By: Samantha Williams

Watching sport on TV or live is entertainment in itself, and billions of sports fans do this, so extending this natural course of events, we find sports betting too. Virtually everyone who takes a wager on the outcome of a sporting event is doing this for additional entertainment and very few take it too seriously. It is a specialized form of betting and wagers take the shape of very simple, low cost bets to more complex and expensive permutations. But there is a place for all levels of expertise, and you do need to know a little about the sport you are betting on.

I must confess, rather than read all about the horses in the Kentucky Derby before placing a bet, I kind of like to close my eyes and stick a pin in a potential winner. This however is not the technique to use to get an edge on the house. So please “don’t try this at home!”

Because there is no direct competition with the house or casino and odds are published for bettors to take advantage of, this form of betting can be quite lucrative. It is very possible to have an edge on the house if you guess right and the bookies guess wrong. Like for example when an outsider comes in on a horse, or any other race or event you wager on.

Sports betting takes place on any type of sporting event, if there is a demand for players to place wagers a bookie will advance odds. Even novelty bets come under the heading of sports betting even though a wager placed on whether life will be found on Mars or not, may not be very sporting, or paid out to you in this lifetime. You could always will your ticket to future generations; hoping against hope the same betting shop will still be around.

Placing novelty bets is a lot of fun and as we were saying, can be lucrative too. One betting individual who remains unnamed walked into a Welsh betting shop on 1989 and placed a handful of novelty bets, the bookies took him on and gave him some keen odds.

The bet was of long standing duration (11 years) but relevant to the New Millennium. All of them came in, and paid odds of between 3 to1, to 8 to 1. He bet on three specific British TV shows still being active, that singer Cliff Richards would be knighted, and that Irish pop band U2 would still be together as a group. The odds of all of these specifics being correct were 6,479 to 1. A few days into the year 2000, this betting gent walked into his local Ladbrokes bookmaker and picked up a check for £194,400. This is the largest novelty bet won in history, although we know for a fact a few private proposition bets have been bigger.

By Samantha Williams

Sports betting is a whole new adventure of its own, and a natural progression from the bookie shops to an online presence has taken place, as every conceivable form of gambling becomes more widely available online. Sports betting entails some skill, and to be successful it generally means you have to know about the sports you are betting on.

If you fancy a name in the Grand National and take a stab at it, this is all in the name of good fun where luck counts. But real horse race betting is a true and pure adventure. This applies to betting on football, golf, baseball, cricket and even the name or sex of the next new member of the Royal Family will take some research. Conducting research into past and present form, historical outcomes and all kinds of other factors is for many people the learning aspect which makes this betting game so exciting.

“Was I right in my prediction based on the empirical knowledge I gained by learning about the subject I placed money on?”

Betting on horses is completely different to any other kind of betting, you have to consider, horse, breeding, jockey, trainer, track, weather and manager as well as many other factors, but this is truly the sport of Kings. All these factors come into play before you even look at the kind of wager you want to place, and before you know it the race is run and over with, while you are still trying to understand what a trifecta is.

People have been racing horses since time immemorial; in fact it is one of our most ancient sports. It dates back to as far as 4 500 BC when prehistoric Central Asian nomadic tribesmen were very competitive. But it was reserved for royalty! So horse racing is ancient, exotic, wild and betting on it can also be very confusing.

It is a professional sport and the second most attended spectator sport in the US after baseball (which you can also bet on). People of the US wager over $10 billion annually on this sport, so it is a major industry. It is popular all over the world including Canada, UK, Ireland, Saudi Arabia, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and South America.

Humankind has a naturally competitive and challenging spirit and they will place bets on anything that races – even hamsters and frogs. Modern horse racing has only grown in popularity to the extent that it has, as a result of widely legalized gambling, and venues for the provision of this.

Yes the language of betting on this sport is all over the map, but it fortunately does reward a few hours of study. Pasting the betting pages on the wall and throwing a dart at it to take your pick, may work for the lucky few, but this is not a game for fools so learn to know your horses.