (which works just like the poker rake does, only there are no poker rakeback deals in sports betting), by tracking the lines skillfully, by interpreting their movements and by taking full advantage of the hidden value wherever it surfaces. This part of the system is obviously much more challenging to put together. What it does though, is that it offers the player long-term EV+, which will only work when coupled with proper bankroll management. How do you find the hidden value and how do you take advantage of it? That’s something to discuss in a different article.

If you’re an online poker player who already plays with rakeback, you may want to learn about the poker prop deals on offer at pokerprops.com. Such poker prop deals often offer rebate percentages of over 100%.

Sky, with their HD service, offer a variety of channels in High Definition and although channels like Sky Poker are not yet HD, there are a range of standard TV and Film channels that allow you to utilise the new technology. However, to many there is one area in particular that High Definition improve no end and in the world of Sport on TV, the better the picture quality the better the viewing experience.

Sports as popular as cricket, tennis and WWE wrestling are shown regular in HD so you can see everything from the fear in a batsman’s eyes as James Anderson shapes up to aim another bouncer at his head, to the chalk flying as Rafael Nadal wins another point on the clay courts in the summer. Although these sports are popular though, it is in the world of football that most people have noticed the difference between high and standard definition TV.

With HD on your TV, more colours can be viewed on your display, which means that the picture is much more crisp and bold. Without HD when watching football, the players seem to have a blurry outline whilst when watching HD, each player looks clear and you are able to see their movement far better. It is much easier to analyse the state of pitches also, so now you can see just why Sir Alex is complaining about a poor pitch without having to be at the match! With Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3 now in high definition as well as Sky Sports News then it is extremely easy to watch all of the best stars playing every week in crystal clear HD.

There are plenty other services available from Sky as well, not just television. Sky has their own online casino, Sky Vegas, where you can play all of your favourite Vegas style games and if poker is more your thing there is also Sky Poker, a place available through the services website or your Sky TV package, where you can play as much Poker as you want from the comfort of your own home.

Let’s start with the beginning though: why do lines move? The problem with line movements is that lines move for a bunch of reasons. Take side-notes for instance. Side notes like injuries to key players, coaching issues or travel problems can cause rather large swings to the line. These movements mean little as far as value is concerned though, because they reflect actual changes on the court/field, and in the power-balance between the two teams.

What bettors are looking for, are pressure-induced swings in the line. Sometimes, despite the match-up being a perfectly balanced one, squares seem to prefer one side over the other in overwhelming numbers. In such cases, the bookie’s carefully set-up deal is turned upside down and he’s forced to make moves to respond and to try to re-establish the balance. The bookie can choose to cover the square bets from his own pockets, but that’s a risky move and the bookie only engages in gambling in extreme cases. Most often, the bookmaker will simply shift his lines around a little, inducing more value into the less bet-on side of the match-up to entice more people to post their monies there, thus re-establishing the balance. That value is something that would not be there if it weren’t for the unexpected influx of square bets. That value there is known as the hidden value. The hidden value will turn an  otherwise negative EV (expected value) proposition into a positive EV one, albeit the EV+ will still only be a marginal one. Getting your money in on either side of a perfectly balanced match-up carries negative EV, because of the vigorish the bookmaker takes. Basically, a well-balanced match-up is the perfect thing for the bookie: he can afford to take the money that the losers drop, to pay the winners out and to keep the juice without any sort of risks involved. Because when you win, you receive even money minus the vig (which is small but significant nonetheless) you get hit by negative long-term EV.

How do you track the lines? Make sure you get the starting line down and keep an eye on it, checking back in regular intervals. Obviously, weekly games are much easier to track, while daily ones present a bigger challenge. Do not try to track the lines on too many games in the beginning. Start with just one and as soon as you get the hang of it, add some more. Keep in mind that swings that do betray hidden value are usually not spectacular ones like the side-notes induced ones.

As a poker player, playing without a rakeback deal is never really an option you should consider. Sign up for rakeback at rakemeback or at pokerprops.com and cut right into the money that you’d otherwise just pay out and never see again. Rakeback will better your overall odds and it may even single handedly turn you into a winner if you’re a marginal loser.

Gambling has its place in football. It’s the world’s largest sport, hands down, and the Premier League is the top English league, thus one of the most popular in Europe. Already in the season, Manchester United is proving to be atop of bookmakers’ favorites list. Man U is no stranger to the PL limelight. Since 1992, the club from Old Trafford has won the championship an impressive 11 times (92/93, 93/94, 95/96, 98/99, 99/00, 00/01, 02/03, 06/07, 07/08, and 08/09).

Man U has developed a hefty following all over the world, and like any great sports franchise, they have their heated rivals in Chelsea and Arsenal. With Man U winning the past three seasons, it’s been a hard pill to swallow for fans of other franchises in the sport. But there’s still some hope for every team this early in the sporting year.

Some of the fan favorites have yet to show any flash on the field, namely Liverpool and their 15 point total, good enough for only 8th place. Aston Villa is an exciting prospect in 6th place, and even Tottenham is looking great, with their 3rd place standing and 19 championship points. But at number one and two, it’s Man U and Chelsea holding down the fort. So, does that mean it’s all locked up? Some would beg to differ on that.

In recent weeks, it has become clear that Arsenal is back in championship form. Fans of Arsenal know all too well of the untimely injuries that have plagued the squad for many years in a row, but thus far, they’re healthy as a horse and currently sitting in 4th place with a record of 6-0-2.

It’s far too early in the season to know who has the best shot at winning. Because of their history and current standing, Man U is a prohibited favorite, but other teams continue to nip at their heels. Picking an overall winner this season will be extremely difficult. But in the meantime, there’s some great game-to-game football happening in numerous leagues across the globe. That’s more than enough to keep any fan busy.

Point Spreads Explained

If you’ve ever heard anyone talk about betting on football, you may have heard them ask “what’s the line?” or “what’s the spread?” What they are referring to is the point spread, a method for evening things out among sports teams so an individual can bet on either team and hope to win.

Why Point Spreads Exist

It’s a maxim in football that “any given team can win on any given day.” The problem is that while this is true, it is usually the case that one team is much more likely to win than the other. If the New York Giants play the Detroit Lions, it will be very difficult to get anyone to bet on Detroit no matter how long the odds the bookmakers offer.
However, if the Giants are required to win by a certain number of points, the situation changes dramatically.

Point Spread Example

Let’s say that instead of the Giants just having to win, they have to win by 14 points. This is a very different situation. People who are sure that the Giants will win the game may not be so sure that they can win by more than two touchdowns.
Suddenly some of the action may go to Detroit. If it doesn’t, the bookmakers can make it 15 points, and so forth. All in the purpose of getting their betting partners to place bets on both sides.

Reading Point Spreads

Point spreads are usually not this large. A typical line will look something like New England +6 Carolina. This means that if you take New England, you get six points. If Carolina wins the game 21 to 17, bets on New England win. If Carolina wins 21 to 14, bets on Carolina win.
If the final score is Carolina 20, New England 14, it is a push and no one wins. Of course, if the underdog wins, all bets on the underdog win. Keep in mind that the line may move over the course of the week depending on how people are betting.

Taking Advantage of Point Spreads

To win against the spread, you need to be able to make an accurate assessment of how much better one team is than the other. It’s a bit like in poker, when you can call without the best hand, if the pot gives you a good enough price.
This can be done through analysis of previous results, injury reports, and other statistics. ]]> http://www.dagool.com/dagool/point-spreads-explained/feed/ 0 http://www.dagool.com/dagool/merry-christmas-and-happy-new-year/ http://www.dagool.com/dagool/merry-christmas-and-happy-new-year/#comments Fri, 26 Dec 2008 12:31:37 +0000 admin http://www.dagool.com/?p=431 Da GOOL! Wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Soccer expert previews will be with you in 2009 year.

Da GOOL is on vacation mode until 2.1.2009